What is freedom of navigation?
If you’re serious about geopol strategy, pay attention to where the ships go
If you’re serious about geopol strategy, pay attention to where the ships go.
From the Red Sea to the South China Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, great powers test how far they can push before someone pushes back. At the center of this quiet contest is a deceptively simple idea: freedom of navigation.
You’ve probably heard the term in debates between China and the United States on Twitter, framed as a legal principle or a moral disagreement.
But what’s the strategy and political maneuvering behind these moves?
So this week, we’ll break down what this means:
What is freedom of navigation, anyways? Freedom of navigation is not freedom of the seas. Its a demonstration of who gets to define that freedom. And every time a fleet moves unchallenged, it redraws the boundary of who enforces what.
It is a mutual test of the geopolitical and strategic status quo.
A strategic demonstration of presence. For the actor asserting it, each transit tests how far they can push. For the actor resisting it, each intrusion tests their ability to impose costs without provoking a larger conflict.Every transit is a message.
When a warship sails through contested waters without asking permission, it sends a message. It is a refusal to accept another state's attempt to change the rules of the sea - so its called ‘freedom of navigation’. It is both a military and diplomatic signal. And what nations do during this transit is also a signal.Freedom of navigation shapes the balance of influence, not just trade.
Sea lanes connect the global economy, but their real value is strategic. Whoever keeps them open decides which claims are tolerated and which are challenged. Behind every escort ship is a message about who leads, and who follows.
You rarely hear this reasoning out in the open - when balance of power and reputation is at stake everyone prefers to keep their true goals hidden.
These contests aren’t new. We’ve seen what would be considered freedom of navigation operations. But they’re becoming more frequent, more public, and more dangerous. The ships aren’t just there to defend trade, but draw red lines.
Let’s break it down a bit.
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1. What is freedom of navigation?
It is not the passage that matters - it is the protest that defines the position.
British Foreign Office memo, Gulf of Aqaba, 1948
The most common image of freedom of navigation is probably what you’ve seen on the X feed or YouTube. Followed by accounts going on about enforcing international law, rules based order, talking about imperialism, and on and on.
But this is a fundamental misreading of how great powers shape maritime law, power projection, and respond to provocation.
While these have points, its narrative theater. And it misses several strategic concepts:
Freedom of navigation is not only movement, but what that movement denies.
At its core, freedom of navigation refers to a country’s ability to send ships, aircraft, or submarines through international waters without needing authorization from any other state. Maritime law, like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) says that waters beyond 12 nautical miles from a coastline are open to all (which is interpreted so broadly its not even funny).
In theory, no country owns them and no country can deny access. Some critics I’ve heard will say international waters are free for all and nothing else matters.
But this is oversimplification that misses the point. But international waters may be free in theory, contested in practice - because no one legally owns them.
But that idea of international waters only holds if someone is willing to enforce it through presence, not paper. This happens when one state moves through an area another state claims. without asking permission. The goal isn’t only to provoke, but to prevent the claim from becoming normal. And for the other side, to assert its claims.
Aircraft and submarines are part of the equation too. At its core, freedom of navigation applies to all forms of movement through international waters, and not just what happens on the surface.
Military aircraft flying overhead and submarines operating below are governed by the same principle: if the zone lies beyond a state’s 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, no permission is required. And that principle can be challenged by in the air or under the sea.
Submarines test this from below. They move undetected, using stealth to probe how far they can go without being challenged. Aircraft do it from above, denying air control claims in real time.
America isn’t the first to do it. As long as ships have sailed the waves, control of naval arteries has been important. So, this isn’t new.
Examples stretch back over a century:
UK vs. Iceland during the Cod Wars (1958 to 1976). Iceland kept pushing its exclusive fishing zone outward, from 4 to 12 to 50 to 200 nautical miles. Britain didn’t respond with speeches, and sent frigates instead. Royal Navy vessels escorted trawlers directly into the contested zone. Each transit said one thing: We do not recognize your claim. This was freedom of navigation by collision.
Japan near the Kuril Islands and East China Sea (1980s - Present). Japan routinely sends ships and aircraft through areas claimed by Russia and China. These are not only patrols, but diplomatic statements, disguised as routine. If Japan stops, it silently affirms the other side’s map - and their territorial claims.
The Bering Sea Crisis (1880s to 1890s). The United States tried to control seal hunting far beyond its coastal waters. Britain refused to recognize it. Canadian and British ships challenged American enforcement directly, sailing into the disputed zone. The issue went to international arbitration, but the facts were shaped at sea. Navigation was the argument.
The right of ships to pass unmolested is tested through friction, then settles into a defacto mutual consensus. It’s less about paperwork and more about presence. The world remembers what is enforced, not what is declared.
Freedom of navigation is pressure in motion, and that must be constantly applied - and countered to be effective.
Which is why China is quite aggressive in responding to FONOPs, but also why the US is so aggressive in engaging in them. The China does it to assert territorial integrity. While the US does to reassure its East Asian allies and assert its power projection in the Pacific.
Politics is absurd theater, but theater all the same. Nations are by the logic of power politics, forced into play their parts. And that brings me to my next point.
2. It is a mutual test of the geopolitical and strategic status quo.
“Those pissing contests are how lords judge one another's strength, and woe to any man who shows his weakness. A woman must needs piss twice as hard, if she hopes to rule..”
- George R.R. Martin, The Hedge Knight
The quote is crude, but accurate.
In peacetime, power is defined by maneuver and ability to escalate to push diplomatic claims. Freedom of navigation operations are one of the few legal tools for states to test the balance (pissing contests!) without tipping into conflict.
They measure resolve. One side asserts access. The other asserts control. Neither wants escalation, but both want to define the line.
They enforce their interpretations of law. The U.S. might cite UNCLOS. China might invoke sovereignty in line with its reading of UNCLOS. The operation becomes a test of whose reading holds.
They prevent silent precedent. If no one pushes back, the claim stands. But if others sail through, the waters stay contested.
They signal to multiple audiences. The message isn’t just for the other state. it’s also for allies, rivals, and the public.
It’s how states avoid surprises. If a country stops performing these transits, or stops responding to them, the signal becomes silence and silence is dangerous. It implies either weakness or preparation for something bigger.
There’s the argument that “it costs so much”. But the reality? Is the price of looking weak is higher than cost of spending to look strong. And states pay this price willingly. And that also extends to assessing the opponent.
They’re intelligence gathering opportunities.
There’s a pragmatic reason. Every transit is an instrument for observing the operating rhythm of a rival. To break the status quo, you need to understand how its enforced tactically.
Each passage allows a state to silently ask: how quickly do you detect us, how precisely do you respond, and how consistently do you signal restraint or aggression?
The data matters because presence triggers reaction. Reaction reveals priorities:
Does the opposing force shadow immediately or delay? Sometimes forces watch at a distance to see fleet dispositions and activities. Other times they do aggressive maneuvers, including locking on to planes and ships to test responses.
Do they deploy coast guard, navy, or both? Which one they deploy can signal diplomatic intent. Or if they are trying to keep the escalation from being militaristic in nature. Using coast guards is a strategy used to assert claims without being too aggressive.
Are there overlapping drone or air assets? Air assets can be used instead of ships to dissuade task forces. Same with drones. This can either range from reconnaissance to buzzing (flying close) to naval units to intimidate them and gather info on their reactions.
How tightly do they track, and where do they pull back? How a nation responds to a freedom of navigation ops shows its tactical and strategic priorities. And these priorities can be wildly different in different geographical areas. A task force in the South China Sea can be treated very differently if strays to close to a naval base or shipping route.
The objective is to gather intelligence. But it is also to build a mental map of the other side’s hierarchy of concerns. A nation reveals what it values by how it protects it and what it protects. A quiet shadowing suggests tolerance.
Militaries use the phrase “maritime domain awareness”. But for the casual observer, it means something sharper: testing the reflexes of a potential adversary in peace to understand how they might respond in war. It is strategy through pressure, not violence.
States on both sides of a transit use the moment to adjust their doctrine. Micro responses feed into long-term assessments of how a state will behave under stress. The interaction becomes a predictable but vital loop of test, observe, refine.
Strategic and tactical posturing is often the aim of both sides.
I like to emphasis diplomacy is not always words. It is movement, proximity, and performance.
So, posturing is not ornamental. It is how means by which states test boundaries without triggering war. That test is crucial in the gray zone between peace and war, signaling replaces bullets.
Structured posturing lets both sides adjust doctrine over time:
Transiting states use these passages to normalize movement, reinforce alliances, and observe which claims are enforced. They push across multiple sea areas and across choke points to assert claims over a region. The first transit asserts a right. The second claims normalcy. By the third, the absence of challenge becomes acceptance.
Resisting states shadow and challenge transits to establish a counter-narrative of sovereignty. They draw counter red lines to establish claims and show their political will to defend territorial waters. China’s PLA navy running drills around Taiwan is an example. Russia doing it in the Baltic is another.
This makes the sea a theater for rehearsals and messaging. They are patterned, repeatable, and tightly controlled. There is choreography in the tension. No state patrols the sea for exercise. It patrols to write a story, one where its movement is natural and the other side’s protest is excessive. Sovereignty is performed long before it is recognized.
But lets talk about a recent event I mentioned on Twitter:
Strategic Illustration: The PLA Navy in Australia and New Zeeland 2025
Between 21 February and 9 March 2025, the PLAN dispatched a task group into the Tasman Sea and Australia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) without prior notification. Live-fire drills (outside the EEZ) forced at least 49 civilian flights to divert, and both Australia and New Zealand closely monitored the activity.
Presence triggers patterns.
Simply being in the water forces the adversary to reveal posture. China used the Tasman transit to stress-test Australia’s surveillance grid and observe how New Zealand coordinates within the Five Eyes framework. Presence drags command out of hiding. It tells you who’s watching, who’s in charge, and who waits for permission. A fleet in contested waters doesn’t just tests decision latency.Refine doctrine through rehearsal.
For the PLAN, this was a dry run: projecting power beyond the First Island Chain and studying allied maritime choreography. For Australia, it was a reminder that its eastern seaboard, once considered distant from pressure, can be pulled into strategic view. Both sides walked away with data for warfighting models.Posture becomes preemptive signaling.
China didn’t need to say we can reach here. It demonstrated it. And it showed that its navy now operates with a rhythm of deliberate ambiguity using FONOPs: unannounced arrival, visible drills, and sudden departure. When a task force does this its writing a rhythm. Predictable enough to manage, unpredictable enough to threaten. That’s how ambiguity becomes a weapon.Map the opponent’s mental terrain.
Intelligence isn’t just about radar signatures or order of battle. It’s about political bandwidth. How fast does Canberra escalate a response? Does it communicate with Washington? How do local governments react? The PLA maneuver was a probe into allied cohesion. A single transit through a contested zone forces allied coordination into the open: radio traffic, diplomatic maneuvers, and military reactions.
The message: If you can run freedom of navigations drills without prior warning. We can run them close to your allies too. And this is our naval capacity, watch how we can exercise it and disrupt your air and naval space.
China did avoid sailing too close to territorial waters or within sight of Perth or Hobart. Which would’ve been escalating too far beyond the message that the PLAN wanted to send.
As the example illustrates?
Visibility is the currency of control, and must be repeatedly emphasized. Even without permission. This is why infantry does patrols on the ground, and the same is true for diplomacy. You cannot use drones or missiles alone to assert control. They augment the presence of visible force.
If you don’t show up, then people and nations, make false conclusions about their claims, capabilities, and your strength. That’s the logic on both sides. Not to win a war today, but to define what’s already considered won and to emphasize it.
And that takes knowing how to send messages:
3. Every transit is a message
A man who sees a fence being built around his field must either pull it down or one day find himself outside it.
Jawaharlal Nehru, 1951
Though referring to land borders, Nehru’s insight applies just as well to maritime disputes. If a nation doesn't send a message creeping territorial claims, by sailing, flying, or asserting presence, adversaries will assume its weak.
States read these transits closely. They look at:
Route selection: Was the ship hugging the edge of the territorial sea, or did it cut directly through a claimed area? Sometimes a path that ship or task force traces draws a territorial claim or to deny it. Which is why you should really look at the routes.
Timing: Did the transit align with a regional summit? A domestic crisis? A new military policy? Sudden increase in freedom of navigation operations isn’t an accident. And can be both a way to get a point across that no declaration can.
Composition: Was it a lone vessel or part of a larger task force? Were there aircraft overhead? Did it include an intelligence platform? Task force composition matters - it can send a message of what they want to control. Weapons drills do too - it signals the ability to project power and naval capabilities.
A task force’s path is not only a journey. It is a statement of what the sender believes and what the receiver must consider. Where it sails defines what it rejects. And what it dares to cross is often more important than where it ends up.
But that’s a tactical look. Here’s the strategic concepts followed by an example:
1. Presence to sent a message - and telegraph consequences.
When negotiations stall or ambiguity becomes intolerable, states resort to the logic of presence. A ship’s path then becomes not just a protest but an armed criticism rebuke. In moments of strategic deadlock, transit replaces language.
Message of refusal: A deliberate incursion into contested waters signals the rejection of a diplomatic premise - “we do not accept the world as you describe it.” This sort of refusal messaging is the foundation for selective escalation for both sides.
Counter to narrative control: When one side attempts to reframe the status quo, a visible transit erodes that fiction without needing rebuttal. One good example is the China and Japan running patrols around the Diaoyu Islands. Or in China’s case, running drills around Taiwan. Both are asserting narratives of territorial integrity.
Strategic rebuttal to negotiation: A state may use movement to reject both the form and the content of an adversary’s offer. Especially if the offer attempts to redefine the terms of acceptable behavior. A good example is to break off negotiations, then respond with increased transits AND military drills.
Pressure without commitment: Transit allows for assertion without escalation. It offers strategic friction, which is to reminding the other party that policy is not costless. Pressure can take many forms from normal transit to running combat drills in contested water. The nature of the message can be read from what goes on during a transit.
Diplomacy is often a contest over meanings. Action and movement like freedom of navigation breaks semantic deadlock by demonstrating realities new facts for the world audience.
2. Show great power status and enforce hierarchy.
States use transit patterns to signal status: who gets to move where, who must ask permission, who challenges the order and who upholds it. These aren’t random ships passing in the night they’re affirmations of rank in the power system:
Freedom of navigation as dominance theater: Superpowers sail without clearance. Regional powers tiptoe. The difference speaks volumes, and the ability to resist it shows the level of power. Neither Somalia nor Eretria can stop US or NATO naval fleets. While the Houthis or China actively resist or shadow US naval fleets.
Coalitional signaling: Joint transits with allies signal shared position and cohesion, like U.S.-Japan-Australia exercises in contested waters. It signals to opponents that freedom of navigation is an allied effort, rather than
Permission asymmetry: When one side gives notice and the other doesn’t, it signals who’s dominant and who’s reactive. Its the geopolitical way of saying ‘ask for forgiveness not for permission’. You’re looking to see who gives in every time.
Escalation ownership: A state that transits boldly is saying, “we’re willing to bear the risk of confrontation”. which is a form of credibility signaling. To transit or counter without flinching is to show the world that you’ve priced in the consequences. And that you’re prepared to pay them.
The modern maritime order is not maintained by consensus. It is maintained by movement. And those who can sail where others hesitate are not just defending the status quo. They become the status quo, unless challenged.
Fleets movements are a mirror held up to the world. It reflects what a state values, where it draws its lines, and how far it is willing to go to preserve them. If the mirror is not shown often enough, others begin drawing lines of their own.
3. Signal alignment and force alignment.
In contested regions, ships don't just move for their own sake. They show up where their allies care. Presence becomes a way of declaring alignment, without the obligations of a treaty or the weight of a speech.
Non-binding commitment: A transit implies support, without triggering legal entanglement. It signals force commitment to allies, without massive costs of investment or need to show a war. Its signals sentiment, rather than intent.
Narrative disruption: When outsiders show up in contested zones, they break the binary narrative of “local dispute” and reframe it as a global concern. Or if its a local dispute, use it to make it part of a their larger diplomatic narrative.
Audience targeting: These signals are often aimed not at the adversary but at regional partners. offering reassurance and political cover. It’s a form of credibility building, but can also show allies the benefit of their alliance.
Dissuasion: These are to prevent small opportunistic actors from taking advantage or gaining leverage. At the same time, it can be used to force smaller states to bandwagon. Which means they are forced to align or stay silent to to survive. Denying one side a sympathetic ally.
It's alignment signaling and alliance strengthen. But its also to dissuade other nations from entering the conflict. Or even joining a side. Messages from freedom of navigations have a wide audience, some of which that may not be obvious.
But this is theory. Lets get an illustration of these concepts:
Strategic Illustration: Soviet Navy during 1971 Indo-Pak War
In December 1971, as India and Pakistan moved toward open war over Bangladesh, the United States and the United Kingdom dispatched naval task forces to the Bay of Bengal. Most notably, the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s Task Force 74, led by the carrier USS Enterprise. The ostensible goal was to evacuate American personnel and signal concern over regional instability. But the real target was political: to pressure India into halting its advance into East Pakistan.
The Soviets responded in kind. Moscow deployed a mix of cruisers, destroyers, and nuclear submarines from the Pacific and Black Sea fleets to shadow and confront the Western flotillas. The message was not subtle. The USSR would not allow coercive interference with its ally, India. The U.S. could park a carrier, but the Soviets made it clear: escalation would not go uncontested.
How this illustrates these three ideas:
Pressure without commitment.
The Soviet deployment didn’t involve direct combat. But it signaled that direct interference with India would have consequences. Moscow didn’t need to engage Task Force 74. Buti it had to convince Washington that doing so wouldn’t be a cost-free move. This was deterrence by presence, not by threat.Show power status.
While the U.S. Navy had superior global reach, the Soviet Navy had grown enough to contest key regional waters. By confronting American carriers with subs and cruisers, the USSR demonstrated its ability to operate in the Indian Ocean and stake a claim in global naval affairs. It wasn’t parity, but it showed the USSR Navy was no pushover - and could impose consequences on the USN task force.Signaled alignment with India.
Backed by a formal treaty of friendship signed earlier that year, the Soviet move served as a strategic endorsement of India’s position. It drew a hard geopolitical line in South Asia: any attempt to coerce Delhi would mean confrontation with Moscow. The line wasn’t declared, but the message was clearly understood.
The logic is simple but powerful. Demonstrate power project or resist it, without disrupting trade or causing a major diplomatic incident. Messages are ritualized. They follow patterns that you can spot with enough practice.
A task force is a paragraph in steel. The route, the timing, the silence writes what communiqués cannot. Together, they make a statement no diplomat is authorized to say aloud.
So what do we need to watch ?
Freedom of navigation operations are boring, But there’s a lot in the details you can miss.
There things I think a casual geopolitical observer needs to watch:
Look beyond the South China Sea. The contest for maritime norms will not stay in the South China Sea forever. Strategic habits migrate. You need to look at new theaters that powerful nations start testing their right to maneuver. And their consistency in doing it. If China runs more exercises near Australia or US does exercises in the Bohai? That’s a sign. Also look at new nations who haven’t done it before doing it. Where power projects itself next reveals where the future fault lines will lie.
The formation of task forces. The makeup of a task force signals diplomatic intent. A lone patrol ship is a patrol. Add more than one carrier strike group doing battle drills and that’s more serious. You need to look at task force composition, armament, and what they do is is how escalation takes shape before it’s acknowledged
The pattern of escalation. Watch if freedom of navigation appears in places that haven’t seen it. For example, a NATO task force sailing near Kronshtadt in the Baltic Sea. Or the first time a task force crosses into a previously uncontested EEZ. Watch for intelligence platforms sailing without escort, or combat drills run just outside claimed airspace. Escalation is a ladder, and changes in freedom of navigation operations can be a warning.
There is quite a bit of polemics about freedom of navigation, but not enough about the strategic framework and political maneuvering it enables. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with them, its important to know the underlying rules to counter or run them effectively.
That’s all for today.
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Bluesky: pplsartofwar.bsky.social