Kinetic Enforcement of Sanctions

The editors of the Washington Post remark on the U. S. military’s boarding and seizure of a Russian oil tanker off Iceland:

Wednesday’s daring boarding of the sanctioned oil tanker Marinera off the coast of Iceland by U.S. Special Forces brings to four the number of ships seized by the Trump administration as part of its enforcement of an oil embargo against Venezuela. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the seizure was part of “stabilization” efforts for Venezuela.

That sounds more like an action in a low intensity global conflict than stabilization to me but I’ll withhold judgment for anow. “Stabilization” greatly understates the seriousness and scale of the actions taken not to mention presenting serious military and legal risks. Robust terminology matters in public discourse.

I agree that economic sanctions need to be enforced; I am less certain that this was the proper means of enforcement.

They continue:

Look closer, and a different valence emerges to this story: The whole episode has Cold War overtones, with a hint of Tom Clancy. Taken as part of broader trends, the successful operation suggests Trump has markedly cooled toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

I’ll interrupt again here. There’s a wry observation that President Trump believes whoever he spoke to most recently. Apparently, he hasn’t spoken with President Putin recently. The editors’ inference that Trump’s attitude toward Putin has ‘markedly cooled’ rests on anecdotal evidence and is, at best, thin.

And again:

This tanker, previously known as the Bella 1, was registered in Panama. It left Iran in late November and sailed to Venezuela. Days after its crew repelled a U.S. Coast Guard attempt to board, the Kremlin hastily allowed it to reflag itself as a Russian vessel, waiving all normal procedures for doing so. The Bella 1 then changed its name to the Marinera and set sail toward Russia.

Once it was officially registered as Russian, the Coast Guard suspended attempts to board. But the Trump administration kept tracking it. This week, U.S. officials said Moscow had deployed a submarine and other naval assets to meet the Marinera and escort it. The Kremlin reportedly asked the U.S. to back off and said it was monitoring the situation “with concern.” To their credit, the Trump administration ignored Moscow and took the ship anyway.

This isn’t the first time Trump has flipped Putin the bird in the past week. “I’m not thrilled with Putin. He’s killing too many people,” Trump icily said during his news conference after Saturday’s snatch-and-grab operation against Nicolás Maduro.

For me the most interesting part of the editorial is this:

Since Trump’s Dec. 28 summit with Zelensky, which at the time looked quite promising, even more substantive progress has been made. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met this week with Ukrainian and European leaders. The document that emerged from their talks shows the U.S. taking the lead on ceasefire monitoring and Europe taking the lead on fielding a multinational ground force to deter future Russian aggression. The self-described Coalition of the Willing has also pledged to finance the ample arming of Kyiv and even gestured at prepositioning weapons for easy access should war break out again.

which, as readers may notice, is very much what I have been proposing for more than a year.

To my eye, the critical questions are not whether the United States and our European allies make good on their promises, but rather: (a) what European peacekeeping forces do if they come under Russian fire, and (b) how the United States responds if they do. At present, I have little confidence that either question has been seriously answered.