-ID’ing pirates might be difficult for the Navy when it comes to the rescue. However, I don’t think it’s difficult for ship crews to figure out who the armed guys climbing onboard are. Your concern here seems excessively theoretical to me.

-The problem at Gitmo lies in proving guilt to a high legal standard that is very difficult to meet when prosecuting war prisoners. That problem is an artifact of our insistence on treating those prisoners like domestic criminals. Some of the people who we let go from Gitmo because we didn’t have enough evidence against them went back to the war and killed more Americans. I think we should avoid replicating this situation with pirates.

You make some good points. I have no qualms about the judicious (sp?) use of force to counter KNOWN pirates when the military or police forces are acting within the established rules for the use of force. But it is the legitimate establishment of those rules that make it morally OK for the SEALs to kill the three pirates on Sunday and NOT morally OK for the pirates to kill a captured crew member. The hard part comes in meeting the (appropriately) high standards of identifying which of the contacts that you can see is a pirate and which is not.

I also agree that piracy is a form of warfare. However, it is more like an insurgency than it is like battle with a uniformed peer competitor. Militaries since at least the 19th century have learned, forgotten, and repeatedly relearned some things about fighting insurgents. (1) It’s hard to know who to shoot. (2) If you shoot the wrong people, you are more likely than not going to ultimately hurt your national political objectives. And (3), the answer almost always lies in a combination of the judicious use of force coupled with addressing the underlying problem(s). I’m not trying to get all kum-ba-yah, but rampant piracy doesn’t happen from countries with an effectve government that can control their territory. I’m actually amazed that it took nearly twenty years before Somalia’s lawlessness spread to the surrounding ocean.

You also said “Since we know they’re guilty there’s no reason to let them go free.” Many good men and women expended (and continue to expend) a tremendous amount of effort in GTMO trying to deal with terrorists whom we “knew” were guilty. Thus far we have achieved, I think, one conviction, and he got off with essentially not much more than “time served.” It is a hard problem.

I agree that the merchant ships ought to be armed to fight back. We just need to recognize that arming merchant ships, using navies, and killing pirates is going to change the current situation from a “business arrangement”, where assets change hands but almost no blood is shed, into truly a form of warfare where lives will be lost.

-Actually, the French have used force, and how do you know that the Chinese don’t? All we know is that the Brits and some of the Euros hesitate to use force.

-Many of the countries that haven’t used force against pirates are assuming that the USA or other powerful countries will.

-I agree that it’s not an issue of law, except to the extent that shipping companies and insurers fear expensive lawsuits if they arm their crews or use force. In that regard it is an issue of law. WRT international laws against piracy it is mostly an issue of the will to use force against pirates.

-I agree that it’s expensive for navies to fight pirates. However, it’s also expensive for shippers and insurers to buy off pirates. The difference is that in the latter case the real costs aren’t immediately apparent, and only become clear in the long run as paying off pirates leads to more piracy. The most cost-efficient and quickest solution is probably to encourage ship owners to arm their crews, but this won’t happen in the current litigation environment. Perhaps the international-law solution is treaties creating an exemption from lawsuits for shipping companies whose crews act in good faith to fight off pirates — i.e., something like an international version of local US laws that forbid burglars to sue homeowners who have injured them.

-It’s not a question of blowing up anybody who looks like a pirate. There is no doubt that these people are pirates. Everyone sees what is going on. It’s not like the police found a body and we aren’t sure who the murderer is.

-Since we know they’re guilty there’s no reason to let them go free. You are confusing piracy, which is essentially warfare, with domestic criminal justice. In the long run, letting terrorists or pirates go gets many more innocent people killed than if you show no mercy to the pirates.

An excellent (and excellently written – William Langewiesche, no less) article on an earlier hijacking explains what’s going on:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/somali-pirates200904

Read all the way through the end – it’s worth it. For those who want his conclusions here is what he has to say – essentially, it’s cheaper (so far) to pay, than to register an entire fleet under a “real” flag. Yes, you get protection from a real Navy with a real flag, but it’s not worth it – the tax savings from registering with an offshore tax-haven are worth more.

“Merely hours after Marchesseau had effected his own release, and French warships had clearly demonstrated the navy’s impotence, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner (a founder of Doctors Without Borders), called for United Nations action, and for an allied naval escalation off the coast of Somalia. It was an early step in what has turned into an ongoing process of doing more of precisely what has proved not to work.

Today, almost one year later, Somali pirates continue to ignore the increasingly urgent displays of national power. One of the ironies of the concern being shown is that the shippers being provided with naval protection are the very same people who for years have made a mockery of the nation-state idea. They know that whatever pirate tolls they pay will always pale in comparison with the taxes that would be imposed if global law and order ever actually prevailed. But there is little danger of that. In its place a convoy system has been instituted for crossing the Gulf of Aden. CMA CGM has ordered its cargo ships to use it when practical. The company runs about 65 transits a month. Because of an increase in crew pay, insurance, and other piracy-related costs, the company has imposed a $23 surcharge on every standard-size container that it takes through—amounting to a quarter-million dollars for each trip by the largest ships. Given the margins built in, and despite the need for the occasional payout, this means that CMA CGM, its insurers, and its crews are profiting from Somali piracy. Other shipping companies are, too. By nature they are adaptable. If the navies would just sail away, they would devise their own methods to get through, maybe at still-higher cost, and probably at calculated risk, but almost certainly without violence. “

That being said, as satisfying as the application of military force may be, it’s more complicated than that. Like it or not, over the last century, most of the civilized world has seen an increase in the standards and expectations against the indiscriminate use of force by the state (military, police, etc). We can’t just go blow up anybody we think looks like a terrorist, pirate, or criminal. Frustrating? Yes. Does that make it longer and harder to “fix” those who would flaunt civilization? You betcha. BUT, we have collectively decided that it is better to let some guilty go free than to kill the innocents. Because next time, it might be you.

And there is the physical and fiscal reality of it all. Somalia’s coast is roughly 1500 miles long. The attacks have occurred hundreds of miles out to sea. That’s a lot of territory. The US Navy only has 283 ships (total). They’d like a lot more, but ships cost money. A lot of money. So, how much of our constrained defense money do we devote to erradicating a problem that affected roughly one seventh of one percent (0.14%) of the shipping in that area last year and only cost the industry $100 million or so? (that used to be real money!) Did I mention that there were relatively few deaths among the captured crews. I digress….

In the end, the US Navy and coalition partners will address the piracy problem within fiscal constraints, using a just application of force where necessary, putting the true scope of problem in the right perspective when balanced with other problems we face, all the while trying to avoid unintended consequnces of our actions. (Whew! that’s a lot for one sentence!)

American citizens have joined the local Somali Islamist militia as terrorists but none as of yet have showed up to shield the pirates.

When I talk with international law profs, I ususally make the suggestion that terrorists or pirates should be tried before a proper court-martial for war crimes ( fighting out of uniform, deliberately targeting civilians) and if convicted, be hanged. While I get many heated objections to the hanging or unilateral military justice instead of, say, the ICC, I have yet to find anyone who actually knows the laws of war tell me that this is not a perfectly legal option backed by long precedent.

So the resurgence of piracy is not a symptom of the collapse of international law, for that which has never stood up to piracy cannot collapse before its resurgence; it is a symptom of the collapse of military will, especially unilateral military will, among those who otherwise have the means.

Piracy has been continuous over the last few decades, especially in the Indonesian Archipelago between Singapore and Australia. Incidents number in the tens, sometimes hundreds, every year.

The only reason this incident has made the news is that the victims of the piracy are Americans. Indonesian pirates concentrate on the small, usually family-owned, ships that carry small-time trade in those waters. Kill the adult men, rape the adult women, carry the children off as slaves, take the ship off to another port and sell it and its cargo: the traditional behavior of pirates.

The fecklessness and pusillanimity of the response keeps the “business” going. Something should have been done long ago, and the fact that nothing has been done is part of the reason the Somalis decided they could get away with it.

Regards,
Ric

If you don’t mind, I’d like to use this thread to air a personal complaint: The word “piracy” is being used too narrowly in most reportage I’m seeing on this nagging topic.

If one stretches the word a bit to include “gray” financial operations, employing statistical fraud to steal elections, the ’stacking’ of local governing boards, and public workers’ striking to extort evermore of the tax-payers’ money (I could go on…Medicare/Medicaid fraud deserves high ranking in the list of acts of piracy, too), you’ll realize that America has failed to react forcefully to attack after attack of degrees of piracy on her own shores.

To sum up, the day Barney Frank serves the “Martha Stewart Sentence” is the day I’ll trust America is getting back on the right anti=Piracy track. His continued impunity is a clarion call to Pirates all over the world to leave their caves and ply their trade.

Nevertheless, I applaud the coverage that Piracy on the seas – and our CinC’s response to it – is getting right now…a better thought-model for contemplating America’s response to piracy of all types could never be devised.

This is precisely wrong. We are paralyzed because we believe there is such a thing as international law. The British cleared pirates from the seas because it was in their interest to do so. They had precious help from anyone else and they were obstructed by quite a few. The difference between us them then and us now is we have a less clear view of where our interests lie.

http://www.neuticles.com/index1.html

We could then give some appearance of having balls.

But having someone with the stones to say do it :(

Once it became obvious, after 1815, that competition with Britain’s Naval and commercial power was a non-starter, then everyone who wanted *any* piece of the pie, was willing to see the kibosh put on any pirate haven or ship. The French added the filip that they could keep their Bonapartist Army occupied elsewhere, by taking the Barbary Coast’s ports, and making them the seed for colonies on the North African littoral.

Nowadays, we have a restraint on dealing with pirates that is not national, but transnational, and it is deeply committed to destroying a class of people. The ships are owned and operated by merchants and capitalists, who many have been taught are the first enemy of all right-thinking people. It should be no surprise to see legal and political obstruction of old anti-piracy measures rise to prominence. After all, those measures would take money from dealing with the crisis du jour, and would help the world-wide network of trade, rather than force it to be “more fair” to all those folks who our degreed elites just know are smarting under the pain of world-wide industry’s employment opportunities.

I wonder if anyone else is noticing this.

Regards,

Tom Billings