South-East Asian countries like Philippines and Indonesia have to cope with an increasing number of maritime issues in order to exert their sovereign rights over their territorial waters, archipelagic waters and exclusive economic zones (EEZ).
In the midst of a tense geostrategic environment, the security of maritime areas and, more broadly, security in the high seas, are subject to major threats and illegal activities as recently summarized in the last Information Fusion Centre (IFC) annual report: piracy and sea robbery, maritime terrorism, cyber-attacks and AIS (automatic identification system) spoofing, trafficking of all kinds, illegal fishing activities and maritime pollution.
To address all the above-mentioned challenges, some countries make the choice to entrust to a specialized administration the relief and police missions. However, the implementation of these missions may fall into another state organization, which paradoxically does not consist of a specialized administration: it is the choice made, in particular, by France.
The French model – or “State Action at Sea” – appeared in the 1970s with the extension of the national maritime domain and the considerable growth of human activities at sea. Occasionally, since the creation of exclusive economic zones in 1976, France had to reconsider its maritime organization in order to be able to enforce its sovereign rights on vast maritime spaces. The studies conducted by the State services had quickly shown that, not only the creation of a specialized coastline administration would have been very expensive and would have suffered from a lack of efficiency…