Donald Trump’s running the world like he’s playing Grand Theft Auto, which is hilarious. And also terrifying.
On Wednesday, the US navy was in hot pursuit of the Russia-flagged Marinera, a dark fleet vessel with ties to the hydrocarbons formerly known as Venezuelan crude, but now claimed by Trump as the (sp)oils of war.
First thing’s first: The Marinera‘s not actually the Marinera, and it’s only recently Russian-flagged. The tanker in question is actually the Bella 1, which was on its way to dock and load in Venezuela late last month when it was intercepted and forced to make a run for it.
Regular readers will recall that the Bella 1‘s owned by Panama- (or Turkey-) based Louis Marine Shipholding Enterprises which was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2024 for carrying cargo on behalf of a Hezbollah front to buyers in Southeast Asia.
When it first encountered US naval assets in December, the Bella 1 wasn’t flying a valid national flag, making it a stateless vessel which, on the Trump administration’s reasoning (and on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), justified the US military’s attempt to board it.
That attempt was unsuccessful. The US has been chasing the ship ever since, following about half a mile behind as it ran away across the Atlantic.
On or around December 30, the tanker’s crew painted a Russian flag on the side of their (t)rusty vessel after hurriedly re-registering the ship with Moscow. (Under international law, you can’t switch your flag while sailing until you’ve formally changed your registration.)
Russia shouldn’t have allowed that, but the Kremlin depends on the dark fleet of which the Bella 1′s a part to transport its own illicit energy.
On Wednesday, Trump decided the jig was up. According to The Wall Street Journal, the US Coast Guard “brought in P-8 Poseidon ‘sub-hunter’ aircraft and AC-130J gunships” to assist in a “boarding operation” near Iceland.
Why the sub-hunters? Well, because Russia dispatched a submarine to escort the ship after Sergei Lavrov’s Foreign Ministry expressed “concern” that the US was still pursuing the vessel as it limped along to Murmansk, Russia’s strategic Arctic port and oil terminal.
I assume Russia will simply let the Bella 1 go, which is to say let the US board it and seize it. The other option was to engage the US in a naval confrontation over a visibly decrepit, empty ship.
But the dramatic events do raise questions about whether Moscow’s willing to confront the US military in the interest of protecting the shadow fleet the Kremlin uses to evade sanctions.
Interesting things are happening on the high seas. The New Cold War is truly “on”.
In December, a Russian-flagged cargo ship sank of the Spanish coast. The Spanish investigation determined it was carrying undeclared nuclear reactor components, and sank after the crew reported multiple explosions, due to a large hole in the hull which some claim is consistent with an external explosion. Speculation is that the ship was destined for North Korea. A Russian ship came on the scene during the Spanish response and unsuccessfully ordered the Spanish ships to leave. Afterwards, a Russian oceanographic ship appeared at the wreck site.
https://maritime-executive.com/article/report-lost-russian-ship-was-carrying-nuclear-submarine-reactor-parts
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ursa-major-north-korea-and-nuclear-reactors-new-details-on-russian-vessel-sinking/
Apparently those countries in the know have decided that the high seas are where the action is. Maybe nuclear weapons plays a roll in that calculus.
These strange times we live in are making me either more cynical than ever or maybe just outright paranoid. But it doesn’t seem far fetched to me for Putin and Trump to have prearranged some tense, very distracting and chaos-inducing moments. Nothing too close to the brink (I hope, anyway), but enough to keep the general narrative under control.