Eco-insurgents at Sea

A Greenpeace ship evaded its Danish naval pursuers and deployed a boarding party in a pod yesterday to disrupt arctic oil drilling. This boarding is Greenpeace’s third recent attempt at offshore oil production disruption, but their use of the tactic dates back to the early 1990s.

Comparable to the cliché that one man’s freedom fighter is another man's terrorist; one man’s environmental vigilante is another’s criminal economic disruptor. As with other open-source insurgencies, (see Brave New War) it is interesting to watch the competition and cooperation between non-state maritime actors. During the peak of the Iraq War, numerous insurgent and terrorist groups tried to one up each other to maintain relevancy (and still do, to a certain extent), launching more and more spectacular attacks. On the less violent end of the conflict spectrum, we’ll probably begin to see a similar phenomenon with non-state maritime actors. Although much older, GP has to fight for recognition and funding from the same group of donors as its more tactically aggressive and marketing savy spin-off Sea Shepherds.

Ship naming is political and fish don't vote, right? Greenpeace is currently trying to reconstitute its fleet and has started construction on a new Rainbow Warrior. The Sea Shepherds seem to have found a winning formula for building brand recognition by naming their ships after celebrities who have championed animal rights, something Greenpeace may want to consider emulating.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.