> like, say, across a civilian bridge?

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.

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adrian_b 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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toyg 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is such a made-up idea.

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.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> colonial powers effectively invented it

“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.

	▲	graemep 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What is the source? 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.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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