Sea Breeze Incident Highlights Weakness of Russia’s Legal Position and of Its Navy, Golts Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 29 – Many had assumed that the era of naval diplomacy had passed, but two cases in recent weeks show that is not the case, Aleksandr Golts says. In the first, Russia dispatched its Pacific Fleet to waters near Hawaii at the time of the Biden-Putin summit; and in the second, a Russian ship supposedly fired warning shots at a NATO ship in waters off Crimea.

            In the first case, Moscow hoped to demonstrate to the US “the military power of Russia and its ability to ‘reach’ a potential opponent;” in the second, it hoped to show its ability to prevent NATO vessels from passing through waters that everyone except Russia considers Ukrainian.

            If Moscow was successful in the first, however, it failed miserably in the second, the independent Moscow military analyst says, because the events in the Black Sea allowed NATO to underscore the weakness of Russia’s legal position and its reliance on force alone and also the weakness of the Russian navy compared to NATO forces (theins.ru/opinions/golts/243109).

            The NATO exercise in the Black Sea off Crimea’s Cape Fiolent prompted Russia to dispatch naval vessels to counter it. What happened next became “a parody on a completely genuine naval battle,” Golts says.  According to Moscow, it fired warning shots at a British ship in Crimean territorial waters and the vessel was forced to change course.

            But that Russian claim was disputed by London which pointed out that legally the waters through which its vessel was passing weren’t Russian and that its ship had not been compelled to change course. Indeed, given the imbalance in the strength of the vessels involved, there was no possibility that Russian ships could have achieved that end.

            “Both Western and Russian militaries are today seeking the best line of behavior in a new strategic situation,” one in which no one is going to attack a nuclear power because of the danger of retaliation but in which powers increasingly view their navies as ways of making political points to each other.

            In this case as in others, Golts continues, “the countries of the West chose a strategy which consists of constantly reminding by military means that they do not consider the actions of Moscow legal,” even while they strive to “avoid the risk of a direct military clash.” They can do so because of international law and because of their superior ships.

            The West acts within the UN Convention on Law of the Sea which allows for the free passage of warships through the territorial waters of other states if the latter do not object. Russia has in this case, but its legal position is weak because no one except Moscow thinks that Crimea is legally part of the Russian Federation.

            Moscow constantly advances claims on the basis of this convention, but because no one recognizes its claims, the Russian side is reduced to defending itself and its views by crude force alone. That might work if its forces were superior, but in the case of its navy, Golts says, that is definitely not the case.

            NATO’s ships including those in this exercise are significantly larger, faster, and more heavily armed. And this incident shows, the Russian military analyst continues, that NATO was able to force Russia to oppose the Western alliance precisely “in a sphere where it is significantly weaker than the forces of the West.”

            As a result, what some in Moscow trumpeted as a triumph of Russian arms was in fact not only a defeat of them but a broader political defeat as well, something that has to be worrying to the Russian command and the Kremlin because it reduces their opportunities to engage in what appears to be a new age of gunboat diplomacy.