Four Americans were hijacked at sea and killed by Somali pirates this week. The U.S. responded to the yacht hijacking by sending a fleet of ships, including the U.S.S. Enterprise, to shadow the pirates and negotiate for the hostages. The ships had been in the region monitoring the growing pirate threat along with other allied naval forces. As you know, the geographic scope of pirate activity is wide and several countries have joined forces to monitor the vast region of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden commonly known as Pirate Alley. This video from MSNBC relates the details of the incident:
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How should the U.S. respond to such pirate attacks? One man with some experience with pirates suggests that we follow a model successfully used in the past:
A Norwegian shipping magnate was strongly criticized Wednesday for suggesting that pirates captured off the Horn of Africa should be sunk with their skiffs or executed on the spot. “When (piracy) implies a great risk of being caught and hanged, and the cost of losing ships and weapons becomes too big, it will decrease and eventually disappear,” Jacob Stolt-Nielsen said in an op-ed in Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv. The 79-year-old is the founder of Stolt-Nielsen Ltd, one of Norway’s biggest shipping companies. He stepped down as chairman two years ago but still serves on the board. “Pirates captured in international waters have always been punished by death, often on the spot,” Stolt-Nielsen wrote Tuesday, arguing that modern navies should deal with the problem like Roman pirate hunter Pompey did more than 2,000 years ago.”Not arrest them and say, ‘naughty, naughty, shame on you,’ and release them again, but sink their boats with all hands,” he wrote. “The pirates won’t be frightened by being placed before a civilian court.”
It may be tempting to deliver summary justice and execute them, but we won’t do that. We are a nation of laws and we take those laws with us wherever we go in the world. 15 pirates have been arrested in the aftermath of this incident and will be taken to the U.S. to stand trial. Piracy is classified as a crime of “universal jurisdiction” which means that any country may prosecute pirates. Will prosecution alone be enough to deter the pirates? Max Boot, a military historian and foreign-policy analyst, has written about how the U.S. and Great Britain successfully fought piracy in the 18th and 19th centuries using quick executions of captured pirates as well as attacks on pirate safe havens. He advocates a combination of military and legal measures to once again defeat piracy in this, the 21st Century.