Thursday, April 16, 2009
From the "Letters to the Editor" section of the Star Ledger:
Most civilian police departments undertake undercover actions to eliminate organized crime syndicates, human trafficking, gangs, drug cartels, etc. Many of these operations are successful, resulting in the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators.
It is rather mind-boggling as to why the maritime powers do not do the same. They now are spending millions of dollars to have dozens of warships patrol, mostly unsuccessfully, a vast area. Instead, they should let three to four small cargo ships heavily armed with concealed weapons cruise the sea lanes. When the pirates get near, the ships should open fire and send them to the bottom of the sea. No need to arrest them.
When the remaining pirates see that their cohorts are not returning home with a prize, they will think twice before go out to sea again. End of piracy.
-- N.M. Elliott, South Orange
Iow, the Obama admin. is unlikely to be inviting the good captain to the W.H. for purposes of substantive talks - though he may be invited for a photo-op, unless it's perceived the good captain would be somehow "unmanageable," for purposes of that photo-op, or perhaps would too publically "excuse himself" from accepting the invitation (which is precisely what he should do, if he is invited for a mere photo-op).
Too, this gets into a far larger issues, applied to international law in general and not solely maritime law. The tranzis - transnationalists - recently have given themselves a pat on the back for the Fujimore case. These are the same tranzis who willfully, obdurately and self-blindingly cannot come to terms with when and how it is viable to apply international or unilateral force against egregiously offending states (e.g., of note recently, Rwanda, Hussein & Sons' Iraq, Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Congo Republic), even when hundreds of thousands and multiplied millions of lives are subjected to systematic and truly massive rapes, tortures and slaughters - resulting in hecatomb upon hecatomb.
So, a Fujimore oppresses or perhaps even kills a few dozen, and moralistic pretense and bravado and triumphalism is indulged by cossetted and self-congratulatory ideologues in the west - while hecatombs are multiplied in other quarters of the globe.
Well, to be honest, this sort of 'undercover operation' would not have to work with any international or national organization. These seas are lawless. That works both ways.
With regards to Mary, this is not a new idea. Google Q Ship for a fuller description. I think this was tried, with sucess, in WWI.
Well, perhaps, but this is 2009, where "illegal combatants" and other legal or quasi-legal issues are an ever-present reality, in fact are a part of the strategic and tactical considerations of asymetrical warfare.
Many analysts have noted that the tactics that work against pirates (shooting them on sight, considering them enemies of all humanity who should not be given the benefits of civil rights) should also be applied to the acknowledged members of terrorist groups. I've always thought this was a good idea.
According to one analyst at Stanfor:
In reality, there is no neat line from crime to war. The West has spent the better part of a century blurring the line and wrecking the old Westphalian rules of sovereignty. The motives were noble. The results are a mess. The Somali pirate situation is not new. Gerald Ford faced a similar incident. Jimmy Carter had Tehran. Ronald Reagan had the Beirut hostages. Bill Clinton had to bargain the last American out of his Mogadishu disaster. George W. Bush had the FARC hostages. At this point, deciding if the Taliban is a political movement with drug connections or a set of drug enforcers with a vague religious-political mission is a real good question.
The intersections of individual rights versus necessities of state in wartime, and of asserted post-colonial sovereignty claims and armed actors who don’t play by Westphalia, is going to be one of the enduring national security dilemmas of the next decade. After all, the Somali pirates claim they are just a coast guard. This is not really asymmetric warfare. This is a blatant assertion that the world does not have to play by the norms of 1945-91. Transnational actors both within and outside the developed world are rewriting the rules and we are all living in the chaos.