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Don't Chase the Pirates
ECPAD-French Defense Ministry / AP Photo
Current talk of invading Somalia ignores our role in causing the chaos.
The rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from the clutches of Somali pirates is a welcome bit of news in a world that's otherwise been short on happy developments. However, the enormous skill of the Navy SEAL snipers who pulled off the extraordinary feat merely throws into relief the extent to which combating piracy solely at sea is destined to be a difficult endeavor with poor prospects for success. The ocean is extremely large, and the number of people who can successful execute a boat-to-boat sniper shooting is very small. The international antipiracy fleet is heavily clustered in the immediate vicinity of Somalia, but as the journalist Xan Rice has observed, the Indian Ocean is “an area too large for foreign navies to cover effectively."
Meanwhile, not all daring antipirate rescue operations have such happy endings. The French, who've been the most aggressive pirate-fighters of all, recently suffered an incident in which one of the men they were seeking to rescue was killed during the rescue process.
Fighting pirates at sea is bound to fall short but it's the best thing we can do until a coherent government emerges in Somalia.
This has led some to call for the U.S. and its allies to invade Somalia and fight the pirates on land. Impatience with half-measures at sea is understandable, but any realistic land options are likely to further plunge Somalia into chaos and make the piracy problem worse in the long term.
Bloomberg reported on Monday that the U.S. military is weighing options for a land assault. Meanwhile, hawks such as John Bolton who are looking to paint Barack Obama as "soft on piracy" are raising the rhetorical temperature arguing that "unless we go in and really end this problem once and for all, we will simply see it grow over time" so a "coalition of the willing" should storm in and put a stop to things.
Before rushing into an invasion of Somalia, Americans would do well to try to understand the broader context in which the piracy problem has emerged—15 years of anarchy following the hasty collapse of a U.S.-led peacekeeping effort in the early 1990s. Pirates thrive in conditions of political fragmentation, a scenario that certainly describes contemporary Somalia and, importantly, a situation to which recent U.S. military intervention has contributed.
For the past 15 years, the closest Somalia got to a period of stable governance was a roughly six-month period in which an outfit calling itself the Islamic Courts Movement seemed on its way to consolidating control over the bulk of Somali territory. The ICM was not a particularly friendly or humane bunch, but nobody is in Somalia, and they offered the prospect of something resembling governance. Unfortunately, in a little-noticed decision, the Bush administration also decided that they represented a threat to American national security. Thus, while Americans were tuning out the news during the week between Christmas and New Year's in 2006, the administration chose to green-light an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, aimed at installing the powerless de jure government in Mogadishu as a puppet regime backed up by Ethiopian troops.
The Ethiopians would likely have wanted to invade anyway, but the United States is a major supplier of military aid to Ethiopia so we probably could have restrained them. Instead, bolstered by overblown claims of ties between the ICM and al Qaeda, we egged Ethiopia on and offered indirect military support to the Ethiopian invasion.
This was accompanied by loud cheers from conservative pundits, but as veterans of other recent efforts by Christian powers to invade and occupy Muslim lands could easily have predicted, the result was a popular backlash and a violent Islamist insurgency.
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I don't know this writer -- the left's hive mind is too populous to identify all the principals -- but this paragraph caught my eye:
"The Ethiopians would likely have wanted to invade anyway, but the United States is a major supplier of military aid to Ethiopia so we probably could have restrained them. Instead, bolstered by overblown claims of ties between the ICM and al Qaeda, we egged Ethiopia on and offered indirect military support to the Ethiopian invasion."
Notice all the qualifiers? This is someone who doesn't know what he's talking about but evidently is obliged to fill a certain number of column inches. But that has never stopped the the Daily Kos kids and their friends in JournoList from airing their opinions. C'mon, Tina. Hire some people who actually, you know, have a little understanding of what they're talking about. Leave the flaunting of igoranace to the rest of us. We do it for nothing..
I think you just did.
The author sounds just like the "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" crowd which justified and celebrated the scum bags who made living in pre-Guiliani NYC a living hell.
Mr. Yglesias is mistaken, on many, many counts. Piracy has existed throughout history and the only way to counter them is take away their land bases. The Romans did it in the ancient Mediterranean, the English did it in the Caribbean, the Spanish did it along the Barbary Coast.
It was usually done without immediate conquest or without a 'State' being left behind and intact. Simply getting on the ground, identifying where the pirates are launching from and destroying those bases would be the most effective remedy.
We know that Somalia isn't going to form a coherent state anytime soon, the US has tried, the UN has tried and the Ethiopians have tried, no state is going to exist until the Somali people get fed up and actually support one side or the other. They seem happy to live in their chaos and squalor, well let them keep it.
Until they get sick of it, stop patrolling the Indian ocean and simply destroy and port on Somalia's coast that is inhabited by pirates. Sit a few destroyers right on those ports and piracy will cease.
I am so glad that someone has finally stopped using this moronic "we're not against the [insert nationality here] people, we're against the [insert nationality here] government leaders." Let's place the blame for the government on its people. Jaguarxjs is exactly correct. This situation will improve when Somalis want it to improve.
Thank you. We also have to face facts that Somalia was a 'failed state' long before the United States ever got involved. Anyone who blames the United States or United States policy simply has no understanding of the situation in Somalia, or the Horn of Africa.
war is hell and hell is war. how much killing do we need? let's take care of our home issues before we show the world again how stupid we can sometimes be.
banjo1 and drmark have it right.........no matter what the sin, no matter what far-off corner of the world some dip commits a heinous crime, it always comes back to one thing with these folks..... "it's the U.S's fault.....Always!
Pathetic.
Bolton (and others hoping to put Obama on some sort of spot) is an idiot who apparently has learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Vietnam. And where on earth would be be digging up the money and troops to invade Somalia with our continuing commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Absolutely the world's shipping industry needs help dealing with these pirates. historically, the only way to stop piracy is to blockade or destroy their land bases, the places where they hide their boats/ships, refule, and rearm.
So we can watch pirates 'outraged' by a violent response to their violent actions, escalate their already deadly, violent behavior, or we can chose a course of action and implement it.
Either way, until they are utterly stopped, the pirates will continue.
Current talk of invading Somalia ignores our role in causing the chaos.
OUR ROLE--please
That is typical crap from the soft left. We are not the cause of all troubles in this world.
The west has been pursuing unregulated and boundless self-indulgence by subordinating and exploiting human and natural resourses of the rest of the world.
I want to know more about Samolia fishing rights being exploited by corporados! and toxic waste dumping! off their shores. I was in the peace corps in Niger and these folks are the poorest of the poor. The same thing occurred in Niger with oil. The oil companies badly polluted the fishing environment on the Niger river and when the people wanted some basis rights and goods the were blasted and labeled terrorists.
I am so tired of this 'might makes right' 'rival street gang' mentality bullcrap
Let's bring some Reality and Truth to the situation....you can't speak of holding pirates accountable to the rule of law when governments and corporations have been lawless , unregulated and unaccountable....this must change if we are to live in a world of real laws and principles.
I agree with the other comments. Destroying land bases and the massive homes built on the spoils is not the same as attacking a whole country. The "mother ships" (those that deploy the fast speedboats) should be sunk or disabled and the pirates rescued/captured. The point is to make piracy not worth it anymore. Piracy exists like any crime when the costs/risks are less than the gains.
Stopping piracy does not fix Somalia of course, but when lawlessness overruns the borders, you have to address that 1st.
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This is a good and factual article despite what the arm chair right wingnuts are howling about - all three of them.
If John Bolton is in such a rush to invade Somalia, I think he should lead the assault. Go John! Lets see some of that braggadocio in action!
That's all we need...another war. And we see how that turned out in Somalia last time.
What this article and all of the MSM are leaving out is that these 'pirates' used to be simple fisherman. The trouble began when the industrial fishing ships from Japan, China and Russia, illegally using drag nets that catch anything and everything and destroy the ocean floor in the process, started fishing the waters off of E. Africa. They completely decimated most fish life in this area of the ocean. The Somali fishermen were left with the choice of quietly letting their families starve to death or take up what we now call pirating - but what the companies who own these ships normally call the cost of doing business.
The truth is that most shipping companies really don't want to see this escalate to a shooting scenario. It's much cheaper to pay the ransom than to pay the families of dead crew members and loose whole cargos when these sort of 'John Wayne' scenarios turn bad.
With our electronic and satellite capabilities, the answer to this piracy problem is simple. These skiffs cannot operate 400 miles at sea without mother ships. the mother ships are where the pirate commanders reside as they send the teenagers to do the more dangerous job of boarding.
Why should they be immune?
Announce once only that we will sink any mother ship dispatching a skiff to attack American shipping.
Then when it occurs, without further warning and without comment, simply sink the mother ship.
Yglesias's opinions are simply anti-American. In 1993 I was pirated in the Riau Islands of Indonesia, simply because I was there and had something the pirates wanted, i.e. $$$. So long as the victim is an American, Yglesias will support the perpetrator. Keep that in mind with people such as Yglesias, who, imo, are the source of a tremendous amount of the problems we have in the US.
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Blame USA for all the conflicts and failed governments everywhere. So how do we get a coherent government in Somalia? Send Yglesias to Somalia and talk with pirates? Tina, you must be running out of good columnists.
Finally, someone is willing to say that it's not a matter of (us) good guys versus (them) bad guys: the situation in Somalia is complicated and dire for its people, and the U.S. is complicit in the mess that has engendered the pirates in the first place.
The US needs to leave the pirates alone. By attacking them, all we're doing is subsidizing companies who don't want to provide adequate protection for their own ships. Even worse, we're now risking the lives of Marines...and for what? So companies can send their goods through a dangerous area. If they want to do that, that's fine by me. But leave my dollars and our soldiers out of it. This doesn't even begin to get into the unintended consequences of our meddling in foreign lands as the writer has clearly pointed out.
The US supported Somalia's dictator Mohamed Said Barre for decades.
Western oil companies received from Said Barre the rights to explore for oil off Somalia's coast, and only 'stability' will allow the drilling to begin.
Nuclear material from western nations is being dumped off the coast of Somalia, and material containing lead, and heavy metals (much of it from European hospitals and factories, passed on to the Italian mafia) is being disposed of off the coast of Somalia as well.
European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their seafood. More than $300million-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving.
And we wonder why Somalis are hijacking Western ships for ransom.
And we wonder why they hate us.
What good has the West ever done for the Somali people?
What good have Somali people have done for themselves?
If the pirates were attacking fishing vessels or dumping vessels, you would have a point.
Thanks for your intelligent and humane point of view. This is a cause and effect universe.
We need a global system that is cooperative, accountable and responsible....that has real laws and principles instead of rival gangs (the US gang being the toughest) trying to dominate and enslave for the last of the world resources
Great. I am all for that system. If you could only get China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and all the other "selfish" and "self-serving"countries to cooperate, I'll be right behind you. Calling you naive would be too kind.
PS: Step away from the pipe.
It may sound naive to speak to for the present (childish and brutishly adolescent crowd of governments and institutions to understand themselves and renounce confrontational politics....
But the feeling that is it naive to speak in such terms reflects frustration and despair. We all must move past that very frustration and despair if we are going to prevent the enslavement and destruction of mankind.
Let's everybody-all-at-once be for global cooperation, tolerance, accountability and responsibility. Who know it could be contagious!!
It is a great necessity in these dark times
Please step up!!...I welcome you!!!!!
The U.S. has supported numerous unsavory characters over the years, usually because the alternative was worse. Do you honestly believe that Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors are an improvement over Shah Reza Pahlavi? The Shah was a despotic tyrant, but at least he was sane. Likewise, do you think the Somalis fare better under local warlords or the Islamic Courts than they did under Barre?
Even if foreigners are illegally fishing or dumping in Somali waters, how does that justify an attack on a U.S. vessel carrying food aid, or a French pleasure yacht? Make no mistake, the pirates aren't taking vessels and hostages hundreds of miles from their shores for their country, or as a matter of law enforcement; they're doing it for the MONEY. And as long as their crimes pay, they'll continue to commit them.
Summarizing the article, the choices, as the author presents them, are to engage in nation building in the country where US, along with the rest of the world has already failed, or, do nothing and pay ransom. Really? No other choices are available?
Modern piracy exists solely because it is profitable. There is no ideological equalizer there. Make it unprofitable, and it will go away. We may not know the path of effective nation building, but yardarm hangings are a proven deterrent to piracy.
Oh, God, Matthew, where to begin. The whiners of the Left once again telling us why we can't do something. Gone are the days when Jack Kennedy said going to the moon will be hard, and that's why we're doing it.
Let's just start with, " the journalist Xan Rice has observed, the Indian Ocean is 'an area too large for foreign navies to cover effectively.."
The journalist Xan Rice is a journalist, an an ignorant one at that. With military satellites, UAVs, and our own Navy, or better, the combined Navies of the civilized world, we are certainly capable of finding and destroying the mother ships that launch the rubber boats on these pirate forays.
And this crap about Somalia being our fault, therefore we can't do anything about it. Our fault or not, pirates have been considered intolerable by civilized nations since Rome. And since Rome, civilized nations have eliminated pirates when they threatened the freedom of the seas and the vital trade that goes with it that is necessary to our existence.
Even Thomas Jefferson and later James Monroe, when we were a small, far off nation with a tiny navy, understood this. And sent that navy along with the U.S. Marines ("shores of Tripoli") to scotch the Barbary pirates.
It is people like this Yglesias, week and without will, cerebral and living only in their heads-- it is such people who undermine through the media our ability to take action when action is what is required.
Just back off, Matthew, and let better men protect and advance civilization over the forces of savagery and barbarism.
Meanwhile, Matthew, as brigands of the Mexican drug cartels spill across our borders and bring their internecine wars into our country, are you going to apply your logic there? We caused the Mexican problem, so we have no right to fight it?
Ok, great. So, the President of the United States ordering the killing of three black teenagers stranded off the coast of Somalia is just an example of the unfortunate tragedy of black-on-black crime gone global, right?!
That's just funny. Since the shooting was done off a moving ship, could it be considered a drive-by?
Or, could it be...our very first Overseas Contingency Operation executing a pre-emptive strike on a potential man-made disaster?!
travlr009 has it exactly right. Without mother ships, those pirates are just tiny guys in tiny boats. Sink the enabling vessels and you sink most if not all of the immediate problem.
As for Somolia -- sorry but I love my country too much to agree with us being arrogant assholes as a matter of policy. The people of Somolia would probably have gotten around to some sort of stable government if we hadn't gone in and messed it up and then walked away.
No, we're not entirely responsible, but we can't pretend we had absolutely nothing to do with the situation either.
Let's contain the immediate threat so we can turn our attention back to more pressing national problems.
Gone in and messed it up and walked away? When did the US do that? OH, you mean when we replaced the UN Mission that left after it's Pakistani peace keepers were murdered while attempting to protect aid convoys. Yes we did step in and attempt to protect the aid agencies and we even tried to exercise Interpol warrants for Somali warlords that were engaged in drug, weapon and human trafficking.
Somalia was in a state of chaos for YEARS before anyone anywhere in the United States even took notice, since the 60's in fact. Blaming our attempts in the 90's to deliver aid and arrest international criminals just shows how ignorant you are about the situation.
Well, there WAS the Islamic Courts Union, but Bush didn't like them, so he arranged with Ethopia to make them go away -- as Matthew noted and you pointedly ignored.
Give me a break all you whiners!
Who cares what age they were or are, if they're old enough to hold an AK-47 and fire at anyone, then I say fire back and aim for the forehead, right between the eyes!
The only way to deal with "pirates" is with absolute and total brute force!
Blow a few of their boats and ships out of the water, I guarantee they will think hard about their next adventure and is the loss of life worth it?
As much as I disapprove of Obama, he had the balls to do what was needed! Do any of you?
As for the drug problem, well had our wonderful Government protected the borders like they should have and vowed to do not more than 2 years ago, the drug problem would be cut down dramatically.
Stiffer prison sentences no negotiating or plea bargains and enforce the death penalty, hey we'd have one hell of a deterrent!
But we have a bunch of mamby pamby's in our country, bleeding heart liberals, comprised of those who aren't willing to stand tall and take the action needed to protect and defend our country!
So honestly when those of you whiners can do what only a few will do, protect our country, stop whining! The job is being done by those more brave than you!
Perhaps, if the Somali pirates had a decent standard of living and opportunities to thrive politically and economically they might be less inclined to adventure into piracy. Now these impoverished but brave and sassy ex-fishermen have turned a cottage industry into a global menace, it would be difficult to rehabilitate them to more standard metier.
I give them credit for their pluck and ingenuity and simple but effective tactics. When the going is tough, the tough get going. Certainly, the Somalis deserve credit though we may disagree with their last ditch methods for survival. The David and Goliath parallel is glaringly evident.
No one stops to examine how these people became pirates. Perhaps when they recognized that trawling fish factory were gluttonously scooping up their ocean's protein, callously depleting the stock without care for their livelihoods or empty stomachs. Perhaps when they watched foreign vessels dumping canister after canister of toxic waste into the pristine waters off their shores. Perhaps when those eroded containers washed up on shore leaking radiation. Perhaps when, as a result, 300 people died while hundreds of others have been poisoned, remain sick and wait for imminent death. Perhaps when they realized NO ONE in the international community was ready to pursue a course of peace, to help stabilize the long-suffering country, unless it was in their best interests which were far from those of the Somalis. This vicious cycle will not deter piracy. Nor the vessels that need to ply the Indian Ocean. Better defensive methods should be as much a part of these vessel's money-making equation as its cargo.
Thank you.
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