26. 8. 2025

This episode of The IR thinker explores the changing landscape of maritime piracy and security with Professor Tim Edmunds, tracing how piracy has evolved from traditional coastal raiding to more organised, networked forms of criminality at sea. The conversation examines the structure and scale of pirate groups, the onshore political and economic conditions that sustain them, and the mixed record of international anti-piracy measures. 

It then turns to wider challenges for the global maritime order, including “grey-zone” tactics at sea, strategic competition around chokepoints and artificial islands, debates over updating UNCLOS, and growing vulnerabilities linked to critical undersea infrastructure, highlighting some of the most pressing and under-researched questions in contemporary maritime security.

Timothy Edmunds

Professor Timothy Edmunds is Professor of International Security and Head of the School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies at the University of Bristol. A leading specialist in security policy, capacity building and security sector reform with a particular focus on the maritime domain, he is co-director of the SafeSeas Network and has played an advisory role in UK policy processes, including work on the 2022 UK National Strategy for Maritime Security. His research on maritime security has been supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy and the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, and he previously served as founding Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Security for Cambridge University Press and BISA.

Publications:

Understanding maritime security

Securing the Seas: A Comprehensive Assessment of Global Maritime Security

Pragmatic ordering: Informality, experimentation, and the maritime security agenda

Innovation and New Strategic Choices

Blue crime: Conceptualising transnational organised crime at sea

Beyond seablindness: a new agenda for maritime security studies

Content

00:00 - Introduction
02:10 - Evolution of Maritime Piracy
10:11 - Organization of Pirate Groups
13:27 - Structural Conditions Fuelling Piracy
20:16 - Size and Scale of Piracy Groups
24:08 - Effectiveness of Anti-Piracy Measures
31:04 - Defining Assertiveness in Maritime Spaces
36:33 - Grey-Zone Tactics at Sea
43:50 - Innovating UNCLOS for Maritime Order
53:05 - Maritime Chokepoints: Ownership and Control
59:25 - Artificial Islands and Maritime Security
01:01:43 - Threats to Undersea Infrastructure
01:07:02 - Most Challenging Areas in Maritime Security Research