An environmental military...

In my class this morning we watched clips from an episode of Whale Wars, a series that follows the radical anti-whaling actions of the environmental group, Sea Shepherd. The group uses a decades old sea-faring vessel, aptly named the Steve Irwin, to hunt down whaling fleets and stop them from hunting whales. A variety of tactics are used, including fire hoses, ramming and even non-toxic, environmentally friendly homemade stinkbombs that make it impossible to work on the deck of the ship.

Sea Shepherd is one of a select few environmental groups that go to such radical and violent lengths to take action and get their message across. Indeed, its founder, Paul Watson (the original founder of Greenpeace and senior member until they kicked him out for his violent strategies) has long said that the traditional forms of protest often lead to no action whatsoever.

The tactics employed by Sea Shepherd are indeed dangerous, but they are also fairly militaristic. Some members of the crew of the Steve Irwin have formal naval experience. In a way, Sea Shepherd represents a very small navy (it has some other ships as well) and it has even titled its fleet, Neptune's Navy.

It has got me thinking. What if Sea Shepherd could grow bigger? What if donations swelled to such a degree that they could purchase even more ships and even more advanced equipment? Soon enough, Sea Shepherd could have itself a solid fleet capable of holding considerable influence. Theoretically, it could have a navy larger than most other countries in the world (mind you, the sophistication and militaristic specialization of the vessels might be lacking).

And what if some other environmental groups with similar radical action plans got involved and their budgets expanded hugely? They could amass the equivalent of a small air force with planes and helicopters. Sea Shepherd already has at least one helicopter. Again, theoretically, some kind of informal environmental military could be established.

Of course, what the intentions of such a force would be would certainly influence the rest of the world's response to it. For instance, Sea Shepherd's actions on whaling and fishing vessels have resulted in arrest warrants been put out in particular countries, though not in its home base of the United States. It has yet to attract enough attention to be considered overly dangerous and require a global response. Of course, if this hypothetical military force started doing more than hassling whalers, more people might start to take notice.

And whether or not such a force could actually find a market in which it could do its work is also an important question to ask. Much of the success of Sea Shepherd has come because it is working towards a specific cause and also working primarily in the global policy grey zone: international waters. This hypothetical force would probably want to expand its mandate, but expanding too far could get it into trouble, especially if much of its work didn't happen outside national boundaries.

It is an interesting proposition, but is marred by countless factors: How would you finance it? Where's the line between 'direct action environmental group' and 'dangerous vigilantes'? What happens if it actually goes to battle with another major force, like a private security force or even a national government?

Now, I would imagine it highly unlikely that the world's globalized security forces would let something like that form. After all, Sea Shepherd is not a sovereign state and national governments would not have to go through the same international process to shut it down -- not that sovereignty always stops them, but that's beside the point. Moreover, who knows whether groups like Sea Shepherd would even want to participate in something that grew beyond its current mandate, size and scope. And I very much doubt that any force of this nature would want to kill anyone.

In light of such an unlikely formation, I can see two semi-legitimate uses for this hypothetical environmental paramilitary force. First, it could serve as a private security force. The United States government, for example, has been using a private security force in Iraq for several years, although it is subject to a great deal of controversy. Theoretically, the environmental force could do contract work for organizations or causes that it sees fit to help. Say some e-waste activists can't get a certain government to stop shipping its e-waste to China even if it is blocked under international law, so instead it decides to stop the ship using direct action by blockading the ship with the paramilitary fleet. But considering that Paul Watson prefers volunteers for Sea Shepherd work -- volunteers have a greater interest and aren't doing it simply for the paycheque, he argues -- he probably wouldn't want to contract his work out for money.

The second application I could see for such a force would be as the de-facto enforcers of international laws. Sea Shepherd already acts in that regard with specific international laws. One of the biggest problems with international laws, after they have been signed and ratified, is global enforcement. Other than groups like the United Nations Security Forces, there are few or no global security forces to uphold international laws. This hypothetical force could do that for environmentally-related international laws, at least to some degree. Of course, the formal complexities of such an idea are well beyond the scope of this post.

I'll finish by noting that by no means am I advocating for such an environmental paramilitary force, but merely exploring the idea. I certainly prefer peaceful and non-violent solutions to problems, but we all know that that doesn't always work.