Trump's oil tanker seizure raises questions about potential Venezuela blockade

The Trump administration's seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela was almost certainly in breach of international laws, according to legal experts, and it has only further complicated the picture of exactly what the ultimate aim of the United States' aggression towards Venezuela may be.

Recent US strikes against smaller vessels — killing at least 84 people — had already raised many questions about the legality of its actions in international waters. But these were all done in the name of fighting "narcoterrorism".

The seizure of an oil tanker — apparently a vessel called the Skipper, flying under a Guyanan flag and carrying 1.1 million barrels of oil — is in a different category.

'Illicit oil shipping network'

US Attorney-General Pam Bondi said the vessel had been involved in "an illicit oil shipping network" that supported foreign terrorist organisations by transporting oil between Venezuela and Iran.

It appears the claimed legal basis for the seizure was a 2022 US sanction against it because of its alleged involvement in a shadow fleet that was moving Iranian oil.

Bondi said US security forces and the Coast Guard "executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran" from a Department of War vessel.

It would not be the first time there have been US seizures of oil in these circumstances.

In August 2020, during the first Trump administration, it emerged the US had seized the cargoes of four oil tankers allegedly carrying Iranian gasoline from the Persian Gulf to Venezuela.

On that occasion, there was no military force but threats of sanctions against the owners, insurers and captains of the vessels, which prompted them to hand over their cargoes.

Questions about the oil's origins

The ostentatious use of defence — as well as US domestic security agency personnel — is one difference this time around, as well as the fact that the ship was sailing away from Venezuela (apparently bound for Cuba) instead of towards it from Iran.

So there is a question about where the oil (worth about $US68 million) actually originated.

Australian National University international law expert Don Rothwell told the ABC that a clear distinction needed to be made "between United Nations Security Council resolutions and sanctions which do allow for vessels to be interdicted on the high seas, as opposed to US sanctions adopted under US law".

"The seizure of any tanker outside of the context of UN Security Council resolutions, the tanker being stateless or are not carrying a flag or the tanker being a pirate ship is really completely inconsistent with some of the very fundamental principles of international law and, most importantly, the law of the sea," he said.

"It may well be this vessel has been subject to ongoing US sanctions but the enforcement of those sanctions in these waters off the Venezuelan coast is really the critical issue here.

"It's not an enforcement of sanctions in a US port or in US waters, but most likely either in the high seas or in Venezuela waters. That's really the absolute critical international legal distinction that we noted here."

The seizure provoked understandable anger from Venezuela, which called it an "act of international piracy".

Venezuela's Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello called the US "murderers, thieves, pirates".

Talk of pirates in the Caribbean meant an easy leap to the famous Pirates of the Caribbean films. Caballo said that while Johnny Depp's character Captain Jack Sparrow was a "hero", "these guys are high-seas criminals, buccaneers".

US expands Caribbean military presence

Bigger issues underlie all the colour: what is the Trump administration's strategy towards Venezuela? And what does the increasing use of legally dubious actions by the United States mean for the freedom with which every other country in the world will claim the same right to flout international conventions?

At the very least, the US stands exposed for hypocrisy, as it did in 2020 when it had criticised the boarding of an oil tanker in international waters by Iranian forces the day before it seized the four tankers.

And it has regularly led missions to act against pirates in the Gulf who have done the same thing, and now criticises China for its actions that might not be piracy but which seek to assert its control over the South China Sea.

The escalating US pressure on Venezuela — and the region in general — has seen the ostentatious expansion of a US military presence in the Caribbean and its attacks on alleged drug trafficking boats that Trump has justified as being about stopping narcotics, claiming the narcotics trade is an act of war against the US.

There is also speculation that he is seeking to pressure for the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

But it is worth noting that after announcing the seizure on Thursday morning (Australian time) that he saved his threats for Colombia's President Gustavo Petro who, he said, "better wise up or he'll be next".

The Venezuelans say the policy is part of a "deliberate plan to plunder our energy resources" and Cabello has said the actions of the US reflect how it had "started wars all over the world".

But even the idea that the US simply wants to seize the energy resources of the country with the largest known oil reserves in the world probably doesn't quite encompass and explain what lies behind what is going on at present.

For that, it is worth looking at the US national security strategy, which was released with relatively little fanfare late last week.

Will a seizure escalate to a blockade?

The strategy formalises the underpinnings of the Trump foreign policy doctrine, such as it is.

That strategy asserts overall that that "permanent American domination of the entire world" is not in the interests of the country and foreshadows its withdrawal from affairs in places like the Middle East.

But the strategy is very clear about where its interests do lie: the Western Hemisphere — that is, the broader Americas.

"The United States must be pre-eminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity — a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region," the document says.

"Strengthening critical supply chains in this hemisphere will reduce dependencies and increase American economic resilience."

Beyond all the noise around Gaza and Ukraine, Trump's assertions on foreign policy since his return to the White House have literally stretched from one end of the Western Hemisphere to the other — from Greenland to South America.

And while much of that has been tied up in the noise about stopping migration, the actions against Venezuela raise the question of just what the assertion of interest by the US means in the Trump administration's mind.

Will it just be an assertion of might to assert right, even as it decries similar action from other powers like China?

Trump has tended to favour what he has thought are clinical interventions in foreign policy issues — whether that be the US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities or trying to seize particular times of perceived weakness like Ukraine's corruption scandal to maximise pressure on other countries.

The immediate question is whether the seizure of this oil tanker will escalate to a complete blockade on Venezuela in an attempt to cripple it economically.