No. I'd actually say freedom of navigation [1] is almost the definition of a Pax. It's precedented across millenia in a way prohibitions on total war are not.
Let me be clear, prohibitions on total war are good. But they're also a new concept and one clearly the world's powers don't agree on to one iota. Freedom of navigation, on the other hand, benefits everyone but autarkies, and has for, again, millenia.
> "shall not suffer interference from other states when in international waters"
The strait of hormuz is NOT international waters.
UNCLOS states that "straits used for international navigation" shall allow transit with impedance, which would include the strait of Hormuz, but Iran has never ratified the treaty (and neither has the USA).
While the US never ratified UNCLOS III (with things like economic exclusion zones), they did ratify the preceding UNCLOS I's Convention of the High Seas and it's freedom of navigation.
Cute. But no cigar. Point is if you put a random assortment of countries in a series of rooms, more of those rooms will agree on freedom of navigation than they will on what bridge can be blown up when. In part because the former is a bright line in a way deciding what is and isn't a military target cannot be.
You should mention that USA does not believe in the freedom of navigation.
Before starting the war with Iran, USA has instituted a blockade of Cuba, intercepting the oil tankers going there and causing thus a severe fuel shortage in Cuba.
Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz was just doing the same that USA has begun doing. So USA has no moral authority to say that Iran should respect "the freedom of navigation", which is a thing that USA does not respect.
Weren't those tankers operating under false flags? Additionally, the US action in Venezuela led to that stream ceasing. I'm not sure what the deal was with Mexico, I read that the US asked them to stop doing business with Cuba but they didn't seem entirely willing to cooperate.
When a properly flagged Russian tanker came through it was left alone.
My impression is that the situation with Cuba is much more complex than the mass media portrayal of a straightforward blockade. Not that I believe the US is free of guilt here; clearly harm is being caused and the motivations seem suspect at best.
Interesting question. I assume piracy and smuggling and various other law breaking but I'm not certain. AFAIK the only requirement is a legitimate registration. Again AFAIK the vessels that were directly interfered with (ie by force) all had either falsified registrations or were flagged under countries that aren't currently in any state to actually manage registrations.
Then there's also their participation in what's been termed a shadow fleet, the associated falsification of origin of sanctioned oil, the accessing of ports where they otherwise wouldn't be permitted berth, the lack of insurance in case of environmental damage, etc. As I said previously, much more complex than the mass media portrayal.
As you say, the shadow fleet exists because of sanctions. In other words, because the biggest bully on the block is committing de facto piracy with their navy. Pretty much the definition of blocking freedom of navigation. Their insurance paperwork not being in order justifies their seizure?
That's a half truth at best. The sanctions in question are hardly unilateral, particularly in the case of Russia. The shadow fleet exists due to a combination of factors; dodging the sanctions is only one of them.
As I understand it (but I'm certainly no expert) the insurance paperwork isn't in order and the fleet not properly registered as a result of the general state of the vessels involved. The US is hardly alone in this - the UK has also recently taken to seizing such vessels that pass too close to them. But generally yes, if due to the risks no country wants to officially register a vessel and no insurance provider want to cover it then it seems entirely justified to seize it in order to protect the commons. These aren't pleasure boats we're talking about here, they're ridiculously large merchant vessels. There's approximately zero legitimate excuses for them to be flying a fraudulent flag.
Ponder for a moment why it might be that the countries involved don't want these vessels flying their own flags and don't want to extend them insurance policies themselves.
Freedom of navigation is a right of countries. Spanish ships have the right to freely traverse the seas next to Greece, etc. So ships have to identify themselves as belonging to a country so that they can benefit from it.
The various treaties about freedom of passage exist precisely because, before the last 200 years, everyone did whatever they wanted with straits and other natural chokepoints, including closing them at will. Freedom of navigation is not an obviously natural right nor one universally accepted, before colonial powers effectively invented it and enforced it with guns. If somebody shows up with bigger guns, it might well disappear again.
Also, I wish the expression "close but no cigar" could be banned on the internet. Unless you're a professor of international relations at a renowned university, you simply don't get to gatekeep what reality is - particularly when making up arbitrary principles like these.
“In both Roman law and Islamic law, notions of a commonality of the seas were firmly established” (Id.). (It’s also weird to describe a custom of commons as colonial. European colonialism was about the opposite, turning historic commons into private rights.)
As a normative concept, you’re right, it’s new. But the notion that a great power would protect sea access for a variety of groups is old. More as a practical matter, granted—it’s hard to project enough power onto an ocean to control it.
Roman and Islamic law were also pretty much "colonial", even though the term is used of modern European empires, Rome was also an Empire, and the Arab Empires were also aggressively imperialist and maritime traders.
> The notion of the commonality of the seas is firmly established in Roman law, which formed the foundation of early modern European discussions on the right of navigation. A series of passages from the Corpus iuris civilis state that the sea, like the air, should be considered, by the law of nature, a res communis – a thing common to all, which cannot be claimed or usurped by anyone for exclusive use. Islamic law, which had a wide impact from the early modern Mediterranean to Southeast Asia, also considers the sea a boundless entity that is common to all mankind and not subject to private appropriation.
> Roman and Islamic law were also pretty much "colonial", even though the term is used of modern European empires, Rome was also an Empire, and the Arab Empires were also aggressively imperialist and maritime traders.
The difference between European empires and Islamic/Roman ones would be what JumpCrissCross advanced + the extent to which the conquered inhabitants are incorporated into the state, no?
Thanks for the quote and source. I believe Corpus Juris Civilis was based on existing law so the concept goes back much further, and I would guess was incorporated into Islamic empire's came from Roman.
> The difference between European empires and Islamic/Roman ones would be what JumpCrissCross advanced + the extent to which the conquered inhabitants are incorporated into the state, no?
Is it not rather more complex than that? The Roman Empire eventually granted citizenship to conquered people's but after centuries and gradually - all free men getting citizenship was 3rd century. When initially conquered a lot of people were incorporated into the state as slaves. AFAIK the Islamic empires were similar, and the price of being treated equally was to adopt the conquerors culture and religion.
The European Empire I am most familiar with (the British) only wanted the ruling class of its colonies to adopt its culture (with consequences such as speaking fluent/native English being a class marker that last to this day). It also (at least later on) gave colonies increasing autonomy.
> I would guess was incorporated into Islamic empire's came from Roman.
I'm uneducated on Corpus Juris Civilis and have a basic familiarity with Islamic law/history but I'm inclined to think that any similarities between the two would be less a product of diffusion than the result of the tangential relationship between Christianity as understood by the Romans of the time and Islam as understood by classical Muslim jurists.
> Is it not rather more complex than that?
Ha! For sure.
I need to do more thinking about this part, re: colonialism/imperialism.
What I had in mind was the distinction between
a) A state/power that conquers a land without integrating the land and its peoples into it
b) A state/power that conquers a land and integrates the land and its people into it
The Islamic empires I'm most familiar with implemented the second form of conquest.
The concept of equality is an interesting one to think about because I'm not sure whether how we envision it today was common anywhere in the pre-modern world. But non-Muslim subjects were afforded their own set of rights and were not incorporated into the state as slaves (the practice of slavery not withstanding, my point is that it wasn't the same case as how you've described Roman civil integration). Additionally, the land was subsumed into the Islamic state.
But I think we are splitting the main argument into two separate (very engaging!) discussions.
The original argument alleged that "colonial powers effectively invented [freedom of passage] and enforced it with guns". Freedom of navigation in the seas was common to both Roman and Islamic law. Whether Roman and/or Islamic empires qualify as "colonial" or "imperialist" is one thing, but they cannot be the colonial powers that the user who made that argument had in mind.
> weird to describe a custom of commons as colonial
When you point at a resource under my control and force me to share it (or else), it's not "a custom of commons" - it's a classic colonial appropriation.
Which is also how Rome and (initially) the Islamic kingdoms saw the sea when they were upstarters - Rome was very much not a naval power to begin with (or ever, really) and Islamic kings resorted to piracy to match Italian and Spanish powers.
Beyond lofty words, when they finally ended up controlling the straits, both empires definitely treated them like personal possession ("mare nostrum", Ottomans closing the Bosphorous...). Like everyone else, in practice.
> No. I'd actually say freedom of navigation [1] is almost the definition of a Pax. It's precedented across millenia in a way prohibitions on total war are not.
What ? The U.S. themselves don't respect this. They only expect OTHER nations to follow it. UNCLOS has been MOCKED by U.S. Presidents all the time. Not just Trump. Reagan & Bush did too. And so do all the neocon U.S. Senators. In their view, the U.S. has a fundamental right to block traffic and setup embargoes.
No. I'd actually say freedom of navigation [1] is almost the definition of a Pax. It's precedented across millenia in a way prohibitions on total war are not.
Let me be clear, prohibitions on total war are good. But they're also a new concept and one clearly the world's powers don't agree on to one iota. Freedom of navigation, on the other hand, benefits everyone but autarkies, and has for, again, millenia.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_navigation