An unarmed Royal Navy warship has just quietly struck a blow for freedom
Freedom of Navigation (FON) is a cornerstone of the international order – and it's one that must be exercised or it can disappear. It's not just a legal principle under the UN Convention on the Law Of the Sea (UNCLOS), but a live issue.
Today, nearly every global choke point is under stress. The Red Sea has had Freedom of Navigation (FON) challenged successfully by the Houthis since December 2023. The current uneasy ceasefire there has not restored sufficient confidence for the larger merchant ships to consider routing through there again. The Black Sea was nearly closed after Russia's invasion, until Ukraine's naval ingenuity restored free passage for its grain exports.
The Strait of Hormuz is in the telescope today as commentators try and guess if the US is about to get involved in the Iran campaign and what that could mean for FON in the Strait of Hormuz. The Danish Straits and the Northern Sea Route are also now contested in different ways.
Meanwhile, in the part of the world many deem the most important, HMS Spey has just conducted a Freedom of Navigation patrol in the Taiwan Strait, the first by the Royal Navy since the 2021 carrier strike group deployment dispatched HMS Richmond through there. HMS Spey, alone, unafraid, and basically unarmed, did the same on Wednesday. This raises a few interesting points.
As the British office in Taipei noted after the 2021 patrol: 'Wherever the Royal Navy operates, it does so in full compliance with international law and exercises its right to freedom of navigation and overflight provided by UNCLOS.' Yet China tries to claim that the Taiwan Strait is its own and it has the right to deny passage through it. China also tries to claim that nearly all of the South China Sea belongs to it too.
So who is right? From a UK and general international perspective this is an easy one. China's claims have no legal basis whatsoever – as found by the Hague's ruling against them in 2016 invalidating their claim to the 'nine-dash line'. China described the Hague ruling as 'null and void'. As importantly, their actions in the China Sea are repeatedly in breach of normal, professional and disciplined maritime behaviours. Close passes, ramming, fire hoses, lasers and so on are behaviours that you would wish to avoid whether you think you are in your own waters or not. It's all part of a broader attempt to 'normalise illegal' until the international community becomes deaf to it, and then you advance one more step.
FONOPs, as conducted by Spey, are part of the counter to this.
That she is unarmed is also interesting because it made the inevitable outrage from Chinese state run media look pretty silly. Screaming and yelling at an unarmed patrol boat is not a good look.
It doesn't seem like she was shadowed through the transit in the way we do when Russian warships pass the UK. Again this is indicative of Spey not being an actual threat, perhaps.
It's also of note that were it not for Taiwan's Foreign Ministry publicly praising the operation, we might not have found out about it at all. 'Do it but don't shout about it' appears to have been our Ministry of Defence's – reasonable – communications posture for this one.
What does this mean as our Carrier Strike Group closes on the region? Without the Spey dash, one would have assumed that they would have detached a frigate to do it later this year as per the 2021 playbook. Was this FONOP done to set the conditions and judge the reaction before doing it again with a larger, better armed ship, or is that it for now?
The final point is the worth of these unarmed patrol ships. With two in the Indo-Pacific, one in the Mediterranean, one in the Caribbean and one in the Falklands, they have more than paid back the paltry sum it cost to buy them. They are also one of the few remaining bastions of faraway fun left in an overstretched fleet and a good command opportunity for those aspiring to higher rank.
In other words, it would be madness to either bring them back to the UK or dispense with them altogether. But it's a sad reflection on the state of Defence, and Defence thinking, that both these options are now likely.
In an increasingly unstable world, and with missiles in the air every night, there is a temptation to assume that every naval interaction will result in high-intensity combat. In fact the opposite is true. The vast majority of naval interactions are like this one. Benign, challenging, occasionally threatening (both ways) but ultimately designed to set the conditions to avoid conflict.
Spey's contribution, whilst small, is part of this wider picture and her captain and ship's company should be commended for doing it. Without such operations Chinese legal perceptions will become international reality – at which point Freedom of Navigation in this critical part of the world is forever compromised.
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