Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO.
We are in a maritime mess. Unknown perpetrators are sabotaging undersea cables, the Kremlin has grown its shadow fleet to encompass a chunk of the world’s commercial vessel fleet, and the Houthis are intensifying attacks on Western shipping to the point that Western carriers are avoiding the Red Sea altogether.
But all this isn’t just a headache for shipping companies or undersea cable operators — it threatens coastal states, the environment and most countries’ economies.
That’s why we need a “Protect the Oceans” coalition.
In November, the bulk-carrier Yi Peng 3 allegedly sabotaged two undersea cables in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). A month later, the Chinese-flagged vessel was still taunting Swedish authorities, anchored in Denmark’s EEZ, adjacent to Swedish waters, biding its time. And the two countries couldn’t get to the bottom of what had happened: Chinese authorities were simply not responding to Sweden’s request for cooperation. On Dec. 21, having refused the Swedish prosecutor permission to board, the Yi Peng 3 sailed off.
Nearby, a steady stream of suspected Russian shadow tankers was passing through Danish and Swedish waters on their way from Russia’s Baltic Sea ports to international destinations. Shadow tankers violate a host of international maritime rules, including the requirement to have insurance and undertake regular maintenance. These rickety vessels thus pose considerable risks to other ships, coastal countries and the marine environment but, again, there’s little nations can legally do to stop them since all vessels have the right to travel through any country’s waters under the U.N.’s Convention on the Law of the Sea.
To be sure, coastal countries can demand proof of insurance and seaworthiness in their territorial waters, but in their EEZs — where shadow vessels primarily sail — they have fewer rights.
For example, on Dec. 16, the U.K., Poland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Estonia announced they’d start requesting proof of insurance from suspected shadow vessels passing through the English Channel, the Danish Straits, the Sound between Denmark and Sweden as well as the Gulf of Finland. But these are not EEZs, which are shadow vessels’ favorite waters, precisely because coastal states have fewer rights there. Meanwhile, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia have seen a string of near-disasters involving shadow vessels, with one such ship even exploding off the coast of Malaysia in 2023.
Then, there’s the Red Sea, where the Houthi rebels continue their vicious attacks on Western-linked shipping. Although the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy and an EU task force are trying to protect merchant vessels in this strategic waterway, the Yemeni militia has kept going, deterred not even by the risk of environmental disaster. In August, they came close to causing an oil spill even worse than that of the Exxon Valdez.
In the South China Sea, meanwhile, Beijing continues a campaign of maritime harassment against civilian vessels from neighboring nations, including Vietnam and the Philippines.
Yes, our oceans are under threat. And lest we forget, climate change is contributing even further harm. The shipping industry is a significant carbon emitter, and in the past decade, its grown by 20 percent. Now, ambitious countries’ green policies are being derailed by geopolitics.
But paradoxically, the fact that the oceans face so many adversaries may be a positive thing. Considering how indispensable they are to modern economies — not to mention life on Planet Earth — an extraordinary range of people, organizations and nations ought to be interested in a better future.
In other words, we need a coalition to protect our oceans.
Imagine if governments as different from each other as those of Indonesia and the U.S., organizations as varied as Greenpeace and shipping lines, and celebrities as wide-ranging as, say, actor Tom Hanks (who endured the horror of ocean disorder in his role as Captain Phillips) and activist Greta Thunberg teamed up to speak about the threats to our oceans — those posed by governments, by shady operators, by the climate crisis. Imagine if they spoke about what would happen to our oceans if those harming it were to prevail, and how profoundly that would affect not just the world’s economies but the health of our oceans too.
Thunberg and the Pentagon may have diametrically different perspectives on the world, but protecting our oceans is a cause they can both agree on. In fact, the only parties one could imagine standing against protecting our oceans would be those actively harming them: an unpalatable coalition including the Houthis, its main backer Iran and the countries that do nothing to stop or even criticize their attacks; countries that conduct trade using the shadow fleet despite knowing it can cause oil spills; China, which engages in dangerous maritime harassment in the South China Sea; Russia, which appears linked to recent attacks on undersea cables; shady operators that sell scrapheap-ready ships into the shadow fleet; the elusive entrepreneurs who buy these ships; and pirates and fishermen who overfish or illegally catch.
But this group isn’t so enormous. It’s certainly not so big that the oceans can’t be protected. And if such a campaign were to exist, which country, company or person would openly announce: “No, I support harming our oceans”?
Of course, such a campaign wouldn’t save our oceans straight away. And some members of the ocean-harming coalition may brazenly continue harmful activities. But an ocean-protection coalition could help bring attention, name and shame some of the shady characters and outfits involved, and demonstrate to the world that a massive majority of nations and people still support order on the high seas.
