New Orleans Maybe it’s one of those times when the right thing happens, even if for the wrong reasons. I’m not sure. It reminds me of playing pool in pickup games, when I was first learning the game in my ill-spent youth. Sometimes a misdirected shot would end up dropping several balls in different pockets making mistakes look like incredibly well intended bank shots. We laughed and hooted, calling it garbage and savoring the win anyway.
The surprising current American and global success in beginning to really impact the Russian economy after three years of war by going after the shadow fleet of oil tankers that has allowed the country to continue to pursue the Ukrainian invasion despite endless sanctions seems a lot like one of those lucky, garbage shots in the foreign policy context. From the cheap seats, when the US started boarding and diverting oil tankers coming from Venezuela, the whole affair on top of shooting down alleged, but unproven drug boats, seemed reckless and dangerous. The US Coast Guard and Navy chased one old beat up tanker across the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Iceland and finally boarded the boat, even after it changed its registration to Russia. It seemed a risky move, perhaps foolhardy, but then Putin blinked in the wake of other negotiations.
The coalition of the willing supporting Ukraine seem to have learned something from these Venezuelan escapades, even as they lambasted Trump for kidnapping the country’s president. These oil tankers were sanctioned, so when they continued to fly flags of convenience why couldn’t they be stopped in the same way? Furthermore, the tariffs that blurt out of Trump’s mouth, almost irrationally, as if he had tariff Tourette syndrome, might be sufficient for the US and others to threaten Liberia and other false flag countries from allowing their countries to be used by ghost tankers to avoid sanctions. This was part of a waterfall of reactions. Maritime insurers boosted their rates for oil tankers astronomically. Tankers started lingering around the world, many off the coast of China, unsure if they could successfully evade capture and unload their product.
Western countries have joined the US in “blacklisting ships en masse. America has imposed ‘secondary penalties’ on Iran and Russia’s oil firms, deterring buyers…Dark vessels have become vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks and…Western military raids.” The British Royal Air Force joined the US in a raid and “later said that it had found a similar legal basis to detain shadow vessels, a dozen of which sail through the strait of Dover every day…Germany blocked a tanker suspected of forged registration and headed to a Black Sea terminal from entering its Baltic waters – an EU first.”
Russia will of course respond. More of the shadow fleet will come under its flag and control. Their navy and submarines may be called to escort some of their ships and the likelihood of international crises will increase. Either way it cost money. Russia depends on its oil revenue to finance the Ukrainian war. If the ships can’t deliver, there’s no sale. If they have to spend precious treasure guarding the tankers, but that also has huge costs for the country.
Meanwhile tariffs play another role as well at garbage time on the green felt of this global table. The US and India announced a new tariff deal where India will see a significant drop in its export rate to the US in exchange for weening itself off of Russian oil. India had gone from 2% before the Ukrainian war to buying one third of its oil from Russia.
Maybe these inadvertent assists for Ukraine were part of deliberate policy and planning. Anyone who believes that, contact me, I have a bridge over the Mississippi that I would like to see if you want to buy. Even so, I’ll give the devil his due. A vicious policy to strangle Venezuela and oust its leadership has somehow caromed into a win for Ukraine, and a tactic where the US and its allies are finally able to make sanctions stick for a while by applying pressure where it was sorely needed.