By Simon Tisdall
The US military campaign to protect merchant shipping from Iranian attacks by asserting direct maritime control in the strait of Hormuz is not an idea unique to Donald Trump’s administration. Almost exactly 200 years ago, in the period 1825-27, a powerful US naval squadron led by Commodore John Rodgers was sent to the Mediterranean to defend American ships from the depredations of Greek corsairs and pirates. (From: The Guardian.)
For all the new-minted republic’s brave talk of liberty, the US squadron did not assist Greece’s ongoing “regime change” struggle for independence from the Ottoman empire. Its sole, self-serving purpose was to defend US trade, markets and business interests. After abandoning his call for a people’s revolution in Tehran, this, too, is what Trump’s reckless war with Iran has now boiled down to.
Yet Trump has since suggested the US itself may yet do exactly that and impose tolls. Although he later rowed back, last month’s “memorandum of understanding” with Iran accepts that it has a right, with Oman, to monetise transit through the strait of Hormuz. Despite the resumption of US attacks and Trump’s increasingly hysterical threats, the MOU currently remains the only basis for a future peace deal.
Two-faced Trump’s equivocal stance reflects a wider breakdown in the “free sea” consensus underpinning maritime law – and hastens the overall degradation of the international rules-based order. Trump believes nation states (or at least the US) have an absolute right to act unilaterally in their own interests, unconstrained by laws, treaties or regard for the “global commons” of the high seas.
The destabilising ramifications of this approach, emulated by other countries, grow clearer by the day. This new 21st-century war of the sea does not involve titanic clashes between Bismarck-class battleships or huge naval showdowns such as Jutland and Midway. But its frontlines are the same as ever: defence, security, borders, free trade, money, power.
Also potentially fatal for international norms is the post-Hormuz debate in Indonesia about imposing tolls in the strait of Malacca, through which 22% of global maritime shipping passes. Might Turkey adopt the US-Iran approach and charge for passage through the Bosphorus? Or Spain in the strait of Gibraltar? The dire implications for global trade and supply chains are obvious. About 80% of goods traded worldwide by volume go by sea.
Friction over seaborne trade aside, overt maritime clashes between regional rivals are increasing, particularly in the South China Sea and the waters around Taiwan. Expansionist China’s creation of artificial, militarised islands on obscure reefs and sporadic confrontations with neighbours such as the Philippines are the root cause. Like the US, Beijing rejects international law when it doesn’t suit it – notably the 2016 ruling by the permanent court of arbitration, which found its claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea lacked a legal basis.
China crossed another red line last week when one of its missile destroyers undertook a live-fire drill inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, about 180km (110 miles) from Okinotori, Japan’s southernmost island. Tokyo and Beijing have longstanding maritime disputes. But tensions rose sharply after Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, suggested a Chinese bid to seize Taiwan could trigger a Japanese military response. Few weeks go by without reports of Chinese air and sea exercises in preparation for a not-so-hypothetical amphibious assault on Taiwan.
The fact a Russian frigate accompanied the offending Chinese warship off Japan points to another major actor in the global war of the sea. Vladimir Putin’s once-vaunted Black Sea fleet has suffered severe losses, caused by Ukraine’s missiles and drones, since 2022. Its ships no longer control the Black Sea, mostly cowering in port. As if to compensate, hybrid “grey zone” Russian military maritime operations against Ukraine’s European allies are expanding. Baltic undersea pipelines and communications cables have proven vulnerable targets.
Russia has also stepped up surface fleet and submarine activities in the North Atlantic approaches, the North Sea and the Channel, where it is suspected of mapping underwater infrastructure with a view to future sabotage. Last Monday, one of its warships went a step further, marking Andy Burnham’s first day as UK prime minister with a rare live-fire drill 70kn (45 miles) south of Plymouth, home of the Royal Navy.
It was the latest in a string of hostile actions designed to provoke, intimidate and test British and European defences. Last month, a Russian frigate fired warning shots near a private yacht off the Isle of Wight. The incident seems trivial until it is set in the wider context of a rapidly building Nato-Russia at-sea confrontation. Then it begins to look scary.
