Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

The constant Russian interference, combined with the regular escalation from the jets patrolling, and the radar jamming, really needs to be dealt with.

We're stuck between having to do timid actions and full NATO escalation. This feels like constant creep.

I have read reams of rhetoric regarding relations with Russia rehashed as "don't poke the bear".

No one ever seems to want to discuss what to do about the bear going around poking everyone else.

Those discussions are had all the time. One of downside of this bear is bear strapped with explosives that could kill us all if bear gets angry enough.

Also, once you are 12 miles offshore, technically you are in international waters and thus cannot be stopped by any Navy except your own unless there is UN Sanctions. If NATO Countries decided to violate that, it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade.

That’s a good point, there’s no formal mechanism to punish any country that has ‘anchor accidents’ 12.1 nm offshore.

It’s probably not even a de jure crime, so what is there to punish on the record?

In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?

12.1 nm offshore is not any country, which is the point…The laws of zero countries matter, and only certain multilateral agreements matter, at least on paper.

It’s still a de jure crime on the ship itself, because the laws of the flag country apply there. If the captain of the ship intentionally damaged something in international waters, he still committed a (de jure, which was the question) crime.

No? Why would the laws of the flag country matter for an anchor slowly drifting to the seabed detached from a vessel several km away?

Edit: I’m pretty sure most, if not all, such countries don’t even ascribe any legal status to wrecked and sunken lifeboats, let alone anchors. Probably most countries don’t even have a formal penalty, of any kind, for lifeboats detached and sunken, for any reason, for anyone on the ship.

The „anchor accidents“ with cables are normally when a ship is dragging an anchor over the cable. That’s property damage of someone else’s stuff, which is a crime in pretty much any country. And even if you drop your anchor to intentionally destroy someone else’s property, that would be a crime anywhere. You don’t need a specific law for anchors.

Do you not know how ships typically operate?

Vessel captains drop anchor all the time if they are caught out of port in a stormy area. And if it’s a big enough storm they are quite literally dragged around along with the anchor.

It literally happens every month on Earth.

It just’s implausible that dragging alone would be a crime in any flag country.

Edit: Maybe they can criminalize dragging it for a very long distance, say 10+ km, but I’m pretty sure the most popular flag countries do not, e.g. Liberia.

That's why my first question was

> In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?

So you are arguing that it's an accident? Do you agree that it would be a crime if it was intentional?

Do you not understand what intentionally anchoring in a place means on a ship?

I’ll repeat as clearly as possible, literally every single month on planet Earth many ship captains are intentionally putting very heavy objects into the water in areas that they know may contain some property that their anchor may hit/drag/snare/etc… on something.

This is usually done when the probability is very low, but in bad enough conditions they may just not care regardless of probability, and anchor anyways.

Ok, so we could have saved 5 comments if you just answered „yes“ to my first question. The cable disruptions most likely aren’t real accidents but sabotage, coupled with plausible deniability explanations of anchor accidents. That’s why I was talking about intentional damage from the start. Read the thread again.