Talk:International Maritime Security Construct

Membership of Kuwait and Qatar
There seems to be some dispute over whether Kuwait and Qatar are members and should be included in the article. This article from "Forces Network" seems to make a pretty definitive statement, and is listed as the source in 2019–20 Persian Gulf crisis. I've never heard of the source before, and the website doesn't make clear what degree of editorial oversight there is, but I'm inclined to take this at face value. The reporter himself has worked for the BBC before.

Whatever we use should be consistent - the current dropdown menu says "9 states", but only lists 7. If there's consensus to include Kuwait & Qatar I'll update the map to match. Pinging who added the countries, and  who removed it. MarginalCost (talk) 02:51, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure how we come up with a consensus with this, other than there being far more sources saying 7 than 9. I removed them because I couldn't find any references in a quick Google or any of the references currently used on the page. My guess is Forces.net misreported this as their article on the same change of command I added omits them. --Lewis Cawte (Talk) 00:27, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, so upon further research, I've found a few articles from around the end of November from various sources including Reuters of Qatar and Kuwait telling the US they will join, but, the sources since that point still omit them. I'd imagine they've not formally joined/contributed or the members of the coalition do not want them involved for one reason or another. If the latter is the case, I expect we'll be waiting for another cable drop to confirm. Or I suppose someone could try and FOI it? --Lewis Cawte (Talk) 00:32, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

After a search, I think both have expressed wishes to join it but have not done so so far, with most articles saying they will join but not have confirmed if they joined it or not. Appreciate anyone who finds a source that confirms if they have truly joined in yet or not. Primdena (talk) 15:53, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, this does indeed make the most sense. Thanks to both! MarginalCost (talk) 01:33, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

CTF Sentinel
I think the article probably warrants some mention of Combined Task Force (CTF) Sentinel which, as far as I can tell, is the military command part of the IMSC? Not adding due to my lack of current understanding, but, here seems to be the original announcement for it. --Lewis Cawte (Talk) 23:14, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

New Commander
https://www.imscsentinel.com/news/coalition-task-force-sentinel-change-of-command

BlueD954 (talk) 09:41, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, excellent. I was waiting for that to come through - it was announced a few days ago on Twitter just hadn't happened yet at the time. --Lewis Cawte (Talk) 10:34, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Categories
Pinging and  to continue the conversation from the user talk page.

To address the category issue particularly, I strongly agree with Lewis that the current configuration is very much an example of WP:OVERCAT. I think a good guide would be to look at other alliances like NATO (which has reached Good Article status), which though it has more about 4x the members, has less categories than the current revision. That precedent would entail removing just about all of the bilateral relations cats, but keeping the more general "military relations of" categories. MarginalCost (talk) 14:16, 3 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I can go for that. I was only stating the reason as to why I added the bilateral relations categories in the first place because this isn't any normal military alliance. The "military alliances involving" categories should stay as well. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 14:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)


 * (Third time lucky due to edit conflicts and moving page?) I'd question whether this is alliance. The page states it as a consortium, and the IMSC itself calls it a coalition and I'd rate it closer to a task group or similar. There's some semantics there, but, the closest reference points I could for something like this are CTF 151 or maybe something like ISAF. Even with military relations categories, this page is (rightly) in the Category:2019–2021 Persian Gulf crisis category, which is a subcategory of a number of these already. --Lewis Cawte (Talk) 14:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've removed the extra cats in three stages, so that if consensus changes they are easier to reverse.
 * First, I removed the bilateral cats, which all 3 of us seem on board with removing.
 * Second, I removed the military alliances cats. Upon reflection, I agree with Lewis that these are not really applicable, as it's not really an alliance in the sense of a mutual agreement for protection. I understand you disagree WikiCleanerMan, but I think we should discuss here before re-adding them – specifically, on in what sense they are "an international agreement concerning national security in which the contracting parties agree to mutual protection and support in case of a crisis that has not been identified in advance" to quote our page on Military alliance.
 * Third, I boldly removed Anti-Iranian sentiments, and Geopolitical Rivalry, as these do not seem to me to be defining categories of the subject. But I know there has been no talk page discussion of these yet. I also removed the Iran-UAE navbox, as this article isn't a part of that series. MarginalCost (talk) 16:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Formation date & founding members
Thinking out loud so to speak - we've got mixed definitions on formation date/founding members - as can be seen in the lead section vs the member's section.

Going back two links from ref#3, we get a few nations joining as early as mid-August. If we look at the formation "main article" which is a section of the Persian Gulf conflict page (which is out of date by way of missing Estonia), we can see the date on the 16th coincides with the Cardigan Bay meeting, and that would have the claims that I believe I made about founding members?

We should probably come to a consensus on what date/definition we're using and update either the lead or the infobox+members section accordingly. --Lewis Cawte (Talk) 16:22, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Got time to answer your concern, Lewis. I'd say the founding members should be the ones who joined between 2019 to early or mid-2020. Because at the time, the coalition was still pretty new, and the U.S. under the then-Trump administration was probably having trouble finding more powerful nations say France, Germany, etc... to join because of their reservations. I think this isn't a major concern in terms of clarity. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 14:29, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

New Commander
See website.

2401:7400:4007:7793:BD2F:4578:5CA0:8C43 (talk) 05:03, 24 August 2021 (UTC)