Why the maritime domain is a major target for gray zone attacks
By Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow, Transatlantic Security Initiative, Atlantic Council
The maritime domain – which ranges from shipping to undersea communications cables – only functions well if most of its participants adhere to the rules governing the world’s oceans. Today, this adherence is waning; indeed, major powers openly violate maritime rules. That will not just make the maritime domain riskier and more unpredictable: it also risks leading to a division of the world’s waters into ones that companies associated with the West can safely use and ones that are only safe for companies from countries positioning themselves in opposition to the West.
“Under protection of EUNAVFOR ASPIDES, MV SOUNION has been successfully towed to a safe area without any oil spill,” EUNAVFOR ASPIDES, the European Union’s naval force protecting merchant vessels in the Red Sea, tweeted on 16 September. The Sounion, an oil tanker owned, managed, and flagged in Greece, had been attacked on 21 August by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, whose assault caused the ship to lose steering and forced the crew to abandon ship. The commandos then set fires on board. The Sounion was at risk, not just of spilling oil but of exploding. Managing to tow her to safety, without any harm to the vessel or the environment, was a remarkable feat by the salvage firms involved and by the Aspides vessels protecting the undertaking. “EUNAVFOR ASPIDES continues to contribute to the freedom of navigation in the area of operation and the protection of seafarers’ lives and global common goods,” Aspides noted in its 16 September tweet.
It certainly does, but today protecting seafarers’ lives and global common goods is considerably more difficult than it was two or three years ago. The Houthis have indisputably delivered the most dramatic disruption of the global maritime order, attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea for geopolitical reasons and using weapons that had previously been the domain of nation states’ official armed forces. Both the former and the latter put Western-linked shipping in a highly perilous position: the fact that they are linked (by flag, ownership, cargo, or destination) to a Western country, or simply because the Yemeni militia consider them linked to a Western country, puts them at risk of attacks, and the attacks involve weaponry more sophisticated than those operated by even the best-armed pirates. This has prompted most Western-linked shipping lines to divert their ships to the Cape of Good Hope, but the detour brings longer transportation times, not to mention logistical hurdles involving both cargoes and crews.
Even more concerningly, the Houthis’ attacks have propelled them to global prominence and have helped them gain enormous political heft. Though the Red Sea is a particularly vulnerable and strategic waterway, other militias are likely to try to replicate the Houthis’ campaign in other waters. Governments may even create proxy militias in areas adjoining sensitive waterways.
Governments are, in fact, already involved in activities harming the global maritime order. They include not just Iran, which arms the Houthis, but also Russia and China, which have not tried to force the Houthis to end their campaign. Indeed, Russian and Chinese ships indirectly benefit from the attacks, as the Houthis spare them.
Russia also actively engages in harmful maritime activities. The global shadow fleet, which has grown explosively since Russia began using it to export oil above the $60 price cap, comprises vessels that lack standard P&I insurance, don’t undergo regular maintenance, and habitually alter their AIS signals. All three activities violate maritime rules and expose coastal states and legally operating vessels to harm. Moreover, shadow vessels flag hop and have owners that are virtually impossible to identify, let alone trace. Though the shadow fleet is, by definition, difficult to measure, it’s now estimated to encompass some 10-20% of the global tanker fleet.1 That makes the shadow fleet an alternative fleet, large enough to, by its mere existence, undermine the functioning of the legally operating fleet.
Other maritime undertakings now also face geopolitical risks. When the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines exploded as a result of sabotage in September 2022, it was clear that geopolitical harm was intended. What was not clear was who the perpetrator was and whom the attack was intended to harm. Although commentators initially pointed the finger at the Kremlin, it later emerged that German investigators had identified a Ukrainian commando as the likely perpetrator.
Either way, the fact that Nord Stream was rendered unusable by geopolitically linked sabotage points to a disconcerting future for sea-based infrastructure. During the past three and half decades of globalization, the world’s oceans have seen shipping grow – and they’ve become home to all manner of infrastructure. Telephone communications cables have been joined by the crucial internet cables that power today’s modern economies; more oil and gas pipelines have been built to similarly power modern economies; and today offshore windfarms too are being built as countries try to transition to renewable power.
Now all such installations are vulnerable to geopolitically linked attacks. In October 2023, two communications cables and one pipeline in the Baltic Sea were harmed by the Chinese-owned box ship Newnew Polar Bear. What transpired on the ship? Investigators are unlikely to find out, because Newnew Polar Bear swiftly departed for Russia’s Northern Sea Route. While operators can monitor activities around their installations, they can’t fight back or even apprehend perpetrators, and coast guards and navies can’t be everywhere all the time.
What is playing out on the world’s oceans is an intensifying clash between geopolitics and the globe-spanning economy, which depends on the oceans. And because the high seas are a common that lacks a global constabulary force, the harmful activities will continue. Businesses and their operations risk being harmed simply because they’re linked with the wider Western community, which involves not just the geographic West but countries like Japan and the Philippines too. Indeed, the world’s oceans risk being divided into two systems and two kinds of waters.
Companies can reduce the harm to their operations by understanding the new environment they operate in and adjust their operations accordingly. The next essay in this Index provides a view on current threats and assesses the impact of these threats on insurance markets.
1 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/what-attacks-on-shipping-mean-for-the-global-maritime-order/ A new report on the shadow fleet is forthcoming from the same institution and author.
