US 'Anti-Piracy' Tanker Seizures: A Masterclass in Imperial Irony
Al Jazeera reports the US is pursuing a third tanker off Venezuela's coast, framing these seizures as part of a 'naval blockade.' The US claims these actions target Nicolás Maduro's government, accusing it of drug trafficking and human rights abuses—charges often lobbed as pretexts for regime change efforts. This convenient justification conveniently ignores that unilateral blockades and seizures
of sovereign nations' assets without UN Security Council approval are, by almost any objective measure, acts of economic warfare, if not outright piracy by a state actor, contravening international maritime law. One might wonder if Washington would call it 'piracy' if Beijing started seizing US-bound tankers for, say, alleged human rights abuses in prison-industrial complex or surveillance states.
Venezuela, a sovereign nation, has been under aggressive US sanctions since at least 2017, intensifying under the Trump administration (whose policies the article implies are still being pursued) to cripple its oil industry. These 'legal' seizures look less like enforcing law and more like enforcing economic submission.