More Piracy Near Somalia

[Wildcat]

The Seven Ways to Stop Piracy

And why none of them will work as well as we might hope.

By Ken Menkhaus
Posted April 2009

Now that the rush of excitement has subsided from the made-for-TV drama of the rescue of Captain Phillips, we are left with the more sobering long-term question of what to do about Somali piracy. Whether piracy constitutes a serious national security threat is a subject of debate. But there is no question that piracy off the Somali coast is now an important symbolic political issue for both the Obama administration and its critics. The Obama administration does not want conservative opponents to portray it as weak on defense or unwilling to use force to protect American interests, and so cannot afford to embrace passive policies on piracy. Yet the piracy issue is replete with traps, a seemingly simple problem with seemingly simple solutions, all of which could easily backfire and make things worse.

Indeed, some of the strategies that have the greatest appeal for the American public and punditry are also the most dangerous. And certainly, none of them offers a quick fix.

Let’s look at the standard menu of options being discussed in Washington.....

To give a bit of background, Dr. Menkhaus is one of my former professors at Davidson. He is one of the world's foremost experts on the HOA, lived in Somalia for a few years in the late 80s teaching English and working on rural development, then was an adviser to UNOSOM in the 1990s, was there during the Battle of Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down), and since then has been active in political and military affairs in the Horn. He has testified before Congress several times on issues regarding Africa and the Middle East, and has been particularly busy recently traveling back and forth between the US, Europe, and the Horn to do advising. It was during my final semester in the spring of 2007, when I was taking two of his classes, that Somalian insurgent attacks against the occupying Ethiopian forces skyrocketed, and he actually had to cancel classes for an entire week because he had been asked by the Pentagon to fly out to the middle of the Pacific to give a briefing to a Marine Expeditionary Unit that was on its way there. The best compliment I ever got from him was after I had given an oral presentation on my research at the end of the semester, and he told me I had a bright future ahead of me as a military planner. Given what I know of planning processes in the upper echelons and the concept of "death by PowerPoint," I'm not even sure whether that's a compliment or not.