Research On The International Cooperation Of Non-traditional Maritime Security

The Non-Traditional Security issues, regarded as NTS, have become increasingly concerned in the 21st century, both domestically and internationally, as a result of accelerated economic globalization and world multi-polarization. The process toward industrialization and informationization, on the other hand, complicates and differentiates the NTS from traditional security threats and makes the NTS far more destructive and challenging. Particularly, the maritime security issues, as one of the major threats of NTS, could never be more addressed in recent years in maritime domain. Although the traditional security threats and those non-traditional ones may share some similarities such as the causes, the NTS threats in maritime domain, such as piracy, smuggling, drug trading, illegal immigration, banditry, human smuggling and slavery, environmental attack, trade disruption, weapons proliferation and terrorism, are exceptional in intensity and in their presentation. Based on the comparison between the NTS and traditional security issues, this essay aims to present a comprehensive view and provide theoretical basis to the solution of the NTS.To cope with the crisis and damage brought by the non-traditional maritime security, it is widely accepted that a global maritime network should be built, and the global, regional, and national cooperation should be enhanced to promote security on the seas. However, the network and the cooperation must follow some certain principles and rules, and act in consistent with international maritime laws. In the quest for an orderly maritime domain, the practice of the global, regional, and national cooperation and the experiment of building a global intelligence network are formulating a new system and to improve the efficiency and are providing an enhanced solution dealing with the NTS. Those agreements, whether bilateral, or regional, or even international, are currently conducted within the framework of international laws and conventions. However, the concept and content of international law may sometime fall behind the reality. Therefore, the international law should be adjusted time in time to improve its adaptability. In this essay, the writer proved that appropriate manifestations of sovereignty of various countries should be respected, and furthermore, it should be legislated to ensure such actions are gaining greater trust and cooperation between countries, including between their military counterparts. Secondly, since the authorities are largely confined to their national territory, the bilateral and multilateral agreements are becoming major solutions, which mean the international non-governmental organizations (NGO) are required to take more responsibilities. Therefore, the related NGOs should be given more right in capacity to fulfill their obligations. Additionally, other ways to amplify the implementation of NGOs are suggested, such as extending the scope of international law, especially the public international law which involves for instance the United Nations and other international organizations, maritime law, international criminal law and the Geneva conventions.Despite the overall positive assessments of the efforts in dealing with the NTS challenges, the Chinese government is falling behind to some extent, and has not yet been fully aware the importance of the non-traditional maritime security, confirmed by the evidence that the practice of Chinese government participating international cooperation is beyond other countries, such as the United States, Japan, Singapore, and India. The lack of concern on non-traditional maritime security issues may bring negative effects to China's core interests in maritime domain in the future. Therefore, a number of initiatives and strategic plans are urged to be launched to eliminate the potential risks and strengthen the capacity of Chinese maritime forces. First of all, the focus on legislation should be further enhanced. Secondly, the co-operation with other countries and NGOs must be encouraged and expedited, while at the same time, the government should develop a more sophisticated system to face various unpredictable NTS challenges. Last but not least, in concert with international laws, the government has to protect its sovereignty from other intentional intervention, and take the responsibility to help build a new international maritime order.