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Comment by stackskipton | Hacker News Reader

Those discussions are had all the time. One of downside of this bear is bear strapped with explosives that could kill us all if bear gets angry enough.

Also, once you are 12 miles offshore, technically you are in international waters and thus cannot be stopped by any Navy except your own unless there is UN Sanctions. If NATO Countries decided to violate that, it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade.

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You are evidently unaware of UNCLOS and the adoption of many of its provisions into customary international law

Also the practical reality of countries not giving a shit about any of that when someone starts breaking their shit. There is a reason Russia is knocking out European lines while leaving American ones alone.

I'm completely aware, used to be involved in this stuff. In international waters, these are UNCLOS requirements to board a ship not of your Navy Flag.

(a) the ship is engaged in piracy; (b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade; (c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109; (d) the ship is without nationality; or (e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship

Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?

To be clear, I am not proposing boarding Russian ships. That is pointless.

But the answer to your question is a. Referring to UNCLOS 101(a)(ii) the cables are "property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State".

> Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?

High seas (which is what that list applies to) is not the EEZ. I don't think anybody could legally argue thar a country wouldn't have the right to board (or fire at, if it didn't comply) a foreign ship from it's coast 24 nautical miles if it suspected it was doing something illegal. Whether that right extends to the entire EEZ isn't exactly clear.

However there are no "high seas" areas in the Baltic so all of the listed items are irrelevant.

Probably don't want to fire at the nuclear powered cargo ship that is suspected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput

Unless the reactor is directly hit there shouldn't be any significant problems? It's not a warship so there wouldn't be any need for heavy munitions to force it to surrender.

Of course the Baltic is very shallow so if the reactor started leaking it might be a bit more problematic than if a nuclear ship/sub was sunk in the middle of the ocean.

The EEZ only applies to resource extraction. Otherwise, it is the same as high seas. What lets you board is the territorial sea, and outside that, the contiguous zone. Even then there are limits.

> customary international law

If only there was such thing.

High Seas "international water" start at after 200 nautical mile EEZ. There's a few explicit articles dealing with malicious submarine cable damage.

But IIRC the TLDR is it has to do with indemnities and putting a vessel/person up for prosecution after the fact. And it doesn't apply if cable damaged while trying to prevent injury, which RU can always claim.

More broadly I think you're correct on paper... RU damaging subsea infra is under UNCLOS is technically punishable, but after the fact. And they're not going to lol pay damages to countries that sanction them. NATO kinetically trying to prevent RU damaging subsea infra (especially in highseas), in lieu of formal UN policing mission against such acts, is closer to act of war.

NATO kinetically trying to prevent Russia from damaging subsea infrastructure WITH a formal UN policing mission is also an act of war, its just more clearly not an act of aggression.

Of course, that would also be true of NATO doing so as part of a broader collective defense operation reported to the Security Council, directed against Russia and explicitly aimed at rolling back the Russian (UNGA-condemned) aggression in Ukraine under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Fair distinction.

International law can be selectively applied for different party according to different scenarios (relative to different geopolitical power). NATO triggering art5 (self defense) won't make it valid / feasible to trigger at parallel UN art51. RU using UN art51 to target UKR a soveign territory, is also going to be different than NATO / or NATO country using art51 to do whatever they want on non-soverign / international high seas. All of which is to say while international law doesn't matter much to the motivated, not everyone is powerful enough to normalized/destablize with impunity. NATO might, but not without RU security council (trumps UNGA) approval, of course NATO can supercede from UN Charter framework which IIRC that NATO explicitly states they operate within. But then we have NATO going independant of UN, which goes back barrels of worms.

That’s a good point, there’s no formal mechanism to punish any country that has ‘anchor accidents’ 12.1 nm offshore.

It’s probably not even a de jure crime, so what is there to punish on the record?

In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?

12.1 nm offshore is not any country, which is the point…The laws of zero countries matter, and only certain multilateral agreements matter, at least on paper.

It’s still a de jure crime on the ship itself, because the laws of the flag country apply there. If the captain of the ship intentionally damaged something in international waters, he still committed a (de jure, which was the question) crime.

No? Why would the laws of the flag country matter for an anchor slowly drifting to the seabed detached from a vessel several km away?

Edit: I’m pretty sure most, if not all, such countries don’t even ascribe any legal status to wrecked and sunken lifeboats, let alone anchors. Probably most countries don’t even have a formal penalty, of any kind, for lifeboats detached and sunken, for any reason, for anyone on the ship.

The „anchor accidents“ with cables are normally when a ship is dragging an anchor over the cable. That’s property damage of someone else’s stuff, which is a crime in pretty much any country. And even if you drop your anchor to intentionally destroy someone else’s property, that would be a crime anywhere. You don’t need a specific law for anchors.

Do you not know how ships typically operate?

Vessel captains drop anchor all the time if they are caught out of port in a stormy area. And if it’s a big enough storm they are quite literally dragged around along with the anchor.

It literally happens every month on Earth.

It just’s implausible that dragging alone would be a crime in any flag country.

Edit: Maybe they can criminalize dragging it for a very long distance, say 10+ km, but I’m pretty sure the most popular flag countries do not, e.g. Liberia.

That's why my first question was

> In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?

So you are arguing that it's an accident? Do you agree that it would be a crime if it was intentional?

Do you not understand what intentionally anchoring in a place means on a ship?

I’ll repeat as clearly as possible, literally every single month on planet Earth many ship captains are intentionally putting very heavy objects into the water in areas that they know may contain some property that their anchor may hit/drag/snare/etc… on something.

This is usually done when the probability is very low, but in bad enough conditions they may just not care regardless of probability, and anchor anyways.

Ok, so we could have saved 5 comments if you just answered „yes“ to my first question. The cable disruptions most likely aren’t real accidents but sabotage, coupled with plausible deniability explanations of anchor accidents. That’s why I was talking about intentional damage from the start. Read the thread again.

I had assumed you already understood the basics before writing the first comment.

Why do you think your questions or assumptions even make sense?

> technically you are in international waters and thus cannot be stopped by any Navy except your own unless there is UN Sanctions

What? No? How do you think we arraign pirates?

> it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade

No? Why? Worst case it would be considered an act of war. Practically, they'd just be arrested.

>What? No? How do you think we arraign pirates?

Because piracy is one of exceptions to "No stopping not your flag ships in international waters."

Here is list of exception: (a) the ship is engaged in piracy; (b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade; (c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109; (d) the ship is without nationality; or (e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship.

https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...

>No? Why? Worst case it would be considered an act of war. Practically, they'd just be arrested.

So under which clause would you like to stop Russian ships cutting cables in international waters?

UNCLOS does have this provision around submarine cables: Every State shall adopt the laws and regulations necessary to provide that the breaking or injury by a ship flying its flag or by a person subject to its jurisdiction of a submarine cable beneath the high seas done wilfully or through culpable negligence, in such a manner as to be liable to interrupt or obstruct telegraphic or telephonic communications, and similarly the breaking or injury of a submarine pipeline or high-voltage power cable, shall be a punishable offence. This provision shall apply also to conduct calculated or likely to result in such breaking or injury. However, it shall not apply to any break or injury caused by persons who acted merely with the legitimate object of saving their lives or their ships, after having taken all necessary precautions to avoid such break or injury

But Russia is obviously ignoring the rules so now what?

> So under which clause would you like to stop Russian ships cutting cables in international waters?

Piracy. Duh. That or you'd break the treaty. (Like China has been [1].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea_Arbitration

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