Seven ships hit off NATO's coast. No one had to defend them

NATO's founding treaty of 1949 is precise about where it applies. Article 5, the promise that an attack on one member is an attack on all, covers the attacks Article 6 describes: on a member's territory, or on a member's forces, vessels or aircraft in Europe, North America, the Mediterranean, or the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer. The Black Sea is not named, and a tanker flying San Marino's flag is not a member's ship. A Romanian defence analyst told AP that whether the water beyond the 12-mile line counts is "a matter of discussion", and that so far it seems it does not.

The Yara J was hit inside the line, on what the treaty calls a member's territory. Even then, Article 5 obliges each member only to take "such action as it deems necessary". Nothing says that action must be a warship beside a tanker. And when Turkey suggested an escort convoy, a Romanian defence source said Romania's own warships have no air defences against drones.

Under the law of the sea, a ship falls under the law of the country whose flag it flies, and beyond a coast's territorial waters that country is the one responsible for it (UNCLOS arts 92, 94). The owner chooses the flag. San Marino, a republic of 61 km² surrounded by Italy, opened a ship register in 2021 that offers any size of ship, owners of any nationality and registration in 48 hours.

The other ships hit off Romania and Bulgaria flew the flags of the Comoros, Togo, Palau, Guinea-Bissau and Malta. Owners choose most flags like these for lower fees, lower taxes and lighter rules on crews; the global seafarers' union calls them flags of convenience. The law requires a "genuine link" between ship and flag (art. 91) but never says what it is. The flag makes a country responsible; nothing obliges that country to be able to protect the ship.

In September 2026 the Joint War Committee of the London insurance market listed the whole Black Sea as a high-risk area, except the 12-mile territorial waters of Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Georgia. Inside that strip ships pay no extra war-risk charge; outside it, war cover rose fivefold in two weeks, from about 0.1% to 0.5% of a ship's value. By October 2026 about nine ships in ten on the route hugged the coast. A line drawn to mark where a country's laws apply became a line on an insurance map, then a shipping lane. Then the Yara J was hit inside it. The strip priced as safe had never been guarded by anyone.

The only way into the Black Sea by ship is through Turkey's straits, and the Montreux Convention of 1936 controls that door. Warships of countries outside the Black Sea may enter only in limited tonnage (30,000 tonnes in total, up to 45,000) and stay no more than 21 days (art. 18). When Turkey is neutral in a war, warships of the countries at war may not pass at all (art. 19); Turkey has applied that rule since February 2022 and urged everyone else not to send warships either.

Inside the door there is one large navy, Turkey's, and it was Turkey that proposed the convoy. When these ships were hit, the convoy was still a proposal, and none of the rules in this story obliged anyone to sail it.

Every rule in this story is a line drawn for a different job. The flag was built for registering and taxing ships. The 12-mile limit marks where a coastal country's own laws apply. The 1949 treaty map was drawn to defend the land of Western Europe and North America; the 1936 straits treaty was written to keep the great powers' fleets out of one sea. None of them was drawn to answer who protects a merchant ship carrying cargo to a NATO port.

Protection could be tied on purpose to one of four things: the flag, the place, the money, or the people on board. Each has been tried, and each has a price.

Tie it to the flag. In 1987, during the Iran–Iraq war, the United States re-registered eleven Kuwaiti tankers under the American flag and escorted them. The first convoy ran into a mine that holed the supertanker Bridgeton; within a year the escort had turned into naval battles with Iran, and in July 1988 a US cruiser in the same waters shot down Iran Air flight 655, killing 290 people. The escort put the duty and the ability to defend in the same hands. Price: the country that lends its flag also takes on the war. If Romania put tankers under its own flag, every strike on them would be a strike on a Romanian ship, and Bucharest would have to answer it.

Tie it to the place. In February 2024 the EU launched Aspides in the Red Sea: it escorts merchant ships regardless of flag and may only defend, never strike targets on land. In its first seven months it escorted more than 250 ships and fought off at least 11 attacks. Turkey's proposed convoy would work the same way. Price: other countries' sailors take the risk for a foreign owner under a foreign flag, with no treaty obliging them to keep coming; in the Black Sea a lasting escort by non-coastal navies would mean rewriting Montreux.

Tie it to money. In November 2023 Ukraine set up the state-backed Unity war insurance with insurers in London for ships to and from its ports. After it opened, war cover for cargo there fell to less than a tenth of what it had been, and ships kept sailing. Price: it pays for what is lost and does not stop a single drone; the state takes on the risk without making it smaller, and cheaper cover draws more ships into danger.

Tie it to the people on board. Unions and shipping employers declared the northern Black Sea a warlike operations area in 2022: a bonus, double compensation for death or injury, and the right to refuse to sail with the journey home paid. Price: the right protects only the crews who use it. Türkiye Today reports some operators replacing Turkish and European crews with cheaper ones from India and Bangladesh; the risk moves to whoever accepts it for less.

Two tankers, a few miles apart, one on each side of a line drawn for something else. When ships burn off a NATO coast, "will NATO respond?" is not the first question. In October 2026 a line on the water decided it: the Yara J was hit inside the 12-mile line, so on paper its protection was Romania's problem; the Wine Trader was a mile beyond, so its protection was San Marino's.