So I saw an article about the latest shadow tanker being seized, this time by France in the Med. I did some quick Gemini searching, and that puts the seizure count at 8 in the last month, with European plans to ramp up this type of thing, and the Russian Navy beginning escorting tankers. The fleet size is substantially larger than I realized (estimates vary, but around 1000) so the overall impact is still small on a numbers basis, but military escort of tankers sounds like the portion of this story that matters. Lots of opportunity for a spark here.

Reuters

France intercepts suspected Russian shadow fleet tanker i...

The French navy intercepted a Russian tanker on Thursday in the Mediterranean suspected to be part of the shadow fleet that enables Russia to export oil despite sanctions.

The War Zone

Shadow Fleet Tanker Seizure Operations Expand In The Face...

Following America's lead, the boarding and diversion of the Grinch came as Europe is drawing up new plans to go after Russia's shadow fleet.

Certainly chance for a spark, but Russia doesn't seem to want a fight over it - at least not yet. They were escorting the one we captured last week (referenced in the twz article) and just watched and asked for humane treatment of the crew. Maybe if we seize more than 8/1000 they'll start to fight.

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by nunya

I wonder if this is the beginning of the return of military escorts being required for most international shippers as Peter Zeihan has predicted?

If there is something the US, Europe, Aussies, Japan, SK, etc… can agree on it is freedom of navigation / access to the global commons (at least for us), could we agree on growing our surface fleets for patrol and escort, agreeing to always protect each other?

4 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

could we agree on growing our surface fleets for patrol and escort, agreeing to always protect each other?

Bro. No. There will be no agreement on meaningfully increasing military spending by any of the nations that have committed themselves to devastating deficits to fund limitless social program spending.

The closest we'll get is printing a little more money to send to proxies like Ukraine. Anything that involves the participation of the civilian population, or God forbid a sacrifice by them, is completely dead in the water.

Until people start dying, we are going to whistle our way into catastrophe just like Europe did in the 30s while Germany was obviously gearing up for war. Someone in the administration, maybe Trump, maybe someone he trusts, knows this and is at least trying to clean up the cheap victories in preparation. Unfortunately for Maduro.