From Sanctions to Seizure – How Maritime Law Gets Broken

Let us be clear about what we are watching, because the euphemisms are doing a lot of dishonest work.

This is not sanctions enforcement. It is not policing. It is not some tidy bit of maritime housekeeping. It is the slow, ugly collapse of the idea that the high seas are governed by law rather than by whoever turns up with the biggest escort.

When Donald Trump announced a “blockade” of Venezuelan shipping, he wasn’t just freelancing language. A blockade is an act associated with war. Declaring one outside any armed conflict, without UN authority, is not firmness. It is legal vandalism. And once you normalise that, you do not get to complain when others respond in kind.

So Russia does what any flag state would do when one of its vessels is threatened in international waters. It sends a frigate. That is not some exotic act of escalation. It is orthodox maritime behaviour. The ship flies a Russian flag, therefore Russia asserts protection. That principle is older than Washington, older than Moscow, and older than the Royal Navy’s obsession with correct uniforms.

The American justification is wafer-thin. Yes, ships have histories. Yes, IMO numbers persist. Yes, sanctions regimes track ownership and control. None of that creates a roaming right to board foreign-flagged vessels on the high seas. If it did, every major power would claim global police powers based on its domestic law. China would love that. Russia would adore it. The United States used to understand why that was a bad idea.

What makes this grotesque is the timing. Days after the military seizure of Nicolas Maduro, we are now told that a tanker may be boarded between Scotland and Iceland. Not because it is carrying weapons. Not because it is stateless. Not because it is piratical. But because Washington says so. That is not law. That is fiat.

And here comes the part the cheerleaders always miss. This is not about whether Maduro is a villain. He is. It is not about whether sanctions are justified. They may be. It is about precedent. If a powerful state can kidnap a head of state and then seize foreign-flagged shipping in international waters to enforce its own sanctions, the rules-based order is no longer a thing. It is a slogan.

Cue the predictable cynicism from Vladimir Putin, solemnly invoking freedom of navigation. He does not mean it, of course. But that is the point. What matters is not what he says, but what he learns. And the lesson being taught is that rules are optional, and power decides. That lesson will be remembered the next time Western shipping passes somewhere sensitive and inconvenient.

The UK, meanwhile, is trying to perfect the art of saying nothing while standing very close to the action. Aircraft arrive. Helicopters appear. The tanker is conveniently near British approaches. And we are told, with a straight face, that this is all someone else’s business. Silence is not neutrality when your territory, airspace, or logistics are involved. It is complicity without the honesty of ownership.

This is how systems decay. Not with a bang, but with a series of “special operations”, each justified by a bad actor, until the distinction between law and muscle disappears. Sanctions become blockades. Enforcement becomes interdiction. Interdiction becomes escorting frigates. And suddenly the North Atlantic looks less like a trade route and more like a proving ground.

Maritime order works precisely because it is dull. Predictable. Boring. Flags mean something. Jurisdiction means something. Once that boredom is replaced by swagger and exception-making, everyone is less safe, trade becomes hostage to geopolitics, and the seas revert to what they were before the rules were written.

If this is strength, it is the sort that breaks the furniture and then looks surprised when nothing works properly afterwards.