Submarine cables: the arteries of peace and war

Recent alarming changes in US-Russian relations will inevitably involve the internet cables that hold the techno-human world together, which may partially explain Trump’s interest in Panama, Greenland and Canada. Today’s fibre-optic cables present the same opportunities for great-power conflict as their telegraphic counterparts did in the 19th Century. 

This article began in one place and time and ended in quite another as it was blown along by the currents of our interconnected world. Currents especially that flow through the fibre-optic cables that are today’s arteries of human commerce and politics. 

A new book by Professor Perri 6 and Dr. Eva Heims – “International Cooperation when Mistrust Deepens: Britain and the First International Regulatory Regime”, uses the growth of telegraphic cables as a case study for their theory of how institutions work in surprising ways. I can’t do justice to their theory here, but this article begins by summarizing the history of cables and cable-cutting as described by the authors in Chapters 5 – 7 of their book.

In the late 19th Century cable-cutting in times of war was discussed, so it’s interesting to see what that can tell us about the recent incidents in the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea where anchor-dragging by Chinese boats is suspected of deliberate sabotage of  internet cables. Concern about cable-cutting lessened as radio telegraphy replaced cables after 1900, but today high-speed fibre-optic cables carry 99% of the world’s communications, including banking services and secret military discussions.

Legal problems were recognized in the 19th Century – if a cable links a belligerent and a neutral country in wartime, can the belligerent have rights to cut the cable as spoils of war, and who has jurisdiction? These issues as well as censorship of messages were avoided by relying on the law governing commercial contracts, and today, too submarine cables are owned and operated by private companies – but similarly open to government pressure, as we shall see.

Until the 1880s the vast majority of cables were British owned and operated, and made landfall at stations in British colonies, making security easier to manage. This situation didn’t please the US Government, which had begun investing in cable-laying, but radio-telegraphy, which was not open to physical control began to take over in the early 20th Century. In the absence of international law, the US used their control of cable landing rights to force companies to use censorship, without needing government involvement.

A turning point was the period 1898 – 1902 marked by two colonial wars. The Spanish-American War led eventually to the loss of Cuba and the Philippines by Spain, and the two Boer Wars in South Africa threatened British Imperial interests. The US succeeded in cutting four Caribbean cables, in one case seizing it and taking it over for their own use, while censorship was used on the Florida-Cuba cable. The US also wanted to cut the cable linking the Philippines to Britain’s colony of Hong Kong, but the UK protested that this was a violation of its neutrality, and in any case the cable was the only way for the US admiral to communicate with the US. An elaborate diplomatic fiction was concocted to get around this situation.

The events of the Spanish-American War made the British concerned about allowing foreign journalists to send reports from South Africa back to Europe during the Boer War.

The rest of this article and some maps can be followed on The Prisma Multicultural website here: https://theprisma.co.uk/2025/03/17/submarine-cables-the-arteries-of-war-and-peace/ in both English and Spanish.