Going back to 2009, senior NATO maritime commanders had begun to talk of an 'awakening' in the alliance's focus on maritime matters. In the years that followed, counter-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa and an air- and sea-based intervention in Libya were key moments in what was a gradual increase in NATO emphasis on operations at and from the sea. Since 2014, this emphasis arguably has been ratcheted up. Today, alliance navies are seeing higher-level political focus on the full spectrum of maritime operations. This is due to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean Sea at one end of the spectrum and the need to address increasingly robust Russian naval activity in European waters at the other.
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