The Beat of the War Drums

The Portrayal of Enemy States With Whom We Are Already in a State of Proto-War

Russian Ship Yantar transiting through the English Channel. Photo credit: MOD

In fascist lockstep, the entire British media, broadcast and print, corporate and state, is leading with a Ministry of Defence press release about a “Russian spy ship” inside “British waters.” No British media appears to have been able to speak to anybody who knows the first thing about the Law of the Sea.

Here are the facts: The Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 miles from the coastal baselines. The Continental Shelf can extend still further, as a fact of geology, not an imposed maximum. On the Continental Shelf the coastal state is entitled to the mineral resources. In the Exclusive Economic Zone the coastal state is entitled to the fisheries and mineral resources.

For purposes of navigation, both the Continental Shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone are part of the High Seas. There is freedom of navigation on the High Seas. Foreign ships. including foreign military ships, may come and go as they please. Nor is there any ban on “spying”—exactly as there is no restriction on spying from satellites.

The Territorial Waters of a state extend out to just twelve miles. These are subject to the internal legislation of the coastal state. There is freedom for foreign vessels, including military vessels, to pass through them but only subject to the rule of “innocent passage”—which specifically rules out spying and reconnaisance. In the territorial sea, vessels have to be genuinely just passing through on their way somewhere, otherwise they may need coastal state permission for their activity.

The Exclusive Economic Zone is subject to the rules of the coastal state only in relation to the reserved economic activities to which the state is entitled. Scientific research is specifically free for all states within the Exclusive Economic Zone. The Russian ship Yantar has been just outside the UK territorial waters. It is therefore under “freedom of navigation” and not under “innocent passage.” It is free to do scientific reaearch.

I don’t doubt it is really gathering intelligence on military, energy and communications facilities. That is what states do. The UK does it to Russia all the time, on the Black Sea, the Barents Sea, the Baltic, and elsewhere. Not to mention 24/7 satellite surveillance.

It is perfectly legal for the Yantar to do this. Personally I wish the entire world would stop such activity, but to blame the Russians given the massive levels of surveillance and encirclement they suffer from NATO assets is simply ludicrous. Not to mention the ultimate hypocrisy that the UK has been flying intelligence missions over Gaza every single day and feeding targeting information to aid the Gaza genocide. The UK’s allies blew up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline. The UK is now accusing the Yantar precisely of scouting this same kind of attack—which we endorsed when the pipeline was Russian.

Screen capture of The Barents Observer.

For example HMS Sutherland, accompanied by Royal Fleet Auxiliary Tidespring, and two other NATO warships penetrated 160 miles into Russia’s Exclusve Economic Zone and lingered 40 miles from Russia’s Severomosk naval base. There was no pretence they were doing anything other than gathering intelligence and sounding out defences.

In armed forces media the UK boasted it was an assertion of freedom of navigation. Yet we harass the Russian vessel equally on the High Seas for exercising its freedom of navigation. That was also perfectly legal. The idea that the same activity is worthy when we do it, but a pretext for war if the Russians do it, is so childish as to be beyond ridicule. But there is not one single mainstream journalist willing to call it out.

The Royal Navy sent vessels including the RFA Proteus (right, behind) to monitor the Russian ‘spy ship’ Yantar (front) off the coast of Cornwall in November 2024. Photo credit: Royal Navy

As this photo of HMS Somerset illegally threatening the Yantar on the High Seas shows, forcing it into dangerous moves, the aggression is not from the Russians. That British jets illegally buzzing the Yantar have been met with lasers designed to disrupt attacks. That is not the Russian aggression John Healy claims. The nonsense about dazzling pilots’ eyes is sheer invention.

Unless the plane is extremely, extremely low or a very long way away it is a physical impossibility to shine a laser into a pilot’s eyes in a modern warplane, from below in a ship. The pilot won’t be looking at the ship out of the window, but will be looking at his screens and the image from the cameras under the plane. These might be disrupted by the lasers—and a perfectly valid and sensible defensive measure that is too.

This is the Eurofighter Typhoon.

German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon. Photo Credit: Public domain

Imagine it in the skies way above you and look at its body, particularly the front end—how would you get line of sight on the pilot? You couldn’t. Lasers only go in straight lines. Most sinister of all is the universal state control of media that gets every single mainstream outlet booming out the propaganda narrative, all entirely without question.

This war talk is of course the normal refuge of extremely unpopular governments. But it is part of a wider tightening of the grip of the military industrial complex on the state. Starmer is committed to increasing military expenditure by tens of billions of pounds a year, while imposing austerity on the rest of the economy. In Scotland, we are told that the closure of major industrial sites like Grangemouth and Mossmorran will be compensated by opening new weapons factories.

Beating ploughshares into swords.

The rise of domestic racism and authoritarianism is accompanied by the increase in militarism and the desire to portray Russia and China as enemy states with whom we are already in a state of proto-war. The state has a mainstream media which is showing itself willing to pump out even the most thin propaganda to this end with no interrogation whatosever.

Western democracy has already died. Not everybody has yet noticed.