For years, A.P. Moller – Maersk has been shipping military equipment around the world for the US Department of Defense – and it has been a highly lucrative business for the Danish shipping giant.
Since 1996, Maersk has been part of the Maritime Security Program (MSP), where shipping companies are obliged to make ships available to the US authorities for a hefty fee when transporting equipment for wars and conflicts around the world.
MSP informs Danwatch that ‘each vessel in MSP is paid “$5.3M per year”, equivalent to DKK 36.3 million, by the US authorities.
According to MSP, Maersk’s US subsidiary Maersk Line has 18 vessels in MSP, plus five from Maersk’s subsidiary Farrell Line, so Maersk accounts for over a third of the total 60 vessels in the program.
In the past five years alone, this has earned the Danish transportation giant DKK 4.1 billion.
Photo: United States Maritime Administration.
More programs
11 of the 23 Maersk ships in the MSP were also among those recently revealed by Danwatch to have been involved in shipping military equipment to Israel during the first year of the war in Gaza.
According to Maersk, however, the shipments to Israel were not part of MSP, but another military program under the US authorities, of which Maersk is a part.
“All shipments from Maersk Line, Limited to Israel are made under the US-Israel Cooperative Security Program. In this official U.S. government program, all transportation costs are funded by the U.S. government.”
“Payment for transportation under the US-Israel Security Cooperation Program is separate from the MSP program, where an annual stipend covers part of the higher operational costs to ensure that US-flagged ships and seafarers can be active in international trade and available to the US Department of Defense,” Maersk wrote in an email to Danwatch.
Maersk has not responded to how much the voyages under the US-Israel Security Cooperation Program have brought in.
Important piece of the puzzle
MSP informs Danwatch that there are no available records of which wars and conflicts Maersk and the other MSP ships sail equipment to. However, it is clear that Maersk and the other shipping companies’ ships in MSP play an essential role in US military operations.
For example, the United States Maritime Administration (MARAD), which administers the MSP, has previously reported that MSP ships carried more than 50 percent of all military equipment used by the US during military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Maersk’s cooperation with the US authorities continues as President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy increasingly challenges the international rules of the game and as military threats as well as threats of trade wars are hurled at America’s normally close allies. Trump has threatened to annex neighboring Canada as well as Greenland.
Jacob Kaarsbo, former chief analyst at the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE) and now an independent security policy advisor, calls it hypothetical, but certainly not unrealistic, that we could end up in a situation where Maersk is about to ship military equipment for the US government to a conflict that goes against Danish interests.
“As security policy differences are growing and we are heading towards the collapse of NATO, it puts these types of agreements in a new light,” he says, referring to Maersk’s collaboration with MSP. He elaborates:
“If we cut to the chase, it’s very clear that the Trump administration is completely indifferent to international law. It doesn’t care about territorial integrity and the right of nations to self-determination, and that increases the risk that we will end up on opposite sides of conflicts.”
Kaarsbo calls Greenland “a crazy example” of a scenario where Maersk risks having to transport American weapons to a conflict that goes against Denmark’s interests.
“It’s crazy, but not the kind of thing you can just assume won’t happen anymore,” he says, and therefore also believes that Maersk’s American arms shipments could easily be an area that FE would start keeping an eye on.
The flag is crucial
Should we end up in a situation where Maersk has to transport American military equipment to a conflict that goes against Denmark’s interests, there is not much the Danish authorities can do.
Maersk’s ships involved in the collaboration with MSP all fly the American flag, and according to Kristina Siig, Professor and a PhD in Maritime Law at the University of Southern Denmark, this is crucial.
“When you as a shipping company choose a flag, you also choose which basket you put your eggs in – including which government or public authority you ultimately report to.”
In other words, the Danish government will not be able to tell a US-flagged Maersk ship to stop MSP cooperation in a crisis situation.
“The US must be sure that US law applies to ships flying the US flag,” says Kristina Siig and elaborates that in practice, US law can outweigh international rules when it comes to a ship flying the US flag.
“The problem is that international law is not always clear-cut. Different countries are not party to the same conventions and there can be different opinions on how international law should be interpreted,” she says.
Ultimately, Maersk will have to decide for themselves whether they want to withdraw from the agreement with MSP or, for example, switch away from an American flag.
“But it’s also a trade-off for Maersk. The US Navy has helped Maersk several times if they were under attack, for example by the Houthis in the Red Sea. So it’s nice to have a big friend with big muscles.”
Neither Maersk nor MSP wanted to clarify what contractual obligations are included in MSP collaborations and what options a shipping company has to refuse a voyage.
