THE NEW MARITIME OPERATING ENVIRONMENT / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

The New Maritime Operating Environment

Rerouting, rising war-risk premiums and infrastructure surveillance have turned maritime security into a hidden tax on global trade.

By: Antonia Colibasanu

A year ago, we argued that maritime insecurity risked becoming as destabilizing as land-based conflict. 

Today, that warning largely holds, and in some ways has become direr. 

The oceans have become a primary operating environment for geopolitical competition. 

The result is an economic landscape in which shipping routes, insurance markets and infrastructure protection are core variables shaping trade flows and investment decisions.

The bottom line for 2026 is that, while growth may be steady enough to sustain current investor optimism, the world economy is operating at a higher security-adjusted cost base. 

The maritime domain is where those costs are likeliest to jump – suddenly and nonlinearly – turning localized disruption into globally relevant repricing.

Trade Corridors Under Sustained Strain

The prediction that threats to key sea lanes would place global trade under unprecedented pressure proved correct, though the language now needs refinement. 

The crisis in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb did not dissipate after early disruptions. 

It instead became the most sustained corridor shock since the pandemic-era supply chain breakdowns. 

Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, higher insurance premiums and uncertainty over Suez transits reshaped Asia-Europe shipping economics throughout 2024 and 2025.

Vessels mostly kept moving, but risk pricing became structural. 

Suez traffic collapsed: By early 2024, container tonnage had dropped by an estimated 82 percent, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, and remained depressed through 2025. 

Only 120 container ships passed through the Suez Canal in November 2025, down from 583 in October 2023, just before Houthi attacks intensified on commercial ships in the area. 

Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope added roughly 30 percent more time (10-12 days) to Asia-Europe journeys and cut effective container capacity by about 9 percent. 

Freight costs responded, with the containerized freight index more than doubling between mid-December 2023 and mid-May 2024. 

UNCTAD later noted that rates neared pandemic-era peaks by mid-2024 and stayed well above 2023 levels through 2025. 

War-risk insurance also reset sharply higher. 

Rates rose to about 0.7 percent of hull value (or higher at peaks) from 0.3 percent due to Houthi attacks that forced ships to reroute around Africa. 

Standard hull premiums are typically 0.5-1 percent, making war-risk a costly add-on – sometimes 2-10 times higher in volatile zones. 

The Black Sea saw similar spikes. 

War-risk premiums surged in late 2025 as tanker attacks escalated and Russia renewed threats to cut Ukraine’s sea access. 

Russian port calls rose to 0.65-1 percent, and Ukrainian ports to 0.45-0.55 percent. 

Underwriters now reassess risks daily instead of every 48 hours, adding tens of thousands of dollars in daily costs for some vessels. 

Industry forecasts for 2026 point to another 2-5 percent increase in war-risk rates, with a possible 10 percent rise in pessimistic scenarios.

Commercial Shipping as a Recurring Target

The prediction that commercial vessels would face growing direct threats also proved accurate, though attacks came in waves rather than continuously. 

After periods of calm, assaults on merchant ships resumed in mid-2025 with deadly results.

In the Black Sea, drone and missile strikes in November sank at least two tankers calling at Ukrainian ports, killing 12 crew members. 

In December, Russia-linked attacks on a grain carrier caused a hull breach and one death. 

Meanwhile, in the Red Sea, Houthi attacks sank a Liberia-flagged bulk carrier in July, killing three. 

Traffic picked up later in the year, and drone strikes sank another ship.

Elsewhere, in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian drone strikes sank a UAE-flagged tanker in July (killing five), while an Iranian missile hit a Greek bulker in August (killing two). 

In the South China Sea, Chinese ramming and gunfire sank an Indonesian cargo vessel in September (killing eight) and damaged three Philippine supply vessels, with one a total loss. 

Finally, Somali piracy reemerged in 2025, with several incidents prompting the European Union anti-piracy force and the Indian navy to become more vigilant in the Western Pacific.

These episodes underscore that persistent naval warfare is not required to generate economic disruption. 

Intermittent violence is enough to keep insurance premiums high, discourages use of certain routes and forces shipping companies to absorb ongoing compliance and security costs. 

Markets remain prone to underestimating the cumulative effect of these disruptions.

Shadow Fleets: From Workaround to Threat Vector

Perhaps the most significant shift since early 2025 concerns the evolution of shadow fleets. 

Formerly a tool for evading sanctions, such vessels are increasingly viewed by governments as hybrid security threats.

“Shadow fleet” is an umbrella term that covers several distinct vessel categories, but at the core is the sanctions-evasion fleet: aging ships with opaque ownership and frequently changing flags, relying on skip-to-ship transfers and non-Western insurance to move sanctioned oil and petroleum products. 

Alongside it is a broader “gray fleet” of semi-compliant vessels that stay technically legal while minimizing exposure to Western regulators, insurers and finance.

The gray fleet is particularly important. 

When sanctions tighten, these vessels need to make only minor adjustments – more indirect routing, more opaque ownership, or less sharing of tracking data – to continue operating. 

This creates a latent risk: Capacity that appears compliant on paper can rapidly disappear into unregulated trade, avoiding the scrapping, resale or lengthy reflagging processes required to create a shadow fleet from scratch.

Operational behavior also creates meaningful distinctions among shadow fleet vessels. 

The “dark fleet,” defined by routine transponder shutdowns, opaque routing and minimal verifiable insurance, presents the highest safety and environmental risk. 

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, another category has emerged: a conflict-zone fleet operating in high-risk waters abandoned by mainstream shipping. 

This segment is sometimes motivated by risk arbitrage rather than sanctions evasion, exploiting elevating freight rates in insecure waters.

Prior to 2020, the shadow fleet was a relatively niche phenomenon, primarily associated with Iran and Venezuela sanctions evasion, but it has swelled since the Russia-Ukraine war. 

Estimates vary widely depending on definitions, but an S&P Global analysis focused on larger tankers counted 978 in the shadow fleet, equal to about 18.5 percent of global tankers. 

Broader industry estimates cited by Reuters place the figure as high as 1,600 tankers.

Sanctions enforcement intensified in 2025, with authorities targeting vessels, owners, managers and intermediaries involved in risky Russian or Iranian trades. 

With more interdictions and seizures, energy transport has turned from a commercial activity into a jurisdictional and security contest. 

Additionally, oil markets are more fragmented, with trade flows shaped less by supply and demand than by questions of legality, protection and political alignment.

The growth of the shadow fleet also raises structural risks. 

More cargo now travels on old, opaque and often underinsured vessels, increasing the chances of accidents, environmental damage and operational failures. 

Complex ownership structures and frequent reflagging complicate attribution and accountability, undermining deterrence. 

Even complaint operators face rising premiums, more inspections and heavier compliance burdens.

Venezuela’s shift toward tighter U.S. oversight likely will shrink its contribution to shadow-fleet activity, but in the short term, it will produce volatility and redirect vessels into other sanction-heavy trades. 

U.S. seizures and sanctions enforcement may temporarily cut global shadow-fleet capacity, supporting higher freight rates. 

Over time, if a post-Maduro framework allows more Venezuelan crude to flow legally, the shadow fleet’s role in global trade could shrink.

Undersea Cables Emerge as Strategic Infrastructure

Warnings about undersea cable security have also materialized. 

Cable damage in waters near Taiwan and in the Baltic during late 2025 and early 2026 confirms that subsea infrastructure has become a strategic vulnerability.

In the Baltic Sea, power and telecom cables between Finland and Estonia were damaged. 

Investigators boarded Russia-linked vessels and said sabotage could not be ruled out. 

Separately, Taiwan in early 2025 reported several suspicious cable breaks involving Chinese-linked or Chinese-crewed vessels near routes to the Matsu and Penghu islands. 

In February, Taiwan even detained a Chinese-crewed ship suspected of cutting cables.

However, sabotage in these cases is hard to prove, making subsea cables attractive tools for coercion. 

Such incidents can impose economic and political costs or probe for red lines, all while preserving enough ambiguity to avoid open escalation. 

As a result, NATO and others have formalized surveillance and protection mechanisms, signaling a move toward anticipatory security. 

Many cable breaks are accidental, but repetition amid geopolitical tension raises monitoring and deterrence costs nonetheless.

New Security Architectures for New Maritime Challenges

The final element of the January 2025 forecast – that new maritime security architectures would emerge – also came to pass. 

NATO’s Baltic Sentry operation and the European Union’s extension of Operation Aspides into 2026 show that maritime insecurity is now treated as a structural condition rather than a series of isolated crises. 

Current realities also prompted changes to NATO's Standing Maritime Group 1 and 2. 

Historically part of the bloc's immediate-reaction naval force, the groups have launched repeated deployments and established a continuous presence to bolster NATO's deterrence posture, instead of being used merely for episodic crisis response.

India and Japan have stepped up coordinated patrols and joint exercises, framing them as efforts to secure trade routes from piracy, illegal fishing and coercion. 

Freedom of navigation, protection of chokepoints and information-sharing on maritime domain awareness were central themes of their 2025 maritime affairs dialogue.

Across multiple theaters, navies are being tasked with not only defending ships but also monitoring and protecting offshore pipelines and undersea cables. 

This requires persistent presence missions, multisensor surveillance and closer coordination with commercial operators and insurers around high-risk shipping corridors.

NATO has institutionalized seabed protection with the Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell in Brussels and regular industry consultations. 

The Baltic Sentry mission deploys frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones to track vessels and protect Baltic cables and pipelines. 

The EU complemented this with its 2025 Action Plan on Cable Security, which lays out measures for prevention, early detection, rapid response and deterrence across member states. 

Brussels also earmarked hundreds of millions of euros for surveillance, redundancy and cross-border response systems through 2027.

Several governments also updated laws to enable preemptive action against suspicious vessels near critical routes. 

Estonia, for example, authorized its defense forces to intervene against ships threatening underwater assets, while the U.K. and Japan now treat subsea cables as national security priorities instead of purely commercial infrastructure. 

Together, these steps mark a shift from reactive repair to continuous monitoring and deterrence.

This institutionalization adds a clear economic burden, however. 

Constant patrols, convoy-style escorts, layered surveillance and complex compliance regimes deter attacks but also embed a permanent security surcharge into global trade. 

Larger firms can absorb these new costs, but smaller operators face pressure to consolidate, exit high-risk routes or cut corners. 

For end-users and consumers, this translates into slightly higher prices and reduced flexibility in routing.

Implications for 2026

These developments gain sharper relevance when viewed against the backdrop of economic forecasts. 

The International Monetary Fund projects global growth of about 3.1 percent in 2026, with advanced economies hovering between 1 percent and 2 percent, while the World Bank sees the new year as part of a low-growth equilibrium rather than a rebound cycle. 

Investors, by contrast, are generally more optimistic, anticipating moderate growth, manageable inflation and AI-driven productivity gains. 

What they underestimate is maritime insecurity’s role as a tail-risk amplifier.

First, chokepoints remain inflation multipliers. 

Rerouting adds time, distance and congestion along alternative routes. 

Freight spikes, war-risk premiums and sudden changes in insurance terms ripple through supply chains, pushing firms to rebuild buffers and over-order inventory, potentially causing surprises in goods and energy inflation even after headline shocks appear contained.

Second, infrastructure, not fleets, is the new battleground. 

Ports, bunkering hubs, repair yards and cables have become high-leverage targets. 

Satellites, ship-tracking data and the capacity to rapidly repair damaged hulls or cables now function as strategic assets in their own right, while cyber interference, limited sabotage or data spoofing are cheap measures that can impose higher risk premiums and compliance costs.

Third, shadow fleets function like a floating sanctions regime. 

As enforcement tightens through seizures and secondary sanctions, traders face unpredictable legal and reputational risks. 

This increases the chances of conflict between traders, insurers and naval or coast guard forces, with seizures, detentions and surprise blacklistings disrupting cargo flows and undermining confidence in maritime commerce.

Fourth, undersea cable security is now a macroeconomic issue. 

Modern finance, high-frequency trading, cross-border payments and cloud-based business processes all rely on low-latency, high-capacity submarine cables rather than satellites, so localized damage can have outsized systemic effects.

Finally, AI optimism collides with maritime reality. 

If 2026 is the year that leading AI firms are judged on sustainable margins rather than just scale, then exposure to energy costs, chip logistics and cross-border data flows becomes central to their business models. 

Data centers are heavy users of electricity and must be located where power and fiber connectivity are secure. 

Advanced chips travel through the same vulnerable chokepoints and shadow fleet-affected lanes as other high-value goods. 

Rising insurance, security and compliance costs along these routes can compress margins just as investors demand proof of profitability.

In 2026, maritime insecurity can no longer be treated as an episodic shock. 

It has hardened into a background condition shaping prices, routes and investment. 

The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea forced markets to relearn how to reroute around sustained threats. 

Incidents around the Baltic Sea and Taiwan pushed states toward permanent patrols and seabed monitoring. 

Shadow fleets turned sanctions enforcement into an ongoing contest at sea. 

In the Black Sea, grain export corridors and fluctuating war risk premiums imposed a semi-permanent surcharge on trade.

Investor optimism may persist, but it rests on a fragile assumption: that resilience – through rerouting, redundancy and clever logistics – can substitute for security. 

That assumption breaks down when chokepoints, undersea cables or enforcement actions at sea convert localized disruption into escalation.

The key point for 2026 is that macroeconomic performance and market pricing will be increasingly sensitive to maritime risk conditions. 

Even if freight rates ease on average as capacity expands, the bigger economic variable is the risk premium: war-risk insurance, compliance and due diligence costs, longer routes and higher spending on protecting infrastructure. 

These costs do not need to stop trade to matter – they act like a persistent tax on margins and a spoiler for disinflation. 

A plausible 2026 macro scenario is moderate growth plus uneven disinflation, punctuated by cost spikes from corridor flare-ups, enforcement actions against the shadow fleet or cable incidents.

The world is unlikely to return to pre-2020 low-risk globalization. 

Trade and investment are now conditioned by security imperatives, sanctions and the resilience of physical and digital infrastructure. 

In this context, 2026 represents not a reversal of globalization but its evolution into a more cautious, risk-priced form.