Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Don't know if this belongs here or the culture war or small scale questions. But the US has sized a Venezuelan oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. I would like to know what makes this different than piracy, if anything.
The US says it had a "seizure warrant" for it. What does that mean? Was the vessel subject to US laws at any point, violated them, and this is the result?
The US says that the tanker is sanctioned. What does this mean? Economic sanctions usually mean, "I won't do business with you," can a sanction mean, "I won't let you do business with someone else, and if you do I'll seize your vessel in your waters?" At what point is a sanction a war with fancier language?
"Guyana's maritime authority said Skipper was falsely flying the country's flag." Does this impact the legal calculation?
Outside of the numerous questions, I'm getting Iraq war vibes from this. "They support terrorism! They have weapons of mass intoxication! The people will thank us, the leader is a dictator, etc etc."
Will the US have boots on the ground in Venezuela in a year? It seems so contrary to Trump's MO, what is going on here?
Piracy is illegal under international law; sanction enforcement with the ascent of the flagged country is not.
It means it went through the procedural process to receive a warrant for seizure, the exact jurisdictions of which apply depends on the case- but which often includes the country under whose flag the vessel was under.
Not just US laws, but the laws of other states- such as those it is seeking the flag protection of. Who, themselves, have interests that are subject to US law, which is why US sanctions have so much international influence.
Not here, since your analogy breaks down in two places- 'your waters,' which gets into the degrees of territoriality at sea which do not prohibit various actions, and 'your vessel,' which goes to the country of flagging, not the nation of proximity or travel.
The most relevant factor in play, and most common in cases of of sanction enforcement against ships that try to seek protection of the sovereignty of other states, is if / when the nation whose flag a vessel is sailing under agrees to rescind protection / allow a seizure. This can be the formal permission of a seizure warrant, and can happen when the flag-state whose sovereignty would be infringed is provided with evidence / reason to rescind protection.
This is where sanctions law comes into play. International law not only recognizes the sovereign right of states to say 'I won't do business with you,' but also 'I won't do business with people who do business with you.' Many states, in contexts where their own significant interests are not on the line, will happily give their own sovereign ascent to sanction enforcement at sea rather than fall afoul of the sanctioner's sanctions.
Massively. Ships don't have legal rights to sail the seas unmolested under international law, states have legal rights to sail ships unmolested at sea. This distinction has two effects.
First, if a ship is falsely flying under a country's flag, it has no actual legal protection. The legal protection derives from the sovereignty of the flagged nation, not the ship itself. There is no sovereign infringement to Guyana if Guyana never extended its sovereignty to the ship.
Second, if a ship is recognized as falsely flying the flag of a country, that country is far less likely to try and to provide political cover to it, and far more likely to agree to the political actions of a requesting power. Such as acceding to a request to support seizure, whether through supporting a warrant or otherwise.
'Trump is being a neocon' is the latest Trump Bad take, and Jon Steward recently spread it further (although he didn't start it- that's been the Venezuelan and associated angle since this started).
Maybe. I wouldn't advise betting one way or the other.
Did you read the US national security strategy that released last week? That is the second Trump Administration setting out it's MO.
While most of the media has fixated on the European dynamic, one of the more significant parts is the strategy's elevating of the Western Hemisphere in the order of administration priorities. There's a fair deal of subtext and background context as to why and what purpose and how Venezuela stands in there.
The more relevant point for your question is that Venezuela is one of the personal priorities of Marco Rubio, who is not only the Secretary of State but also Trump's National Security Advisor. He is the first person to hold both positions in the Presidential cabinet since Kissinger, and both positions give him substantial influence over American strategy such as the NSS. They also give him substantial influence over American policy, since Trump prefers the pageantry of being President to actually managing the bureaucracy, and Rubio is able to present his desires as aligning with Trump's stated goals (which Rubio helps write into stated policy).
Thank you, this is very helpful. Would you say that the difference between piracy and this is that piracy is when an unflagged or false-flagged ship attacks a ship sailing under the flag of a country. And this is a country attacking an unflagged/false-flagged ship? So actually the opposite.
No and no, assuming I am reading you asking only two questions.
The difference between law enforcement at sea and piracy is the nature of law enforcement versus theft. It's fine to claim taxation is theft, but most people will recognize there is in fact a difference.
In turn, countries don't attack objects in a political sense. States have relationships with political actors. War is the extension of politics by other means, and all that. There is no country being attacked if a [Country A] gives its sovereign ascent to [Country B] to board a ship that is / claims to be under the sovereign aegis of [Country A].
I just don't understand the difference between going out and taking a boat or taking, say, a plane. Like, could we send special forces to an airport in Brazil and have them fly out with a dozen Boeing jets and it's not an act of theft or war? Something like that would be legal? Or do boats sit in a weird conceptual space?
I genuinely don't understand and am not intending to sound like I'm taking a side here. I'm not intentionally doing the noncentral fallacy. I just want to understand the difference between this and stealing the crown jewels.
There is no special legal immunity / inviolability for planes either. The reason states don't board planes in mid-air is because it's dangerous and murder / reckless endangerment is bad. If you could do so without killing everyone aboard or putting people at great risk, there is no special legal obstacle. This is seen most often when planes are directed to land so that law enforcement can get to someone identified in the plane.
Like ships, planes are subject to the national / sovereign jurisdictions of both [sovereign state they are in] and [the sovereign state of the owner]. When in the territorial space (air or on the ground) of a nation, they are subject to national authorities, which does include things like 'following air traffic controls' but also 'you can be inspected for smuggling or committing crimes.' They are also subject to the national regulations that apply to their owning interest, which also includes things like 'you will pay taxes for business you do elsewhere in the world' but also 'you are not allowed to smuggle or commit crimes.'
Let's call the [sovereign state of the owner] the first country. Let's call the [sovereign state they are in] the second country.
Where third countries come in is that other countries can have their own lists of crimes that people violate. And when someone does commit a crime against that third state, that state can seek access to the criminal party (or ship, or plane) through either the first country, or the second country.
Second countries have sovereign rights too, and that includes the right to cooperate with other states.
Why would it be an act of theft or war if it is in compliance with Brazilian and American law with the consent of the Brazilian authorities? Is Brazil declaring a war against itself if it receives the American request, considers its various interests, and then goes 'okay, sure?'
Now replace [boat/plane] with [person]. Kidnapping is a crime. Human trafficking is even a crime under international law. But does that mean an extradition for an arrest warrant in another country in accordance with an extradition treaty 'actually' a kidnapping and that extradition is illegal under international law?
[Theft] is not merely 'taking something'- it if it was, then giving gifts would be theft on the part of the recipient because they are taking something being offered. But [theft] is not merely 'involuntary taking of something'- that would allow anyone with an objection to object, whether they were the owner or not. It would also mean that a state is engaging in theft if it recovers stolen goods, or seizes contraband, or collects taxes over the objection of the dispossessed.
You need a bounded concept of [crime] in order to understand what would be a [not-crime].
Under whose legal jurisdiction would it be illegal?
Jurisdiction in international law requires one of three things: territoriality (it has to happen in your national territory), nationality (such as the victim being subject to your sovereignty), or the nature of the crime itself (such as your country being the victim).
Now apply this to the context of a ship at sea.
If the vessel is outside of territorial waters, there is no territoriality jurisdiction. International waters are owned by no one. There are degrees of territoriality for ships, such as economic zones versus territorial waters, but this is no different than nations having air defense identification zones that go beyond territorial airspace.
Nationality of the ship derives from the flagging of the ship, not the crew. When a ship takes on the flag of a nation, it is subject to the laws of that nation for not only tax and wage purposes (the part most companies care about), but also law enforcement purposes (the things that the flagging state can do / agree to let others do).
The nature of the crime generally requires you to be the victim. In international law, the primary victim of a ship boarding is the sovereign of the ship, and to a different degree the nationalities of the crew, but cargo is cargo. States can take their merchant disputes up in their own courts or other channels, but they have no sovereign standing over the sovereignty of the flagging nation of the ship carrying the cargo.
Now apply this to any given at-sea boarding.
Is it done in the territorial waters of a sovereign state that refuses?
Is it done against the sovereign assent of the nation that flagged the vessel?
Is any other sovereign right being unduly violated?
If the answer too all of these is 'no,' there's little legal obstacle to a boarding. And even if the answer to some of these is 'yes,' it may still be a legal boarding, if there is other international law enabling it- see UN resolution law when the UN bans various exports like weapons proliferation and authorizes members to take actions to stop it.
International law is a weird conceptual space in and of itself. The anarchic nature of the international order means international law is very much 'if it is not forbidden, it is permitted,' when significant parts of the national legal order in most nations is 'if it is not permitted, it is forbidden.'
Unlike most legal contexts, there is no higher appeal authority or source of [international law]. The fundamental legal basis for all international law is the principle of national sovereignty allowing states to enter into agreements with other nations, including the international laws that restrain their own actions. Everything else- including international courts- derives from 'this is international law because a bunch of countries said it should apply to themselves.'
The flip side is that if the states themselves do not agree to establish a limit, there is no other authority establishing the limits. Even when they do agree, it generally does not apply to states that did not agree in some form. Even UN-law ultimately derives from the fact that the sovereign states agreed to join the UN, and in doing so conceded to letting the Security Council do things under the UN charter that says the Security Council can do things.
Again, you have to have a legal concept of what [theft] is, distinct from [non-theft].
Stealing is taking someone's property without permission or legal right. The authority who has that legal right depends on the sovereign legal jurisdiction. Sovereign jurisdiction at sea depends on the national flag on the ship. The national flag of the ship brings with it the national and international agreements of the state of that flag.
There is nothing legally special about [national crown jewels] where, if you placed them in the sovereign jurisdiction of another country, that other country could not handle them in accordance with its own laws and international agreements.
Lukashenko essentially managed to pull this off (well, not exactly this but something very close to it): https://apnews.com/article/journalist-belarus-dissident-sentenced-4c4c0c21838f79ab98b44b97366af379 Of course, it works only once, then the planes would just route around your country, and pulling this off outside of your borders is practically impossible.
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