CABLE cutting, the extraction of a national leader and two high seas boardings by US special forces. Happy New Year everyone: been a quiet start, hasn’t it?

For many months (if not years), Lloyd’s List has been asking plenty of ‘but what happens if’ questions surrounding freedom of navigation principles. We may be about to find out some answers.

Question one: what happens when the US decides to completely abandon even its informal recognition of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which it has not ratified but has largely adhered to?

Question two: how far will Russia go to protect vessels flying its flag? Shadow fleet tankers have slowly been migrating to the warm embrace of the Russian registry, which is backed by more than a few frigates and nuclear submarines.

Today, the US has boarded two tankers. The stateless M Sophia, boarded off the coast of Venezuela following the dramatic extraction of leader Nicolás Maduro, poses fewer problems than the boarding of Marinera, formerly Bella I, which reflagged to Russia on December 24.

Undertaken with the support of UK naval assets, the boarding took place before Russian submarines could begin escort. Otherwise the answer to question two might have been dramatically forthcoming.

Instead, we must now wait to see what Russia does next, both in the short and long term.

In the short term, Moscow must now decide what it is willing to do to protect its assets at sea, because today the US showed as little regard for its flag as it might have for a substandard shadow fleet registry of your choice.

In the long term, where does this leave other nations in regard to UNCLOS? Baltic states have tied themselves in knots over the past 18 months trying to effectively respond to cable cutters without overstepping the mark and potentially breaching the convention.

This suits both sides. Russia relies on UNCLOS to get its oil out, and the Baltic states want to avoid an effective closure of the South China Sea or the Arctic. Will either side look at today’s events and rethink its strategy?

We’ll have to wait for the full ramifications of January 7 to become apparent.

But perhaps the immediate lesson is that all of the conventions, the rules, the treaties that shipping relies and thrives on, are incredibly flimsy.

The US had the ability to board those tankers, so it did.

Is there any realistic recourse?

Russia could yet escalate the situation with reprisals.

Or it could theoretically take the case to the International Court of Justice, and demand the immediate release of the vessel. It can’t use International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (which has been done in the past), because the US has not signed up to UNCLOS.

However it ends up playing it, we’re about to see the biggest stress test freedom of navigation has faced in decades.

Editor-in-chief Richard Meade, maritime risk analyst Tomer Raanan and senior reporter Joshua Minchin, Lloyd’s List

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