How USA Can Impose a Blockade in the Arabian Sea?
Might is right. That is the ancient law of this world. Humans create a pretense, every now and, then, to convince themselves it is not so anymore, but soon the covers come off. In 1944, the world was fed the potion of liberty, equality, democracy, and good governance. The pretense held for a while.
When fire becomes unbearable and there is nowhere to go, even a cat stands on her kittens to escape it. Today, under the heat of $38 trillion debt, USA has done the same to every ally except Israel. As narrated in Chapter 11, this war is more necessitated by economic compulsions than any bona fide humanitarian mission to save the world from nuclear catastrophe.
What Chapter 11 described as three attacks on ships carrying Indian crew is now, in legal terms, something more specific. The United States has commenced active piracy on the high seas. The question this chapter addresses is: how far are these actions legal?
Piracy on High Sea
Piracy on high sea was always a state sponsored enterprise. What was an explorer on sea for one state was a pirate to another. Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama are stated to be explorers but what they did all their life when not exploring for India, remains under wraps. Recently Hollywood unraveled this truth rather forcefully in the movie “The Bluff”. The movie was a disappointment otherwise. But it was bold enough to tell the truth about pirates.
On 10 December 1982 at Montego Bay, Jamaica, UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) was agreed upon. It became operative from 1994 and is binding on all countries. But USA, Israel, Turkey, and Venezuela refused to sign. Later in 1994 US recognized UNCLOS as customary international law without signing it. Thus, it is not binding on USA.
According to this convention, the high seas are reserved for peaceful purposes. Article 88 unequivocally states that merchant ships carry the right of free navigation through international waters and straits. That right is not conditional on the politics of their cargo’s destination. It belongs to the ship, the flag, and the crew, including crews from nations that have no party to the conflict.
The Blockade
A blockade is the mechanism through which a belligerent state attempts to suspend that right for its enemy. But a blockade that binds third-party neutral states requires more than unilateral action. Article 42 of the UN Charter places that authority exclusively in the Security Council.
USA has no Security Council resolution authorising this blockade. Without one, neutral vessels flying the flags of Palau and Guinea-Bissau, carrying Indian sailors, are under no legal obligation to recognise it. Attacking them for non-compliance with an unauthorised blockade is, by common sense, piracy.
Military blockade, in the language of the UN General Assembly’s 1974 Definition of Aggression, is an act of illegal armed aggression. UN experts said precisely this in 2025 regarding the Venezuela blockade: there is no right to enforce unilateral sanctions through an armed blockade, and a blockade is a prohibited use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. But USA has done it, anyway.
There is another instrument worth examining. The Declaration of London, signed in 1909, states in its Article 1 that a merchant vessel must not be attacked unless it refuses to submit to visit and search after warning, or to proceed as directed after seizure.
Three conditions must be met before force is lawful. The vessel must be ordered to submit to visit and search. The warning must be received. Only then, upon refusal, does the right to use force arise.
But no country ratified it. The House of Lords itself rejected it. Thus, this declaration is also a dead letter with all its best intentions. This brings us back to the principle of Might is Right.
Might Is Right
In this background USA exercised its right of being mighty in the gulf and attacked ships, details of which are given in Chapter 11.
CENTCOM’s public statements describe the attacks in the following terms:
the crew of MT Marivex “failed to comply with directions,” the crew of MT Settebello “ignored orders,” and the crew of MT Jalveer “repeatedly failed to comply with radioed instructions.”
The message does not say that any ship had received or acknowledged the instruction. On the contrary, iOS Marine, the operator of MT Settebello, stated directly:
“To the best of our knowledge, based on the information available, no warning, message or communication successfully established the vessel to the action taken against it.”
The captain of MT Jalveer insisted his ship was at anchor and that US forces gave no warning before opening fire. The distress call from MT Marivex, recorded and reported, captured a crew member in obvious shock: “US Navy attack, missile on our engine room.” That is not the voice of a crew that had been warned and chose defiance.
The legal principle is one of natural justice and is long settled in municipal law. Proof of dispatch is irrelevant. What must be established is proof of service, meaning that the notice reached the party it was directed at and was understood. A process server who testifies “I mailed the summons” without a signed acknowledgment does not prove service. It certainly does not shift the burden to the defendant to prove non-receipt.
CENTCOM has produced no acknowledgment, no recorded response, nothing confirming that any of the three crews received and understood any instruction. iOS Marine directly negated receipt. That negation stands.
CENTCOM’s phrase “failed to comply” is strategically evasive. Compliance presupposes receipt. One cannot refuse what was never received. Silence following an undelivered message is not defiance. It is the absence of any interaction at all. But why the pretense? USA could say that it did what it felt right. Why not say so?
Toilet Paper
Toilet paper is more useful till it is discarded in the flush. The international laws are not even worth the papers on which these are written. Look at the comedy it produces.
At the first level, the attacks violate UNCLOS Article 88 by using military force against neutral vessels on the high seas. At the second level, they violate the 1909 London Declaration by attacking without established warning. At the third level, the blockade itself, lacking Security Council authorisation and targeting neutral shipping, constitutes illegal armed aggression under the UN Charter and the 1974 Definition of Aggression. At the outermost level, if the blockade prevents civilian populations from receiving essential goods, it crosses into the prohibition under the Rome Statute. Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) classifies deliberate starvation of civilians as a war crime. Article 8bis(2)(c) classifies the blockade of a state’s ports by another state’s armed forces as a potential act of aggression.
The United States has not ratified the Rome Statute. It noted that inconvenience long ago. But that you must have guessed already by now.
The General Assembly has passed over 10,000 resolutions since 1945. One struggles to name five that changed anything without simultaneous American military backing, which means the resolution was a press release for American action.
My college canteen produced more actionable resolutions than the United Nations. Those resolutions had one property the UN structurally cannot replicate. The people making them had to face each other the next morning. Accountability was not a clause in a charter. It was breakfast.
The UN was designed by the victors of 1945 to look like an alignment of interest and consequence while preserving their freedom to defect from it. It has performed that function faithfully for 80 years. Nicaragua proved it in 1986. The Gulf of Oman proved it again in June 2026.
India
India summoned the Chargé d’Affaires of USA and registered its protest for the attack on Indian nationals. The question being asked is why India has not raised this before an international forum.
The answer is simple. First, there is no law binding USA. It is beyond the reach of maritime laws. Second, no forum exists to exercise any law.
The International Court of Justice is the obvious forum. Right?
The US accepted its compulsory jurisdiction in 1946. In 1986, the ICJ ruled against the US in Nicaragua v. United States, finding that American support for the Contras violated international law. The US response was not to comply. It was to withdraw its acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction entirely. It has not reinstated it in four decades. The court that ruled against it was not reformed. It was simply made irrelevant to American conduct by American withdrawal.
The Security Council is the other candidate. The US holds a permanent veto. Any resolution censuring American naval action dies before a vote is called.
The General Assembly can pass resolutions. It has no enforcement mechanism. We can only wonder if any official in the White House even reads UN resolutions.
India is therefore not silent because it lacks a legal argument. It is silent because the laws of the jungle apply in international law. It can retaliate militarily like it did in Operation Sindoor. But that shall be at a time of its choosing and place of its choosing.
The gloves have been off for a long time. We just did not notice.
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