EVERYONE supports freedom of navigation, at least in principle. The problem facing shipping is that the principle is becoming increasingly detached from any shared understanding of what it actually means.

The unusually public intervention this week by the Consultative Shipping Group is significant not because the 18 maritime nations behind it have proposed new rules, but because they are sounding an alarm over a problem that has become increasingly difficult to ignore: governments continue to invoke the language of maritime freedom while simultaneously advancing sharply different interpretations of where that freedom begins, ends and can be enforced.

For decades, the assumption underpinning global trade was relatively straightforward. Ships could move freely through international waters under a framework established by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and administered through multilateral institutions such as the International Maritime Organization. That consensus was never perfect, but it was sufficient to sustain an increasingly interconnected global economy.

Today, that consensus is fraying.

The Red Sea, Black Sea, Baltic, Taiwan Strait and Strait of Hormuz have all become arenas where geopolitical competition is playing out, not only through military power but through competing claims about maritime law itself. Freedom of navigation remains the common slogan. The disagreement lies in its interpretation.

Russia has increasingly framed European boardings and seizures of shadow fleet tankers as violations of international law and freedom-of-navigation principles. China routinely endorses freedom of navigation for commercial shipping while rejecting what it views as freedom-of-navigation operations that challenge its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. Western governments, meanwhile, argue that sanctions enforcement, vessel inspections and naval operations are legitimate applications of established international rules.

All sides claim to be defending the maritime order. Each accuses the others of undermining it.

That divergence matters because freedom of navigation has never been a self-executing right. It depends on broad acceptance of common rules and agreement over who has authority to enforce them. Once those interpretations diverge too far, the principle itself becomes increasingly subjective.

The immediate concern is not that major waterways suddenly close. Hormuz remains technically open, in principle if not in practice for all. Commercial shipping continues through the Red Sea. Ships still transit contested waters daily. The greater risk is the gradual emergence of a fragmented maritime system in which access, enforcement and legal protections vary according to political alignment.

That is the warning at the heart of the CSG statement. Its concern is not any single dispute over shadow fleets, sanctions or chokepoints. It is the cumulative effect of those disputes on confidence in the rules-based framework that has enabled globalisation for decades.

Shipping has long operated on the assumption that the oceans are open highways. That assumption increasingly looks less like a fact and more like a political choice that governments must actively defend.

Freedom of navigation still exists on paper. The question facing shipping is how much consensus remains behind it. 

Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List

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