It seems to be criminal cosplay season for Donald Trump, as he successively takes on the roles first of kidnapper, then pirate. There is a case, albeit disputed, to be made under the laws of the sea for the legality of the seizure of the tanker Marinera. There is none under international law for the seizure of the admittedly odious Nicolás Maduro. But none of that matters in Trumpworld, where might makes right and American laws and interests override all else.
Now, suddenly, commentators have woken up to the presence of more tankers from the ‘shadow fleet’ – which is both an inaccurate label and also an inadvertently cool way to describe a collection of superannuated rust buckets – in the seas off Britain. Calls for more seizures are the inevitable breast-beating result.
In those circumstances, there is an inevitable urge to present the implications for Putin’s Russia as all one thing or the other. Either he is ’emboldened’ by Trump’s spasm of muscular unilateralism or he is ‘terrified’ by it. Needless to say, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Trump’s position is not just America First, it is America Only
Maduro’s capture was the inevitable trigger for some vigorous (and often almost surreally hypocritical) Russian castigation of ‘imperialism’. However, Moscow’s reaction was relatively restrained, not least because the Chavista government remains in power. Although they understand that they will have to make concessions to Washington – which may prove illusory and temporary – they feel they can work with new Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez more effectively than with the erratic, grandstanding Maduro.
Likewise, the seizure of the Marinera is not the kind of escalatory flashpoint that some feared. Toxic Russian tweeter-in-chief Dmitri Medvedev inevitably fired off a broadside against the ‘brazen Americans’ who had carried out ‘a criminal seizure of a civilian vessel’ but even then he urged restraint, as ‘there are too many unruly people around’.
Are the Russians worried that Keir Starmer is one of those ‘unruly people’? Or that he is going to go beyond simply holding the Americans’ coats for them and start going after ships passing Britain? Probably not.
Despite Moscow’s obsession with casting the British as their most devious enemies and the primary drivers of the war in Ukraine, there is also a keen awareness of the political and practical constraints on its activity. The Marinera’s mistake was to try to change its flag mid-voyage, from Guyanese to Russian. This is something that can generally only be done legally if there is a full change of ownership. The Russians say this was done; the Americans say it wasn’t, leaving the ship stateless and unprotected by law. Actually resolving this issue would require a proper hearing, and meanwhile it was the Americans who had the guns. Arguably this is a suitable metaphor for Trumpian foreign (and even domestic) policy in general.
Otherwise, for all the talk of ‘seizing sanctioned ships’, national sanctions do not override international law outside a state’s national waters, generally framed as 12 nautical miles from their coastline. (Even then, ships have what is called the right of innocent passage.) Starmer may hesitate before calling out Trump for his breaches of the law, but Moscow – probably rightly – assesses the Prime Minister as unlikely to get into the piracy business himself. Starmer is much keener on using the law as his weapon.
Nevertheless, even as the UK trumpets its successes targeting the ‘shadow fleet’, Lloyds List has estimated that the tally of hulls moving sanctioned Russian, Iranian and North Korean materiel already includes more than 1,400 ships. Ten more are added each month.
In many ways, this explains the ambiguity of the Russian response, once the rhetoric around the actions of the past week has been swept away. It is not as though Trump’s actions – even his threats to annex Greenland – are in any way liberating Moscow to do as it pleases. It already does. Nor is his assertion of American hegemony over Latin America giving Russia any analogous rights to a sphere of influence. Trump’s position is not just America First, it is America Only.
Instead, there is inevitably a concern in Moscow that Trump might start using the same muscle against Russia. There is still uncertainty on their part about how far to take seriously the claim by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham that he had given the green light to a bipartisan sanctions Bill against Russia, or rather against countries buying Russian oil.
On the whole, though, the Russians still regard that as relatively unlikely. Meanwhile, Moscow is heating up the popcorn and watching Trump bulldoze the last remnants of the much-vaunted ‘rules-based international order’. Russia has long regarded this as simply being a justification for the west to protect its own interests.
In the global South, Trump’s actions will be presented as ample proof that it is the West, not the Russians, who are the true imperialists. As Europe twists and turns, trying at once to appease and deter Trump, Russian propagandists will gleefully amplify internal divisions and dismays. And at home, the West can be portrayed as simultaneously thuggish and impotent. A ‘shadow fleet’ tanker sailing through British – or German, or French, or Spanish – waters is further proof for them that even the new pirates can’t beat Russia. These propaganda lines may not be true, but they are the basis for a compelling narrative.
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