I’ve been meaning to post on the recent pirate attack on the Maersk Alabama and its aftermath, for a couple reasons. First, President Obama deserves credit for giving the go-ahead for military action; I believe the appropriate response to pirates, terrorists, and anyone else who would hold innocent lives in pawn for their own benefit is best illustrated by the Israeli raid on Entebbe: no mercy, no quarter, no hesitation.
But second, that requires one other thing: no negotiation. Here, in my opinion, is a major black mark on this administration; to first offer to negotiate and then strike was a deeply problematic move, for reasons that Cornell’s William Jacobson lays out:
There are two choices when negotiating with hostage takers/pirates. One is the Israeli model of no negotiation. The only thing to be negotiated is the life of the hostage taker. Money, free passage, and other benefits are not on the table. The purpose of this approach is to deter further hostage takers, even if it means the death of the hostage.
The other model is the model of negotiating over almost any benefit, as long as the hostage is freed safely. This is the model Obama initially appeared to follow with the pirates. But if one believes the spin coming out of the White House, then negotiation was a ruse to buy time.
The problem is not in this case, which ended successfully, but in the next hostage taking situation. If one is going to follow a negotiation approach, the trust of the hostage takers in the negotiation process is key. If hostage takers believe negotiation is a ruse, then the hostage is in more danger. Words cannot be just words in a negotiation.
So negotiating as a ruse is the worst of all alternatives. It does not have the deterrent effect of the Israeli approach, or the hostage-safety effect of the negotiation approach.
This point was actually illustrated quite nicely on last Friday’s episode of NUMB3RS, for those who follow that show. The likely result of this approach by the administration will be what the pirates are already threatening: escalation. This tactic worked, this time, but it won’t work again—and as a consequence of its use, the pirates are much more likely to preemptively kill any Americans they take.
The ironic thing about this is that, all in all, the pirates are probably the best allies we have in the Horn of Africa.
Piracy is not a strategic threat to the US, it is a big problem for Europe and Asia but not for us. It wasn’t until Asia and Europe realized we weren’t going to solve this problem for them that they stepped up themselves.
Terrorism in Somalia has long driven Navy operations off that coast. On one side, we have a high visibility piracy problem that does not threaten the interests of the United States directly, at all, and our only current national interest regarding the piracy issue is one man with 4 guys in an orange boat 200 yards off the bow of the USS Bainbridge (DDG 96). There is a national economic interest, but the impact to date has not risen to a level that has created a serious concern among global leaders to the point they are willing to commit serious resources toward solving the problem.
On the other side of the Somalia problem, we have the terror problem no one else in the world is interested in doing anything about. And in the middle is the reality that while both the pirates and terrorists are operating in the same black market space, the pirates and terror groups don’t like each other.
Then there is another problem. What if we support a government strong enough to remove piracy, but too weak to do anything about the terrorism cells? Piracy is what has the international community involved in the problems of Somalia right now, if that goes away, we are left with the bigger threat to our national interests and no one internationally to help.
In other words, the pirates aren’t hurting us that much, but they are hurting the Somali terrorists that are a much bigger threat to us. I don’t like the idea that we might be better off working with them than fighting them—allying ourselves with thugs has never worked out all that well in the past—but from a Realpolitik point of view, it actually makes a lot of sense. Really, who else is there? That being the case, even if we leave that aside (as, morally, I believe we should), it does still suggest that our focus in Somalia should continue to be where it has been: not on fighting pirates, but on stopping terrorists.
HT (for the last article quoted): Smitty