Only works if you find someone to pay. I listened to a lengthy (German) podcast about international maritime law. To sum it up: you can’t do that much, because you won’t find the responsible person/company/state.

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makeitdouble an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> German podcast

There was a Planet Money episode touching on Maritime law:

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5577076/shadow-fleet-ru...

It was about Russian tankers breaking the sanctions, but with a well put explanation of why we can't just stop these ships even with extreme confidence in their fraudulency.

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JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> why we can't just stop these ships

To be clear, why we don’t want to. Freedom of navigation makes all of us tremendously richer, even if it permits such fuckery.

Every great power has, at this point, rejected the notion in limited contexts. And if you’re not concerned about trashing trade, there is no incoherence to ignoring these rules.

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nradov 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

In a hypothetical future where sailing under flags of convenience becomes untenable, all the legitimate merchant vessel owners would rush to register in the US or China. Those vessels would still be able to sail anywhere unmolested. Outside of a few pirate gangs, no one would be stupid enough to screw with them and risk kinetic retaliation. This might increase shipping costs by a few percent.

Russia can bluster and threaten but their navy is weak and shrinking. Most of their commissioned warships never venture far from port. Outside of their territorial waters they have minimal capability to protect their own merchant vessels or interdict anyone else's sea lines of communication.

	▲	MangoToupe 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> all the legitimate merchant vessel owners would rush to register in the US or China The US can't afford to field the navy necessary to back this ams hasn't been able to for many decades

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m0llusk 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

As we are seeing, "can't" is a really strong word.

	▲	makeitdouble 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. I meant it more as "can't _just_", we can do it but need to account for serious ramifications in doing so at scale.

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> (German) podcast about international maritime law

Russia isn’t even pretending to follow international maritime law. China hasn’t for a decade. And now America is being creative with its interpretations.

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m4rtink 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Still I don't see an issue - basically you either pay the armed coast gard cutter that stands in your way or you don't go through the straight. If you don't cause any trouble, the other cutter on the other end will pay you back. No money, no transit - unless you really like being boarded.

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jopsen 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most of the water isn't internal.. getting in and out of the baltic sea goes past Sweden/Denmark.

But we probably have promised not to blockade ships in some conventions. And little Denmark (or Sweden) do not benefit from setting a precedence that conventions can be broken.

Getting payback is easy though: support Ukraine.

	▲	actionfromafar an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There is no such convention as far as I can tell.

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bena 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The Outlaw Sea, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865477223/theoutlawsea/ , is a book about all of the ways international water is essentially lawless.