Law of the Sea and Hybrid Warfare

Project Information

LOSFARE

Grant agreement ID: 101018998

DOI

10.3030/101018998

Project closed

EC signature date 3 December 2021

Start date 1 April 2022

End date 31 March 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 214 158,72

EU contribution

€ 214 158,72

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I TROMSOE - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LOSFARE (Law of the Sea and Hybrid Warfare)

Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2024-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The objective of LOSFARE is to examine the legitimacy of naval hybrid warfare by identifying the limitations under the law of the sea to the jurisdiction of States in imposing their political influence on other States. To reach this aim, LOSFARE scrutinises State practice and examines whether it has affected the state of the law. This project verifies if State practice demonstrates the emergence of a new concept of hybrid naval warfare which should be distinguished from the traditional phenomena of naval warfare and law enforcement. LOSFARE also examines if the concept of hybrid warfare is useful for assessing the (il)legality of an aggressor’s actions in the maritime domain.

LOSFARE focuses on the practice of States in imposing navigational restrictions on foreign ships and aircraft in densely navigated maritime regions in the context of hybrid warfare. Foreign ships that were navigating through important chokepoints of maritime commerce have recently been repeatedly subjected to the use of force or coercion by the coastal State of the relevant strait. Problems in the classification of naval incidents between peacetime law enforcement and humanitarian law paradigms underline many contemporary inter-State naval conflicts, e.g. the Kerch Strait incident, attacks against ships in the ‘shadow war’ between Iran and Israel, and the ‘spillover’ of the Yemeni armed conflict in the Red Sea as manifested by attacks against foreign ships passing through that important waterway. In the Baltic Sea region, there have been repeated incursions of suspected Russian submarines into the territorial seas of Sweden and Finland and multiple violations of Russia’s neighboring States’ airspace by Russia’s military aircraft. These are all instances that serve as examples of hybrid warfare.

Furthermore, sabotage against submarine cables and pipelines is one of the main sources of grey zone conflicts. Numerous maritime incidents in the past couple of years have raised questions about the legal resilience of critical energy or telecommunications infrastructure in the context of hybrid warfare. These problems are best exemplified by the Nord Stream explosions of September 2022 and the damaging of the submarine gas pipeline and cable of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (hereafter NATO) Member States Estonia and Finland in 2023. In this context, one of the topics addressed in this project is how hybrid naval warfare impacts the safety of objects of critical offshore infrastructure and how to increase their legal resilience? The project also focuses on the interdiction of ships suspected of being involved in sabotage against critical offshore infrastructure outside the limits of the territorial sea.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Books
1. Lott, Alexander (Ed.), Maritime Security Law in Hybrid Warfare. De Gruyter Brill [forthcoming].
2. Lott, Alexander (2022), Hybrid Threats and the Law of the Sea: Use of Force and Discriminatory Navigational Restrictions in Straits. Leiden/Boston: Brill Nijhoff.

Journal Articles:
1. Alexander Lott. Maritime Security in the Baltic and Japanese Straits From the Perspective of EEZ Corridors. Ocean Development & International Law, (54) 2023 (3), 327−348. DOI: 10.1080/00908320.2023.2265301.
2. Alexander Lott, Shin Kawagishi. The Legal Regime of the Strait of Hormuz and Attacks Against Oil Tankers: Law of the Sea and Law on the Use of Force Perspectives. Ocean Development & International Law, (53) 2022 (2/3). DOI: 10.1080/00908320.2022.2096158.
3. Alexander Lott. Barriers to wildlife movement in straits: Problematizing habitat connectivity across marine ecosystems. Marine Policy, 141, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105107.

Blog posts:
1. Russia’s Blockade in the Sea of Azov: A Call for Relief Shipments for Mariupol. EJIL: Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law, 14 March 2022.
2. Guidelines for Grey Zone Naval Incidents: Distinguishing between the Rules of Armed Conflict and Law Enforcement. The NCLOS Blog, 29 April 2022.
3. Reflections on the Kerch Strait Incident Award from the Military Activities Exception Perspective. Humanities Matter Blog: Brill, 9 August 2022.
4. Attacks against Europe’s Offshore Infrastructure within and beyond the Territorial Sea under Jus ad Bellum. EJIL: Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law, 17 October 2023.
5. Did an Alleged Ukrainian Attack against the Nord Stream Pipelines Violate the Law of Armed Conflict? The NCLOS Blog, 21 November 2023.

My comments/analyses have been published by the newspapers of Norway (Skipsrevyen, Forskning.no) Finland (Hufvudstadsbladet), Estonia (Postimees, ERR News, ERR Uudised), and the Russian Federation (Novaya Gazeta). I have been invited to in-person radio interviews in Estonia (National Broadcasting, Raadio Kuku, Raadio Kadi) as well as to podcasts that are operated from the United States ("Sea Control") and Germany (’Völkerrechtliche Tagesthemen: Spotlight’). I have been repeatedly invited to television interviews by the Estonian Public Broadcasting. In 2022, I received the Estonian President’s Young Scientist Award. This meant that my LOSFARE project received increased public attention. I disseminated and communicated the project activities and results via my LinkedIn account and via the Facebook account of the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea.

I was invited to present at conferences organized by the University of Tartu, University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, Kiel University, Utrecht University (in cooperation with the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam (in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the British Embassy in Vietnam), International Society for Military Law and the Law of War University of Turku,, the Western University of Applied Science (in cooperation with Norwegian Ministry of Defense), the Estonian Academic Society of Law, the Estonian Students Society.

I organized under the auspices of the University of Tromsø the International Conference ‘Hybrid Naval Warfare through the Lens of Maritime Security Law’ which took place in Tallinn (Estonia) and the workshop ‘Hybrid Threats and the Law of the Sea: Inter-disciplinary and Regional Perspectives’ which took place in Tromsø (Norway).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This research determined how maritime security law can contribute to ensuring the rule of law in major commercial shipping routes that are impacted by hybrid conflicts. LOSFARE provided States and decision-makers the knowledge necessary to respond to the challenges posed by hybrid warfare. LOSFARE addressed this need by publishing two books book (a monograph and an anthology), research articles, blog posts, and by engaging with the public media, as well as by organising a topical workshop and a conference. In addition, the project results in the conclusion of a roadmap-brochure for the policy-makers on how to determine the applicable legal framework in naval hybrid conflict.

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