Pirates Come Back Shooting--Does It Matter?

Not surprisingly the Skiff Riders Of Puntland were back on the job almost before the USS Bainbridge had collected the bodies of their three dead fellow thugs. Neither is there any shock in the news that the Bad Boys of the Somali Coast went after a US flagged cargo ship with, or so the now obligatory pirate spokesman alleged, a specific intent to "destroy" the ship and its crew.

"Unfortunately," this Jolly Swagman's answer to Robert Gibbs continued, "the ship escaped our attack." Right, dude, fer sure, how unsporting of the Americans not to just sit there and take it, suffer your Somali version of retributive justice.

The cowardly Americans hid in the engine room of the Liberty Sun and called for the US Navy and CNN. When the navy in the form of the USS Bainbridge arrived, it was the pirates who had left the area at a high rate of knots. Unfortunately the Bainbridge must not have had access to aerial reconnaissance such that the offensive skiff could be followed and (it is to be hoped sincerely) engaged before it reached the safety of Somalian territorial waters.

Instead, the Bainbridge, with rescued Captain Richard Phillips still onboard, proceeded to escort the slightly damaged Liberty Sun and its cargo of food aid for Africans to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. The Ship Molesters of Somalia undoubtedly were back in port at Eyl or some other coastal hole vowing to try again.

Eleven other wannabe Heroes of the Islamist Sea were not so lucky. They and their thirty foot "motherboat" as well as three skiffs came to the attention of the French. After having been spotted by a helicopter flown from the frigate Nivose, the French warship shadowed the aquatic goons overnight and moved in around dawn at a point five hundred nautical miles off the Somalian coast. Apparently the maritime jihadists offered no resistance as they were all taken alive. Whether or not the eleven will join the three pirates captured in a French commando raid a few weeks ago and face a French tribunal is not clear yet.

These two incidents along with the wave of successful pirate acts over the weekend shows that no more than a single snowflake heralds a blizzard nor a pair of robins, spring does a successful takedown or two mean the Jolly Swagmen of Somalia have been suppressed or even slightly deterred. The incidents along with their precursors do, however, point in the direction which successful policy must go.

Sustained violence, particularly when coupled with credible threats of hostile escalation, must be met with resolve. A resolve to oppose violence with more effective violence. Just like in poker, when the opponent ups the ante, you have to meet the raise--or fold, get out of the game, surrender the pot without contest.

Calls for a UN sponsored exercise in pacification and nation-building are a refusal to stay in the game, to match and call the pirates' bluff. So are the urgings that the "international community" provide the resources necessary for the Somali Transitional National Authority so that this pretender to government status can impose peace and order on Somalia and its neighboring waters. So are delaying gambits such as the construction of new international agencies of coordination or criminal justice.

One, highly doable, course of action is the placement of armed guard parties on US flagged merchantmen. While doing this would impose an increased demand on the already overstretched US military, particularly the Navy and Marine Corps, the demand would not be excessive given the small size of the US flagged merchant fleet. As SecDef Gates said at Maxwell AFB, one does not need a billion dollar warship to defeat a bunch of teenagers in speedboats.

Light weapons, a modest sensor suite and a squad sized detachment would be sufficient to keep even the most audacious crew of Swagmen at bay or kill them if they were so poor at decision making as to press home their attack in the face of superior discipline and firepower. The use of military personnel as the Armed Guard would not only obviate some of the paranoia afflicting lawyers but also has historical precedent--the Armed Guard units on US ships during World War II.

Almost as doable would be the dedication of increased surface warfare and maritime surveillance assets to the Western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden areas. It boggles the mind that the USS Bainbridge did not have real time data, including imagery of the boat which attacked the Sun Liberty, such that it could shape an interception course once it became clear that the Skiff Riders of Vengeance had broken off their attack.

Either the Bainbridge has less access to airborne platforms than the French frigate Nivose or its commander did not have the authority to pursue the attackers. If the former, our Navy is not what it is alleged to be in the sea surveillance field. If the latter, then there has already been a major failure of political will in or near the Oval Office.

If the difficulty is one of assets it is rather easily rectified. Surely the US has a few P-3 or similar aircraft littering a hanger or apron somewhere. Perhaps we even have a small number of long loiter time UAVs parked somewhere. If we do, they could be redeployed with profit to the WIO/GA AOs. If we don't, then it is about time for some high speed, low drag procurement efforts--or make a deal with the French since they apparently have a surfeit of helicopters.

If the difficulty is one of deficient political will at the highest levels, the problem is not easily solved. It means that the people at the pinnacle of the National Command Authority are basically so risk averse, or so afflicted with the fatal disease of High Mindedness, that the US has no choice but to fold in this particular game of high stakes international poker.

Rather than bow before a scurvy collection of Somali seagoing jihadists, it is to be hoped that the Obama administration can bring itself to realise that the avoidance of small and controllable risks today will simply assure the emergence of larger, even much larger, risks far less susceptible to control in the not-too-distant future. The Obama-ites also have to wake up and get a grip on one fundamental reality: The government of the United States has no responsibility to create a functioning, friendly regime in Somalia; it does have a responsibility to continue the long American historical trajectory of maintaining freedom of peaceful navigation on the high seas.

Or, Team Obama may want to buy into the latest seemingly zany idea of Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Representative Paul went public last week with a video in which he advances an idea that has been chatted about sub rosa for the last couple of years. At first glance the notion seems as out of date and massively irrelevant as stocks in a manufacturer of buggy whips.

"Come on, Geek! Cut to the chase!"

OK, oh impatient one. The idea is for Congress to use a power granted it by the Constitution. The power to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal. While no such Letters have been granted since the War of 1812, the authority is still there. It has not been eradicated nor enervated by the assorted treaties and conventions entered into by the US over the past two centuries.

The idea behind Letters of Marque and Reprisal which were issued by all major and some minor powers for centuries is not so much war on the cheap as a means of enhancing one's naval power in either an undeclared conflict or a conflict against a non-state actor. (Yes, both sorts of non-war wars were extant even hundreds of years ago, despite our liking to pretend that they are of modern, even post-modern origin.)

Private interests would be licensed by the Federal Government to undertake offensive operations against pirates in the WIO/GA areas of operation. Performance and compliance bonds would have to be obtained by the candidate privateers who would also have to conduct their operations in a way which conforms with the international laws governing war at sea. Rather than depending upon the value of assets seized from the pirates as compensation as was the case way back when, the Privateers of the Twenty-First Century would have to look to bounties placed upon the heads of the pirates by Congress.

Any proposal to resurrect Letters of Marque and Reprisal from the historical dust will undoubtedly bring an epidemic of knee-knocking, tooth-gnashing, hair-pulling anxiety in the High Minded and Lofty Thinking crowd. These worthy folk will decry the notion as barbaric, so horrid and reprehensible that not even the Cheney-Bush administration proposed it.

Perhaps it is an idea whose time has not yet come. Still, one way or another, the US and countries of similar mind must take the violence to the pirates, up close and personal. The advantages the US and other advanced technology countries have in surveillance, communication and specialised violence application forces gives the good guys an awesome advantage over the Jolly Swagmen of Somalia.

But, (here it is, the inevitable, big "but") our advantages whether in billion dollar warships, or multi-million dollar aerial platforms or the skill and training concentrated in the right index finger of a sniper go for nothing if we do not have the political will to use what we have. Here is the irony: Political will does not even merit a line item in any budget, but without it nothing else matters.