Wow, big news here. Thanks to Somalia Report for breaking this story first, and a hat tip to David Isenberg for finding and posting DoS’s new official position on armed guards on boats.
The thing here is that Secretary of State Clinton has had to make a pretty significant public reversal on her ‘views’ on PSC’s. As a Senator and presidential candidate, she was pretty much opposed to PSC’s and even introduced legislation against the usage of them in the war. Of course that all happened during the aftermath of the Nisour Square deal, and we have come along way since then…. Here is a quote from Somalia Report:
It is a stunning reversal of opinion for Clinton, a well known opponent of the use of private security companies and a political appointee who has openly discussed taking steps to eliminate them. As a presidential candidate running against President Obama she sponsored legislation entitled H.R.4102 “Stop Outsourcing Security Act”. The suggested legislation was created in November of 2007 proposed banning the use of security contractors.
Although it should be noted that the DoS has been steadily using WPS contractors during her entire time as Secretary of State, and I am sure she has experienced the security services of quite a few WPS folks in places like Afghanistan. Security contractors really shined during the attack on the embassy in Kabul, and I am sure that has only enforced how important their contracted guard force really is. Not to mention that their security contractors will be incredibly important to the mission in Iraq as troops leave in mid-December.
So I want to applaud her and the DoS for promoting armed guards on boats. It makes sense, it works, and it is the right thing to do. I also hope that this will open the market a little for US security companies. If anything, we should see more American guards protecting US flagged vessels. Plus, that would also help chip away at veteran unemployment to some degree. Every little bit helps.
But there is another issue though that the US government needs to address, and that is the cost that US flagged vessels must contend with. The other day I came across a very interesting document at Marsec4 that talked about how much US flagged vessels pay to operate, versus the global market.
Operating a deep draft ocean going vessel under a US flag costs on average $20,000 per day, a much higher amount than the $7,000 daily average for vessels flying foreign flags.
With that said, if the DoS really wants to help, then reduce or eliminate the frivolous or costly rules and regulations that make it so expensive for US flagged vessels to operate. Get our fleet economically competitive, so at least American shipping can afford armed security and capture some of that global market share out there. –Matt
Remarks to the Defense Trade Advisory Group
Andrew J. Shapiro
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs
Washington, DC
November 9, 2011
……Finally, I want to provide a brief update on our efforts to counter piracy off the Horn of Africa. This is another area where we are working very closely with industry. Commercial shipping vessels transiting off the coast of Somalia are frequent targets for pirates. The lives of innocent seafarers have been lost and crews are often held hostage for many months in appalling conditions. The monetary total of ransoms demanded runs into hundreds of millions of dollars a year, with the total cost of piracy to the global economy estimated to be in the billions.
With so much water to patrol it is difficult for international naval forces in the region to protect every commercial vessel. Working with industry, we recently established a national policy encouraging countries to allow commercial ships transiting high-risk waters to have armed security teams on board. The reason for this is simple: to date no ship with an armed security team aboard has been successfully pirated. We believe that the expanded use of armed security teams by commercial vessels is a major reason why we have seen a decline in the number of successful pirate attacks this year. Therefore, we have recently demarched countries to permit the use of privately contracted armed security personnel on commercial vessels. And we are also working with industry and transit countries to make it less onerous for privately contracted security personnel to transit foreign ports with weapons intended for the self-defense of ships.