The Daily View: Cry freedom

FREEDOM of navigation has never been free. It has always rested on military power and political consensus. What is changing is the willingness of states to challenge the rules that underpin it.

At this week’s International Maritime Organization council meeting, dozens of countries reaffirmed the importance of open sea lanes and the international laws that govern them. Yet the debate revealed a deeper problem. While there is broad agreement that freedom of navigation is fundamental, there is no consensus on where it begins, where it ends, or who has the authority to enforce it.

For the first time since the Cold War, major maritime trade routes are increasingly becoming contested spaces. From the Red Sea and Black Sea to the Baltic, the Taiwan Strait and now the Strait of Hormuz, access to global shipping lanes is being challenged not only through military force but through competing interpretations of what the law of the sea permits.

The exchanges between Iran, the US, Middle East Gulf states and Russia exposed those fault lines. Each side professed its commitment to freedom of navigation while accusing its rivals of undermining it.

Russia pointed to European detentions of shadow fleet tankers. Iran argued that the obligations of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea cannot simply be imposed on states that never ratified it. The US and MEG states countered that attacks on commercial shipping, mine-laying and threats to impose tolls in Hormuz amount to a direct assault on maritime security.

This is more than diplomatic theatre.

The Strait of Hormuz may not be closed, but neither is it fully open. The assumption that it will simply revert to pre-crisis normality — regardless of whatever settlement may emerge — is increasingly difficult to sustain. Until there is a credible framework that all parties accept for ensuring safe passage, the cycle of escalation and de-escalation is likely to persist.

If a new interpretation of freedom of navigation is emerging, it cannot be built on vague principles alone. It requires agreed rules, accepted obligations and clarity on enforcement.

Hormuz remains unique. No other chokepoint has faced such persistent and recurring threats of closure. Yet as geopolitical rivalry intensifies, governments and businesses are increasingly being forced to consider scenarios once regarded as implausible.

The real danger lies beyond the MEG.

If freedom of navigation becomes negotiable in one of the world’s most strategically important waterways, the precedent will not remain confined to Hormuz. The risk is not that the strait becomes impassable, but that legal, political and military toll booths begin appearing elsewhere.

Shipping has long operated on the assumption that the oceans are a network of open blue highways. That assumption is becoming harder to maintain. Freedom of navigation still exists on paper. The question is how much the world will be willing to pay to preserve it in practice.

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