There is something quintessentially European about a naval interception occurring in the Mediterranean. It is a sea that has seen the rise and fall of every empire worth mentioning, and now, it is the stage for a tragicomic performance involving a rusting oil tanker, the French Marine Nationale, and the ghostly whispers of British intelligence. One can almost see the ghosts of Roman triremes sighing in the currents as they witness the modern bureaucratic machine grinding its gears against the so-called “shadow fleet” of the Russian Federation.

The news that France’s Navy has intercepted a Russian oil tanker is being presented to the public as a triumph of international cooperation and maritime vigilance. It is, of course, nothing of the sort. It is an expensive piece of theater designed to reassure a nervous continent that its sanctions are more than just a polite suggestion written in disappearing ink. The French Navy, usually preoccupied with ensuring the yachting lanes of Saint-Tropez remain free of unsightly proletariat debris, has finally found a target worthy of its refined aggression: a vessel that likely possesses the structural integrity of a soda cracker and the aesthetic charm of an abandoned shipyard.

Let us consider the role of the United Kingdom in this little drama. British intelligence provided the “tip-off.” There is a delicious irony in the UK and France cooperating on anything these days, let alone maritime security. It is as if two elderly neighbors, who haven’t spoken since a dispute over a fence in 1973, have suddenly found common ground in shouting at a delivery truck parked on the sidewalk. The British, ever the masters of the “we know something you don’t” school of diplomacy, have pointed their Gallic cousins toward a floating heap of rusted iron, and the French have obliged by treating the event with the gravity of a second Battle of Trafalgar.

The “shadow fleet” is a term that drips with noir sophistication, conjuring images of sleek, blackened vessels slipping through the night under the command of monocled villains. In reality, it is a collection of nautical geriatric cases—ships that should have been turned into razor blades and bridge girders decades ago, now resurrected to carry the lifeblood of a sanctioned regime. These ships navigate the globe under flags of convenience, their ownership papers a labyrinth of shell companies that lead back to a single, dusty filing cabinet in a basement in Nicosia. They are the zombies of the high seas, and our response is to occasionally tap one on the shoulder and ask for its identification.

Sanctions, as any intellectual with a passing interest in history can tell you, are the diplomatic equivalent of a sternly worded letter sent to a hurricane. They are designed to make the sender feel virtuous while providing the recipient with an interesting puzzle to solve. For every tanker intercepted by a French frigate, how many dozen others slip through the Strait of Gibraltar or navigate the northern routes, their hulls groaning under the weight of crude oil and geopolitical necessity? The Mediterranean is vast, and the will to truly enforce these edicts is, shall we say, remarkably flexible when winter heating bills start to arrive in Parisian mailboxes.

What we are witnessing is not a strategic victory, but a bureaucratic spasm. The interception of a single vessel is a marvelous distraction from the wider reality: that the global rules-based order is currently being held together by duct tape and wishful thinking. The French Navy gets a photo-op, the British intelligence services get to feel relevant, and the media gets a headline that suggests someone, somewhere, is in control. It is a comforting fiction. We live in an era where incompetence is masked by “security protocols” and where the failure to stop a global conflict is mitigated by the successful detention of a cargo ship.

As the tanker is escorted to a port for “investigation,” one cannot help but admire the sheer commitment to the bit. The sailors will fill out forms, the lawyers will bill their hours, and the diplomats will exchange meaningful glances. Meanwhile, the shadow fleet will continue its work, fueled by the same global demand that necessitates the very sanctions it evades. It is a perfect, self-sustaining cycle of absurdity. I have lived long enough to know that when the authorities start making a spectacle out of a single success, it is because the broader failure has become too large to hide. We are rearranging the deck chairs, not on the Titanic, but on a sanctioned Russian tanker that is leaking oil into the sunset of the European dream.