Professor and former U.S. Navy captain, Lawrence Brennan, appeared on Al Jazeera Inside Story to discuss sub-standard regulations and unlawful practices that often accompany the practice known as Flag of Convenience in which commercial ship owners register their vessels with a foreign country.
I think there’s no dispute that the United States has encouraged Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, and maybe others to take appropriate actions to ships that are engaged in improper and unlawful conduct such as smuggling, trafficking drugs, violating sanctions, such as was done in the early 19th century by the U.S. and British navy in fighting the slave trade.
One of the important things to realize is the international nature of maritime commerce. There’s 35 trillion dollars invested every year in world global trade, most of which 80 percent or so goes by sea and the infrastructure, ships, ports, facilities. And that’s a lot of money. It’s really the driving force of the world economy.
Watch full video below.
Additional media coverage of this topic:
U.S. State Department Is Demanding Iran Releases Detained Vessel
Iranian Hostilities Could Cause Spike in Global Oil Prices
Gulf Tanker Incidents May Raise Shippers’ Costs, Cut Traffic