Events of recent years, spanning the Black Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, with a look ahead to brewing tensions in Chinese waters, the Indonesian archipelago and perhaps the Baltic, have once again focused the attention of analysts and forward-looking industry players on the fundamental factor that makes the maritime economy and shipping (in the sense the term has held since the Napoleonic Wars) possible. The age-old debate regarding the legal status of the sea in peacetime and the rights of neutrals during wartime, whether is declared or de facto, is resurfacing as we confront powers that do not recognize and do not comply with the regulatory framework centered on the Montego Bay Convention. The consequences of a collapse of this order would be epochal and would alter not merely the balance of power and geopolitical dynamics, but the minimum capabilities sea-going nations would need to acquire to continue trading across the oceans.

Main topics:

• The Status of the Sea in Law and Power Realities
• Does a katechon of the oceans still exist?
• The perennial issue of strategic choke points and the liabilities of the trend towards ever-larger ships
• Exclusive Economic Zones as a placebo remedial to  the outright  territorialization of the sea
• What can prevent the Mediterranean from becoming a territorial sea? (panel of opinions)