Day 1,658: fort, intricate, fraught, tribunal

The quest for opportunity and order at sea has a long history. In the 17th century Grotius, a Dutch jurist, laid out the principle of freedom of navigation and in the 19th Britain enforced it by means of the Royal Navy and a network of ports and forts.

This vast and intricate system faces two challenges. One is fraught geopolitics.

China ignores tribunal rulings that it objects to.

America fights back

Artwork of the day 
View of Fort Samson
Georges Seurat
Date: 1885; France
Style: Pointillism, Neo-Impressionism
Genre: landscape
Media: oil, canvas
Location: Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Dimensions: 65 x 81.5 cm

Word of the day 
fort: a military building designed to be defended from attack, consisting of an area surrounded by a strong wall, in which soldiers are based:
intricate: having a lot of small parts that are arranged in a complicated or delicate way:
fraught: causing or having extreme worry or anxiety:
tribunal: a special court chosen, esp. by a government or governments, to examine a particular problem:

Quote of the day
“She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte.”

― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover