Footage of the US pursuit of the Marinera (Photo: US Coast Guard)
The UK justified its support for North Atlantic operation, saying sanction-dodging ship was stateless. Legal experts say that’s debatable
The US seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker, with British military support, in the North Atlantic may have violated international law, legal experts tell Declassified.
“Overall, there would appear to be no credible basis in law for this interdiction,” Douglas Guilfoyle, professor of international law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney said.
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Just before 2pm on Wednesday, US European Command announced the ship’s seizure, with Britain’s Ministry of Defence confirming soon after that it had provided the US with “enabling support in full compliance with international law”.
The support included Royal Air Force surveillance and the provision of the RFA Tideforce, a Royal Navy auxiliary ship “designed to provide key underway replenishment at sea”.
Defence secretary John Healey justified the UK’s involvement, citing the ship’s “nefarious history” of Russian-Iranian axis sanctions evasion “fuelling terrorism, conflict and misery from the Middle East to Ukraine”.
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Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, said a vessel could only be stopped, searched and seized on the high seas under four conditions.
These are if it is a pirate ship, engaged in unauthorised broadcasting, is stateless/not-flying a flag or acting in violation of US Security Council resolutions.
“None of those conditions appear to apply in this instance as I understand the tanker was Russian flagged (and that is not in dispute), and the only sanctions it was subject to were US sanctions imposed under US,” he said.
“So, on the facts, this would appear to be extraterritorial US national law enforcement taking place on the high seas/international waters, or even within the UK’s 200 [nautical mile] exclusive economic zone.”
The UK support, he added, was “not exceptional, especially as the tanker was off the coast of Scotland and would have in the normal course of events been under watch by the UK”.
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In 2018, a colleague and I, together with a team of Greenlandic research assistants, conducted one of the most comprehensive surveys to date on public opinion in Greenland. We travelled to 13 randomly selected towns and settlements across the island nation, conducting in-person interviews with a representative sample of adult residents.
The survey explored a wide range of topics. We asked for views on climate change, economic matters – and the prospect of independence from Denmark. Until recently, this was the latest poll on what the people of Greenland thought about this issue.
Greenland, a former Danish colony, is currently an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. This political arrangement grants Greenland extensive self-rule, including control over most domestic affairs, as well as its own prime minister and parliament. However, Denmark retains authority over foreign policy, defence and monetary policy.
While our survey results were covered in Greenlandic and Danish media upon their release, they received scant international attention. This changed abruptly on January 15, when newly re-elected US president Donald Trump reposted an old news article about our results. The headline stated that two-thirds of Greenlandic citizens support independence.
Trump did not add a comment in the post but the insinuation was clear given his recent statements about annexing Greenland from Denmark: Greenlandic residents want independence from Denmark, and therefore, they might be open to other political or economic arrangements with the US.
“I think we’re going to have it,” Trump recently said after a phone call with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, who told him the land was “not for sale”. Trump has in the past spoken of somehow “purchasing” Greenland but has since moved on towards speaking in more assertive terms about taking control of the territory.
Back in 2018, when we conducted the survey, Trump had not yet revealed any plans to annex the island nation. It was a scenario we could hardly even have imagined and therefore did not ask our participants about. As such, regardless of how Trump framed them, the survey results in no way indicated that the population harboured a desire to join the US.
In fact, a recent survey conducted by Sermitsiaq (a Greenlandic newspaper) and Berlingske (a Danish newspaper) directly addressed this question and found that only 6% of respondents wanted Greenland to leave Denmark and instead become part of the US.
In the study I published based on the 2018 data collection, I reported that a majority of the Greenlandic population aspired to independence. Two-thirds of the participants thought that “Greenland should become an independent country at some point in the future”.
Opinions were more divergent regarding the timing of independence. When asked how they would vote in an independence referendum if it were held today, respondents who stated a preference were evenly split between “yes” and “no” to independence.
The Act on Greenland Self-Government, passed in 2009, grants the Greenlandic government the legal authority to unilaterally call a referendum on separating from the political union with Denmark. According to the law, “the decision regarding Greenland’s independence shall be taken by the people of Greenland”.
During the 15 years since its passage, the option to call a referendum has not been exercised. This is likely due to the potential economic consequences of leaving the union with Denmark.
Each year, Denmark sends a block grant that covers approximately half of Greenland’s budget. This supports a welfare system that is more extensive than what is available to most Americans. In addition, Denmark administers many costly including national defence.
This backdrop presents a dilemma for many Greenlanders who aspire to independence, as they weigh welfare concerns against political sovereignty. This was also evident from my study, which revealed that economic considerations influence independence preferences.
For many Greenlanders, the island nation’s rich natural resources present a potential bridge between economic self-sufficiency and full sovereignty. Foreign investments and the associated tax revenues from resource extraction are seen as key to reducing economic dependence on Denmark. Presumably, these natural resources, which include rare earths and other strategic minerals, also help explain Trump’s interest in Greenland.
As Greenland’s future is likely to remain at the centre of a geopolitical power struggle for some time, it is crucial to remember that only Greenlanders have the right to determine their own path. What scarce information is available on their views suggests that while many aspire to independence, it is not driven by a desire to join the US.
Greenland’s concentration of natural resource wealth is tied to its hugely varied geological history over the past 4 billion years. Jane Rix/Shutterstock
Greenland, the largest island on Earth, possesses some of the richest stores of natural resources anywhere in the world.
These include critical raw materials – resources such as lithium and rare earth elements (REEs) that are essential for green technologies, but whose production and sustainability are highly sensitive – plus other valuable minerals and metals, and a huge volume of hydrocarbons including oil and gas.
The scale of Greenland’s hydrocarbon potential and mineral wealth has stimulated extensive research by Denmark and the US into the commercial and environmental viability of new activities like mining. The US Geological Survey estimates that onshore northeast Greenland (including ice-covered areas) contains around 31 billion barrels of oil-equivalent in hydrocarbons – similar to the US’s entire volume of proven crude oil reserves.
But Greenland’s ice-free area, which is nearly double the size of the UK, forms less than a fifth of the island’s total surface area – raising the possibility that huge stores of unexplored natural resources are present beneath the ice.
Greenland’s concentration of natural resource wealth is tied to its hugely varied geological history over the past 4 billion years. Some of the oldest rocks on Earth can be found here, as well as truck-sized lumps of native (not meteorite-derived) iron. Diamond-bearing kimberlite “pipes” were discovered in the 1970s but have yet to be exploited, largely due to the logistical challenges of mining them.
Geologically speaking, it is highly unusual (and exciting for geologists like me) for one area to have experienced all three key ways that natural resources – from oil and gas to REEs and gems – are generated. These processes relate to episodes of mountain building, rifting (crustal relaxation and extension), and volcanic activity.
Greenland was shaped by many prolonged periods of mountain building. These compressive forces broke up its crust, allowing gold, gems such as rubies, and graphite to be deposited in the faults and fractures. Graphite is crucial for the production of lithium batteries but remains “underexplored”, according to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, relative to major producers such as China and South Korea.
But the greatest proportion of Greenland’s natural resources originates from its periods of rifting – including, most recently, the formation of the Atlantic Ocean from the beginning of the Jurassic Period just over 200 million years ago.
Greenland’s onshore sedimentary basins such as the Jameson Land Basin appear to hold the greatest potential of oil and gas reserves, analogous to Norway’s hydrocarbon-rich continental shelf. However, prohibitively high costs have limited commercial exploration. There is also a growing body of research suggesting potentially extensive petroleum systems ringing the entirety of offshore Greenland.
Metals such as lead, copper, iron and zinc are also present in the onshore (mostly ice-free) sedimentary basins, and have been worked locally, on a small scale, since 1780.
Difficult-to-source rare earth elements
While not as intimately related to volcanic activity as nearby Iceland – which, uniquely, sits at the intersection of a mid-ocean ridge and a mantle plume – many of Greenland’s critical raw materials owe their existence to its volcanic history.
REEs such as niobium, tantalum and ytterbium have been discovered in igneous rock layers – similar to the discovery (and subsequent mining) of silver and zinc reserves in south-west England, which were deposited by warm hydrothermal waters circulating at the tip of large volcanic intrusions.
Critically among REEs, Greenland is also predicted to hold sufficient sub-ice reserves of dysprosium and neodymium to satisfy more than a quarter of predicted future global demand – a combined total of nearly 40 million tonnes.
These elements are increasingly seen as the most economically important yet difficult to source REEs because of their indispensable role in wind power, electric motors for clean road transport, and magnets in high-temperature settings like nuclear reactors.
The development of known deposits such as Kvanefield in southern Greenland – not to mention those not yet discovered in the island’s central rocky core – could easily affect the global REE market, owing to their relative global scarcity.
An unfortunate dilemma
The global energy transition came about due to increasing public recognition of the manifold threats of burning fossil fuels. But climate change has major implications for the availability of many of Greenland’s natural resources that are currently blanketed by kilometres of ice – and which are a key part of that energy transition.
An area the size of Albania has melted since 1995, and this trend is likely to accelerate unless global carbon emissions fall sharply in the near future.
Recent advances in survey techniques, such as the use of ground-penetrating radar, allow us to peer with increasing certainty beneath the ice. We are now able to obtain an accurate picture of bedrock topography below up to 2 km of ice cover, providing clues as to the potential mineral resources in Greenland’s subsurface.
However, progress is slow in prospecting under the ice – and sustainable extraction is likely to prove even harder.
Soon, an unfortunate dilemma may need to be addressed. Should Greenland’s increasingly available resource wealth be extracted with gusto, in order to sustain and enhance the energy transition? But doing so will add to the effects of climate change on Greenland and beyond, including despoiling much of its pristine landscape and contributing to rising sea levels that could swamp its coastal settlements.
Currently, all mining and resource extraction activities are heavily regulated by the government of Greenland through comprehensive legal frameworks dating from the 1970s. However, pressures to loosen these controls, and to grant new licences for exploration and exploitation, may increase amid the US’s strong interest in Greenland’s future.
Officials at the scene following the shooting by federal agents of two people in Portland on Thursday. Photograph: Jenny Kane/AP
US federal agents shot two people in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon, Portland police said.
“Two people are in the hospital following a shooting involving federal agents,” the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) said in a statement, adding that their conditions were not known.
The PPB said its officers were not involved in the shooting.
“At 2.24pm, officers received information that a man who had been shot was calling and requesting help in the area of Northeast 146th Avenue and East Burnside,” police said. “Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel. The patients were transported to the hospital. Their conditions are unknown.
“Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents.”
Maxine Dexter, a Democratic congresswoman who represents East Portland, said in a statement: “Just one day after the horrific murder in Minneapolis, I received reports that two people in my district were shot by federal immigration officials this afternoon in East Portland. Both individuals are alive, but we do not know the extent of their injuries.”
She added: “ICE has done nothing but inject terror, chaos, and cruelty into our communities. Trump’s immigration machine is using violence to control our communities – straight out of the authoritarian playbook. ICE must immediately end all active operations in Portland.”
dizzy: Details of this incident are still unclear. It appears strange to me that these individuals call emergency services themselves after being shot by federal agents i.e. did the federal agents abandon them after shooting them, did not realise or care that they had been shot?
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.The original Fascists Mussolini and HitlerOrcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
