Pirates: Dealing with an 18th-century menace

last updated 8 January 2015

“It’s anything but a swashbuckling tale,” said the San Francisco Chronicle in an editorial. When Somali pirates hijacked the Saudi tanker Sirius Star last week, seizing more than $100 million in crude oil, the world finally started to pay attention to the international menace off the Horn of Africa. The modern brigands are frighteningly efficient, said Tom Vanden Brook in USA Today. Guided by GPS technology, “they come out of the darkness” in small, swift fiberglass boats. Using only AK-47s, grappling hooks, and rocket-propelled grenades, they can overpower the crew of a yacht, freighter, or other vessel in just 15 minutes. “Most of the time they meet no opposition, only frightened unarmed crews.” This year alone, the Somali pirates have attacked nearly 100 ships and taken more than 740 hostages. The Somali attacks are “already driving up the cost of shipping and insurance” and could get much worse. In a worst-case scenario, the pirates could blow up a seized tanker to create what one expert called “five Hiroshimas.”

So far, the world has responded to this threat mainly with “hand wringing,” said the Chicago Tribune. With more than a million square miles of ocean in the Gulf of Aden and off Africa to patrol, Western nations insist that they can’t possibly intercept the pirates before they seize vessels. They’re also paralyzed by international law, which does not authorize unilateral military action against pirate vessels. And so, hamstrung by indecision, governments are caving in to blackmail. “Ransoms paid to free the ships could reach $50 million by the end of the year.” There’s only one way the West can respond: “Sink a ship. Now there’s a language pirates can understand.”

Hanging a few of them would also make an effective point, said Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal. Merely jailing the pirates we do capture isn’t much of a deterrent, especially since it means an upgrade in their meals and medical care. If hanging sounds so 18th century, so is piracy—a “primordial” form of barbarism that no civilized society should tolerate. Arming merchant ships would help, too, said Investor’s Business Daily. But in the long term, Somalia itself must be confronted. It’s the ground zero of today’s piracy precisely because, as the most chaotic and violent failed state in the world, it is a perfect haven for lawlessness. “As hopeless as it sounds, Somalia needs nation building.” The alternative is the specter of seafaring terrorism without end.