Navy's Top Officer Calls For A Global Naval Force Clark Outlines Strategy For Combating Terrorism

Newport, R.I.— The Navy's top officer outlined on Monday a strategy for fighting terrorism that calls for an international naval collaboration to share intelligence and resources in an unprecedented show of maritime force.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark described the proposal as a “maritime NORAD” in his opening speech at the 16th International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College.

Clark spoke to representatives from 75 countries, among them about 60 navy and coast guard chiefs. By combining their strengths, he told them, terrorists would have no place to hide.

He said the navies of the world need to share intelligence about terrorist threats and coordinate resources to make the maximum use of every warship, plane or submarine, rather than having them work on redundant tasks.

“We have an opportunity of historic proportions — to assemble a maritime partnership the likes of which has never been seen before,” Clark said. He said he envisions “a global force, operating as one to defeat terrorism wherever it may fester, the greatest maritime force to ever set sail.”

“We are combating an enemy that will risk everything to drive a stake between the nations of the world,” he said. “We must stand, shoulder to shoulder, to defend against this enemy.”

Clark described the following as models for the collaboration he proposes:

• Operation Sea Cutlass, which involves warships of five countries to strike at terrorists off the Horn of Africa. It was initially commanded by a German admiral and is now commanded by a French admiral.

• Operation Active Endeavor, a NATO initiative under command of an Italian admiral, has monitored more than 30,000 ships transiting the Straits of Gibraltar in the last two years. It escorted more than 340 ships thought to be potential targets of terrorists.

•In mid-2002, as the United States geared up for war against Iraq, the Indian navy escorted two supply ships through the straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia.

Clark said one way to accomplish the international maritime coalition is to keep expanding the existing collaborations until they overlap and encompass all the world's oceans. The system could take any form, he said, and the U.S. Navy would not have to lead it.

“It can be formal or informal,” he said. “The key is we have to talk, and we have to start talking today, at this conference, about the tools we're going to need to do it. We may not perfectly define the solutions in the next two days, but we can lay the groundwork.”

The strategy, he said, would be the nautical equivalent of the North American Air Defense Command, which since 1958 has protected the airspace over Canada and the United States with multilayered radar.

“I'm looking for a maritime NORAD, so we share, globally, information and intelligence, and we optimize our resources,” Clark said.

•••••More than 150 delegates from about 75 countries registered for the symposium, which has been a biennial event since 1969. The 2001 symposium, however, was cancelled because of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The symposium was established to foster navy-to-navy cooperation in an academic setting, which removes many of the restrictions that might be imposed in a diplomatic get-together.

Clark noted that about 30 percent of the world's economy depends on international trade, and 99.7 percent of that commerce travels by sea, in more than 46,000 vessels serving about 4,000 ports. Trade links, he said, are tempting targets for terrorists because they can disrupt global commerce with a single act.

In the two years since the Sept. 11 attacks, Clark said, there has been a sevenfold increase in maritime interventions by the world's navies and coast guards.

Terrorists have launched attacks from the sea to disrupt entire economies, he said. He cited the suicide bombers who attacked the French tanker Limburg off Yemen a year ago, killing a crewman and dumping 100,000 barrels of oil into the sea.

The long-term consequences from that incident continue, Clark said, noting the following:

• Insurance premiums immediately tripled for ships entering Yemeni ports, and some shipping lines dropped the country from their schedules.

• Container traffic dropped by more than 90 percent.

• Some 3,000 jobs have been lost as a result of the environmental and economic disruption.

The Yemeni government estimates that the terrorists have cost the country $15 million a month, about 1 percent of its gross domestic product, he said.

Clark said that terrorists are using the seas to smuggle weapons, drugs and people, and using the money from their smuggling to fund terrorist acts.

Also, he said, in the first half of this year there were 234 documented acts of piracy, many of them politically motivated.

“This was the worst six-month period since the International Maritime Bureau started compiling piracy statistics in 1991, and a full 34 percent increase over the same period last year,” Clark said. “All over the world, our sea lines of communications are under attack.

“When you look at us collectively, together we have the resources and assets to spread all over the world. None of us, individually, can watch the whole world.”