More Piracy Near Somalia

[huskerguy7]

If we had the political will to solve this problem, which we arguably don't at the moment, what kind of strategy do you think would be ideal? Allowing private security contractors to carry heavy weapons? Conducting a full blown peace operation? Shifting most of our diplomatic energy from Mogadishu to Puntland? Training a coast guard?

David Axe recently wrote an interesting article that discusses how the overall strategy is failing. Maj Gen Tom Wilkerson, CEO of USNI, says

We could use the same techniques that are helping us take out terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to take out pirates in Somalia.

I found his statement to be thought-provoking. Would a "CT" strategy, similar to how we saw Gen McChrystal and Adm McRaven using in Afghanistan, work against Somalian pirates? Or, would this be inefficient as the pirates tend to be more similar to an organized crime group?

Thoughts?

[Entropy]

huskerguy7,

The problem is that the pirates currently hold over 500 hundred prisoners from a variety of nations. Any action against the pirates will put those people at risk and I think any country would be pretty pissed off if it's hostages were executed in response to a unilateral US action.

So there are any number of possible courses of action against the pirates, including the one you link to. However, one must also consider the downsides to any option and so far they've all got some pretty big downsides.