Defending yourself

The Maersk Alabama is free and so is her Captain, Vermont resident Richard Phillips.

So first things first: Good on President Obama who gave the order to rescue the Captain and kill the pirates if necessary.

Good on the Navy Seals who took down three pirates with three shots.

And no words can praise enough the courage and resourcefulness of Captain Phillips.

So that being said, what about the next time? Because people have been paying ransoms for so long now, the Somalia-based pirates are not going to give up their cash cow easily.

Somali pirates vowed to target American and French ships to avenge the death of five colleagues in two recent rescue operations, including the freeing of a U.S. captain yesterday.

“France and the U.S. will encounter unforgettable lessons,” Mohamed Hashi Yasin, a self-declared pirate spokesman, said by mobile phone from the port town of Eyl. “We will treat every country as they treat us.”

The President wants to work with the International Community to fix this

 "We remain resolved to halt the rise of piracy in this region," Obama said in a statement. "To achieve that goal, we must continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks, be prepared to interdict acts of piracy and ensure that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes," said the president.

Well, that's fine, as far as it goes. But what are the options? From Strategy Page

You can do what is currently being done, which is patrolling the Gulf of Aden and shooting only when you see speedboats full of gunmen threatening a merchant ship. The rule appears to be that you fire lots of warning shots, and rarely fire at the pirates themselves. This approach has saved a few ships from capture, and the more warships you get into the Gulf, the more pirate attacks you can foil. But it won't stop the pirates from capturing ships. Establishing a similar anti-piracy patrol off the east coast of Africa would cost over half a billion dollars a year, at least.

A second approach is to be more aggressive. That is, your ships and helicopters shoot (pirates) on sight and shoot to kill. Naturally, the pirates will hide their weapons (until they are in the act of taking a ship), but it will still be obvious what a speedboat full of "unarmed" men are up to. You could take a chance (of dead civilians and bad publicity) and shoot up any suspicious speedboat. Some of the pirates would probably resort to taking some women and children with them. Using human shields is an old custom, and usually works against Westerners. More pirate attacks will be thwarted with this approach, but the attacks will continue, and NATO will be painted as murderous bullies in the media.

The third option is to go ashore and kill or capture all the pirates, or at least as many as you can identify. Destroy pirate boats and weapons. This is very dangerous, because innocent civilians will be killed or injured, and the property of non-pirates will be damaged. The anti-piracy forces will be condemned in some quarters for committing atrocities. There might even be indictments for war crimes. There will be bad publicity. NATO will most likely avoid this option too. The bottom line is that the pirate attacks, even if they took two or three times as many ships as last year, would not have a meaningful economic impact on world shipping. For example, the international anti-piracy patrol in the Gulf of Aden costs $300 million a year, a fraction of a percent of the defense budgets of the nations involved. Politicians and bureaucrats can stand that kind of pain, and will likely do so and refrain from doing anything bold in Somalia.

Now a ship at sea has the exact same problem as an individual with regards to personal security: You can not count on the authorities being at your exact location at the time you are being attacked. And it takes time for the authorities (be they cops or the Navy) to respond even if you are able to dispatch a distress call.

At the point of contact where criminal meets victim, the victim needs to be able to respond to the threat directly.

Individual citizens should be allowed to be armed and cargo ships at sea should be allowed to be armed.

Think about it: 4 pirates overcame 20 men whose only defensive weapon in this case were ice picks. The bad guys had something better and everyone knows you don't bring an ice pick to a gun fight.

You bring a gun.

While the International  community sits around and weighs their options, drafts a course of action, votes on it and marshals the resources to carry out their plan, what do the seamen do in the meantime?

In my opinion, the easiest way to kill these pirates is at the point of contact with the crime.