History Reveals Piracy Poison Pill: Send in the Navy

Intervention by the Navy instead enraged the Somali pirates.  Their threats are intended to force shipping companies and other nations to back down, in the ancient pattern of intimidation and submission.  It is time to send in the ships and shut down the havens used by the pirates ashore.

While dealing with Somalia presents challenges, there may also be minimal actual combat once the push is launched, if the past is any predictor of the future.  This is properly an issue for the United Nations, to change the diplomatic context of vigorous action to eliminate Somalian pirates rather than having it become an example of heavy-handed American treatment of a weaker state.

And something more permanent than simple suppression must follow.  Pringle, writing in the early 1950's, actually predicted the problems and prescribed a long-term solution.  "Human beings usually only do anything when the incentives outweigh the deterrents.  Piracy flourished most when the incentives were highest and the deterrents lowest," he said in terms that echo today's circumstances of East African piracy.  "Gain is a relative term.  A loaf of bread is a big prize to a hungry man.  Poverty and unemployment increase the incentive to rob...

"... (I)t has often been suggested that pirates were inspired by love of adventure and deterred by severity of punishment.  In spite of a careful search I have found no evidence of any pirate having been influenced by either consideration.  ...It was consistently a matter of gain versus risk.  ...Piracy ceased to exist when it ceased to be a paying proposition."

Pringle concluded, "The first step in the suppression of piracy was the removal of pirate bases. ... The second step was police action at sea. .... The Age of Piracy lasted as long as it did only because successive Governments held the erroneous belief that a country could afford crime better than a police (force)."

History's lesson to world leaders concerned with the curse of Somalian piracy is that there is no benefit in paying ransom for hostage ships and crews, beyond a temporary humanitarian relief of those held captive.  A concerted international effort to first obtain release of all now in the hands of the East African pirates should be followed by swift and vigorous action to sweep the region's seas of the pirates and shut down their bases of operation.  Even if that means interrupting merchant traffic or convoying ships until the project is completed, the short-term cost will yield long-term results.

Afterward, the world must become serious about the horrendous conditions in Somalia and other regions where genocide, religious and ethnic hatred, and simple greed of petty war lords produces only chaos, misery and lawlessness.  Will it take yet another country that follows the sad path of Afghanistan before at last humanity decides to act on what unites and uplifts people?  That is the true seat of piracy and robbery on the high seas.

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