In seizing the Russian tanker Marinera, formerly Bella 1, following hard upon the citizen’s arrest of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump was aping in the mid 21st century the habits of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite privateer, Francis Drake.
The seizure of the empty, 22-year-old super tanker somewhere south of the Iceland Gap in the North Atlantic appears to have been accomplished bloodlessly. But it could have deadly consequences.
It was the third tanker to be grabbed by the US Coast Guard and Homeland authorities on the same pretext in as many months. Immediately after news about Marinera broke, a fourth ship, the Sophia, was reported to have been arrested by US Coast Guards in the Caribbean. The ships were seized for breach of the embargo on Venezuela. They were part of the “ghost fleet” busting sanctions on Russia and Iran, as well as Venezuela.
Last month it was a ship called the Hyperion, and like Bella 1 she had been renamed and reassigned to the Russian flag. Ironically, the Bella 1/Marinera has the newly registered home port of Sochi, on the Black Sea, hard by Vladimir Putin’s favourite summer palace.
It all marks a dramatic handbrake turn in the tangled personal relations between the American and Russian presidents. With his latest move to enforce his version of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 – renamed the “Donroe Doctrine” – Trump is likely to have reassigned Putin from “frenemy” to outright enemy.
The oil embargo strikes at three of Russia’s close clients, allies or proxies – Cuba, Iran, and China. Iran’s shadow fleet is under sanction. As with Maduro’s Venezuela, the principal client for oil from both countries has been China – and Beijing will hurt from Trump’s new oil strategic offensive. The last three registered ports for offloading for Bella 1/Marinera are in China.
Cuba, Russia’s main client and ally in the Caribbean next to Maduro’s Venezuela, is completely dependent on Venezuelan oil. It is now under a complete “soft blockade” from the US. Havana has lately been suffering up to 56 hours on end of sustained blackouts.
Iran is descending into further chaos in fast-moving street demonstrations. The ayatollahs’ regime is threatened as never before in its 45-year history. Reports say the protests are spreading now to the south-east. Unless the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can restore authority and credibility within 48 hours, its time may be up.
Iran has been a vital ally for Russia in its war in Ukraine, now about to hit its fourth anniversary – a conflict that has lasted longer than Russia’s wars against Germany from 1914 to 1917 and 1941 to 1945. The results have Putin’s “Special Operation” by comparison look nugatory. This week Ukraine is counter-attacking and striking at facilities deep in Russia.
With the squeeze on the ghost fleet, or shadow fleet, tankers in the Baltic and the Black Sea become vital battle areas. The Ukrainians have been hitting shadow tankers, some in international waters. On the Black Sea, the industrial port of Novorossiysk has been badly damaged, and Kazakhstan’s Caspian Petroleum Corporation, responsible for 1 per cent of global oil exports, has suspended operations.
The Iceland gap where the operation to seize the Russian tanker was launched (Image: The i Paper)The focus for Russia is now to keep the Baltic ports open to oil shipments – especially Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Vysotsk and Kaliningrad. In its enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad – formerly Prussian Konigsberg – is especially vulnerable. A formidable naval base, it is now one of the short-odds bets for a clash between Russia and Nato.
Trump’s oil strategy appears to have brutal simplicity. He aims to dominate, and even control where possible, the hydrocarbon resources of the American continent – “Our Hemisphere” in the words of the US national security strategy released last year – plus the strategic minerals from copper to rare earths, lithium and the like. The claim runs from the Arctic to Antarctica.
This leads to America being the dominant hydrocarbon superpower – able to face down Opec, Russia and China, in energy commerce. This week Washington has declared the grabbing of 50 million barrels of oil “owed” to it from Venezuela.
The new face-off with Russia is the key to the latest Trump posture and rhetoric about Greenland. Not so much a deep mineral and hydrocarbon resource, it is needed for America’s defence, we now hear. Specifically, it is needed for American installations as part of the embryonic “Golden Dome” anti-missile defence – because a large part of the projected flight paths of Russia’s strategic missile force is over the Atlantic Arctic, mainly Greenland. It looks as if large parts of Greenland could become areas of sovereign base for the US forces by treaty.
The episode of the Bella 1/Marinera directly involves the UK alliance with the US. A US special force contingent has used bases in England – Thetford, Fairford and Mildenhall – and the standard SOFA – stationing of forces agreement. Supporting the chasing of sanctions-busters, the Royal Navy provided a tanker and the RAF a P8 surveillance plane.
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The events across the Atlantic from the Caribbean to the Baltic of the last days and hours, as well as the implosion of Iran, are parts of a rolling crisis, now changing by the hour.
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