For those of you interested in pirates outside of their rakish hilarity and annual holiday – that is, in the continuing and significant threat they pose to international security – there's been considerable additional discussion today of the Somali pirate affair. Here's Patrick Barry on the various international parties now attempting to police the Gulf of Aden, and Douglas Farah asserts the pirates have militant connections.
The Wall Street Journal has this oped, arguing that Combined Task Force 150 is inadequate and a greater “exercise of U.S. power” will be required. Matt Yglesias has a slightly different plan – fighting piracy by stabilizing Somalia politically for the first time in living memory.
While Yglesias is right that, long-term, we have to deal with the structural issues that cause the Gulf of Aden to be a center of instability, we do have an immediate need to stop the piracy; that is, we can end piracy off of Somalia permanently only by assisting in the development of political stability, but domestic political stability is impossible when non-state actors are marauding off the coast at will. (Eventually, the piracy will dramatically decrease international commerce to the Horn of Africa, too; the Gulf of Aden is a major thoroughfare for global shipping, but rational countries and corporations will find other avenues if attacks continue at this rate). In that vein, the Journal seems right that Task Force 150 is inadequate – that, perhaps, is why the various fleets that Barry mentions are flocking to the region. Whether Task Force 150 can be beefed up, or replaced with a coordination mechanism that lasts, is a harder question; Russia-EU-US relations are not at their apex, and the US military is strained in all branches. Until this week's escalation of piracy, the great powers didn't seem to think they had compelling enough interests in stable shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden to strengthen the task force. The challenge now will be turning their interest in quelling this immediate outbreak into a coordinated approach and then into a long-term strategy which successfully secures the Gulf.
