Time to act like a state

I couldn't agree more. All our parents taught us to walk away from the schoolyard bully.. unless and until he was beating us up everyday and stealing our lunch money. Then, it was perfectly acceptable to use force, if all other means of authority (teachers, principals) failed to intervene.

If a Brinks truck can carry its own armed security guard, it makes perfect sense to me that a ship full of valuable cargo should do the same.

I also agree. Although we won't change the incentives to start up piracy if there's nothing else, we can at least physically stop it from happening, even if it means we have to take the beat-stick to the Somalians every few months. Such is the price of clear sea lanes.

The trouble is, the cost of piracy for somalians is very low while the potential benefit is extremely high.

The monetary cost of a piracy attempt is well under $1000, not counting the risk of losing small boats and small arms. The monetary gain is in the millions or tens of millions of dollars. There is no other way for young somalians to get that sort of money. Not by winning a lottery. Not by taking over the government.

So let's try a cost benefit analysis.

Somali pirate:

Commit piracy
Cost: might be killed
Benefit: unimaginable wealth.

Do anything else
Cost: abject poverty
Benefit: stay safe in somalia

Now suppose we arm the ships' crews.

Crewman:

Resist piracy
Cost: might be killed
Benefit: shipowner might say thank you.

Don't resist
Cost: inconvenience, hostage for maybe months at full pay
Benefit: reasonably safe.

Who's more likely to win that fight?

Specifically, President Obama should give on-scene commanders permission to shoot pirates on sight.

I think the consequences to the USA of following your suggestions will be minimal. But let's look at the implications.

There are a large number of somali fishermen. Some of them own boats that are worth $1000 or more, and their catch keeps them from utter poverty. Ideally we would be sure which boats have pirates and which don't before we shoot them on sight, though there would probably be few consequences to us for sinking thousands of fishing boats and killing their crews.

By the law of the sea, established through hundreds of years of tradition, when two vessels come close the less maneuverable one has the right of way. In theory that should be the sailboats. (But pirates can have motorboats that look like sailboats, or they can launch their very small craft from sailboats.) In recent years large ships have not followed the law of the sea. They use sophisticated electronics that tell them where other large ships are, without needing anybody to even look out a porthole. So often they don't look at all, and small boats take their chances. If a fishing boat gets in the way and is destroyed, likely nobody will ever find out what happened to it.

Ideally the US Navy would keep a lot of small craft in the area and would stop whatever boats they find and search them. If they find weapons they would confiscate the craft and detain the crew for awhile and then eventually return them to somalia without their boat, weapons, or money. It isn't exactly a crime to have weapons on the open sea. ("We need to protect ourselves from pirates!") So if you think somebody's a pirate but they haven't done anything, just take everything they have and throw them back. There's no law involved, and the consequences to us should be minimal.

But we can't spare that many small heavily-armed craft and crews, for the indefinite future. So we have to do something else. One possibility is to destroy every small boat we find in the area, on the assumption that they might be pirates. Let's look at another cost benefit table.

Somali fisherman:

Go fishing:
Cost: might be killed
Benefit: scrape by

Don't go fishing:
Cost: utter destitution
Benefit: safe in somalia

Sucks to be him. Not great for us either, we'll tend to destroy $1000 boats with $100,000 munitions. But it's only money.

He should also authorize punitive strikes against the bases from which Somali pirates operate.

Basicly, that's harbors. If we destroy all the fishing boats while they're in the harbor then they can't be used for piracy or as decoys for pirates to hide among. And it's humanitarian -- many of the crews won't be there at the time. Consequences to us are minimal.

Such actions, over the course of days or weeks, should be sufficient to drive the pirates off the seas.

Only if we get rid of all the fishermen too. Otherwise, consider that cost benefit analysis:

Somali pirate:

Commit piracy
Cost: might be killed
Benefit: unimaginable wealth.

Do anything else
Cost: abject poverty
Benefit: stay safe in somalia

You're not going to get rid of them in a few weeks. You'll have to persuade everybody who wants unimaginable wealth that there's absolutely no chance for them to escape their poverty.

There are methods that could work. For example, if we had a firm commitment that whenever a ship is hijacked and held for ransom, we will destroy that ship -- and its crew if the crew are still present. And we will refuse to pay ransom for crewmen no matter what happens to them, and have dire legal consequences for anybody else who does pay that ransom..

Then we would remove most of the profits from hijacking ships. And ships' crews would have a strong incentive to fight.

Crewman:

Resist piracy
Cost: might be killed
Benefit: shipowner might say thank you.

Don't resist
Cost: almost certain death
Benefit: nothing

If the US Navy made it clear that no shipowner in the world would be allowed to pay pirates to get their ships back, that every ship that was captured would be quickly destroyed with no bargaining, the piracy would mostly stop. But we aren't ready to do that.

I don't think staying in Somalia as an alternative to piracy is exactly a "safe" proposition. These pirates are doing what they're doing because they know they have very little to lose, at sea or on land. Also, they use their hostages as human shields, so it's not just a matter of shooting them, it's eliminating everyone on board, as your point about the Navy sending the message it won't negotiate, but destroy any ship taken hostage. How are we supposed to do that, kill innocent hostages, without any backlash?

I don't think staying in Somalia as an alternative to piracy is exactly a "safe" proposition.

Did my irony not show through enough? I agree with you.

How are we supposed to do that, kill innocent hostages, without any backlash?

That's why we haven't done it, right? It's the obvious hard-nosed solution, but we prefer to give hostages. We have created the business by paying pirates to hijack ships and take hostages. We pay them for it, and they do it. If we didn't pay them to do it, that whole pirate industry would collapse. But we want to be nice to the innocent hostages, who innocently sailed into pirate-infested waters, who signed up for that individual cruise knowing they were going to sail into pirate-infested waters. Then they get attacked by pirates and they surrender. "Oh help, somebody save me, I'm an innocent victim who had no idea such a thing could happen!"

If they were responsible for their own lives they'd charge a hefty risk premium for doing that run and then they'd do whatever it took to fight off pirates. And if there was no danegeld available the pirates wouldn't attack in the first place.

This is an entirely self-created problem, because we aren 't ruthless enough to sink our own ships and crews when they are captured by an enemy or by an opportunistic businessman.

I've quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms2.blogspot.com/2009/04/re-time-to-act-like-state.html