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This chapter explains the role of the United States Navy in maritime interdiction operations. It begins by defining maritime interdiction operations and details the complications presented by the vastness of ocean space, the lack of a universal police force, and the concept of flag sovereignty. The chapter moves into a discussion on the legal basis and framework for unilateral and multilateral interdiction operations. It also analyzes the problems that arose from the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, in particular the jurisdictional issues and limited definition of “piracy” that frustrated U.S. efforts to bring the terrorists to justice. It concludes by outlining the common legal issues encountered when executing these operations.

This chapter explores the history of how contemporary maritime migration policing (i.e., maritime interdiction) emerged out of confrontations over the treatment of Haitian asylum seekers during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. It argues that an unprecedented litigation-oriented social movement provoked a dynamic of escalating conflict that eventually resulted in the rise of the contemporary immigration detention system and the transfer of the South Florida immigration border offshore—to northern Caribbean seas and, later, Guantanamo Bay. The chapter combines hitherto untapped archival materials and oral history interviews with a new theoretical approach to American border space, its jurisdictional paradigms, and its legal fictions. This framework conceptualizes borders as a complex of three elements—a judicial border, a policing border, and a territorial border—each standing for the outer limits of the physical or authoritative dimensions of these institutions. Using this perspective, the chapter traces how these three "borders" became disjointed as executive branch immigration officials sought to recapture and routinize the sovereign flexibility that came under attack during the beginning phases of these litigation conflicts. The multi-decade scope of the chapter reveals the dynamic and its effects while also laying the groundwork for more targeted discussions in the chapters to come.

This chapter focuses on measures that collective security institutions take to address threats. Chapter 5 begins with addressing the Security Council's sanctions competence, including the constitutional requirements of necessity and proportionality which the Council has to observe. Most traditional measures of response are economic sanctions and arms and air embargoes, including the maritime interdiction element. The chapter examines the Council's relevant practice in multiple situations such as Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, or DRC, and assesses the effectiveness of these measures and their humanitarian implications. The analysis then moves to so-called targeted sanctions against terrorist suspects and assesses both the evolution of the targeted sanctions regime from Resolution 1267(1999) onwards to date, and the reaction of national and international courts to this regime. The second major element of Chapter 5 is the authorization of the use of force by the Security Council and it covers the cases of Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, and Cote d'Ivoire. Legal limits on the Council's powers and the interpretation of its decisions underlies this analysis. The third major part of this chapter relates to the enforcement practice of regional organizations such as OAS, EU, as well as the relevant practice of NATO, OECS, AU, and ECOWAS.

The introduction to the book introduces the reader to the method of naval warfare known as ‘maritime blockade’. Comparing and contrasting blockade to similar types of maritime interdiction operations, it outlines the particular characteristics that set blockades apart from sanctions, embargoes, and contraband operations. In particular, this part of the book provides insight into the author’s principal argument that there is a humanitarian gap in the law of maritime blockade that permits blockading powers to deliberately cause the starvation of the civilian population of a blockaded area. As a consequence, the introduction sets out the thesis that the contemporary law of maritime blockade is outdated and requires significant reform in order to remain valid in the context of twenty-first-century international humanitarian law (IHL).^.