Somali pirates are back with a vengeance – at least according to the major corporate media outlets. For instance, there is this article in The Conversation, elaborating upon the uptick in piracy off the Somali coast, and the reasons for such a resurgence. In the early 1990s, Somali pirates gained media attention, but after a few years of manufactured outrage, the issue disappeared from the radar.

One of the stated reasons for this increase in piracy in the maritime region of the Horn of Africa is the Iran war. Has not Tehran implemented a toll system in the vital Strait of Hormuz? The Iranian government is charging the major oil companies a transit fee, so their oil tankers can pass through this crucial maritime choke point. Is that not evidence that Tehran is engaging in an act of international piracy?

No, it is not. In fact, when the corporate media refer to the Strait of Hormuz as a ‘choke point’, they are admitting the way they see the world’s oceans and waterways – not as vast maritime ecosystems that belong to all of humanity, but as economic strangulation points to be used as leverage against regional nations.

Indeed, the large imperial nations of today – the Anglo-American axis, France, Holland, Portugal, Spain, among others – all used maritime blockades, piracy, hijacking ships and warfare on the water to enforce a trading system preferential to their domestic economies.

They used maritime strangulation, charging transit fees and blockading ports, to force nations to accede to their demands. The United States still deploys a maritime blockade of Cuba to this very day, an act of international piracy which is sabotaging the energy trade of that nation.

Let’s examine the Strait of Hormuz briefly. The United States is not the first colonising nation to be expelled from Hormuz. In the 1600s, the Portuguese empire, which built its wealth on the back of global piracy, was expelled from Hormuz by the Iranians, with surreptitious backing by England, another aspiring global maritime empire.

The Indian Ocean was a hub of maritime trade in the centuries prior to Portuguese colonisation. In the 1400s and 1500s, multiple trading networks crisscrossed the Indian Ocean. Bengalis, Gujaratis, Omanis, Achenese, people of the Malaccas (what is today the Malay archipelago), East Africans – all traded with each other. The Portuguese simply extorted this trading/cultural network, imposing its own transit fee system, and colonising territories to make the system work in its own favour.

The Anglo-Persian seizure of Hormuz was not an individual isolated act of piracy, but a concerted effort to redress the wrongful impositions of the Portuguese empire. The latter forcefully imposed a system of flow control over the trade in spices and merchandise in the Indian Ocean.

The Iranian government’s tollway system in Hormuz is a modern day countermeasure to the US-imposed war on their nation. US multinational corporations have profited immensely from the maritime oil traffic in the Persian Gulf.

The US helped to build and finance the Panama Canal, not out of humanitarian concerns for the welfare of Panamanians, but to establish a choke point for inter ocean maritime trade. Connecting the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean, it is a major conduit for global trade, providing access between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Is not freedom of the seas, mare liberum, a fundamental right of nations? Should not every nation respect the free maritime trade of each and every nation, without exception? That is very true. The founding father of international law, Hugo Grotius (1583 – 1645), Dutch lawyer and scholar, spoken of until today in reverential terms, elaborated an extensive concept of freedom of the seas, mare liberum, in a book.

All that is fine, except for two things. First, the Dutch, British and other maritime powers became global ocean-navigating forces by engaging in acts of piracy. They frequently hijacked, raided and looted each other’s ships, and sold off the booty. In fact, Britain became an expert piratical power, seizing 35 000 enemy ships between 1652 and 1815, over the course of fourteen wars. London was not averse to blockading shipping traffic from rival nations to gain economic advantages.

Grotius himself was a lawyer. Why is that significant? He was hired by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to defend an act of international piracy. The Portuguese trading ship, Santa Catarina, loaded with merchandise and spices from the Indonesian archipelago, was hijacked by a Dutch conquistador, and its goods sold off in Dutch markets. Occurring in 1603 in the Singapore Strait, the Portuguese were outraged at this brazen criminal episode.

A number of VOC shareholders, mostly Mennonites, objected to this use of force and sued their company. Grotius was hired to rationalise and justify this act of piracy – he elaborated his doctrine of mare liberum, not as a principle of human rights, but as a legal instrument to absolve the VOC of its criminal liability.

So when Grotius is invoked as the foundational father of international law, we would do well to remember the glaring hypocrisy at the heart of that reverence. A corporate lawyer excusing an act of piracy is hardly a role model of human rights.

Freedom of navigation on the seas is a fundamental human right. Sovereign nations have the right to launch and navigate their ships with unfettered access, free from any interference or violence. The past and current conduct of the Anglophone alliance, and their European counterparts, demonstrates that they have cynically deployed the principle of freedom of the seas to gain economic advantage over their rivals.

The ruling circles of London and Washington have recently rediscovered their commitment to freedom of navigation on the seas when facing challenges from Somali pirates, or the Iranian Hormuz Strait transit tollway. The behaviour of the Somali pirates is a reflection of the values and practice that we have implemented over the years with regard to maritime trade.

What is needed is a revitalised system of international agreements regarding marine ecosystems. The oceans are the common preserve of humanity. We are not overlords of the oceans, just their custodian. David Attenborough, veteran naturalist and documentary maker approaching the end of his life, made an impassioned call to rescue the oceans, the maritime ecosystems upon which we all depend.

It is up to us to heed his call.