I still don't get how this works. My world image must be pretty off at this point if this kind of thing is possible. A tanker is big, expensive, and not exactly easy to misplace. And for a nation to be able to send this kind of expeditions it must be both dysfunctional enough to allow this, but competent enough to be able to mount it. And other countries allow it? Why? Again with the "expensive and hard to misplace".
As other people have noted, Somali piracy is not "new". It's been happening since the 90s (Somali Civil war and failed international interventions). There were, and still are multinational (basically chartered by the UN) naval task forces operating in the area, to deter and interdict pirates. See CTF-151 (https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/ctf-151-counter-piracy/)
These types of actions are not perfect, they cannot stop everything, so you still see successful attacks happen.
And no one wants to try to intervene in Somalia itself. The world tried that in the 90s and got completely burned.
So the answer is that "other countries are not allowing it" in the same way that no country allows murder, and yet it still happens.
Much of the current state of the world is coasting on things done in prior eras, and this is always the case. A country needn’t be able to build a large boat now to have built one in the past. They can send that boat around the world until someone realizes that the US guarantee of safe water ways too is something it can no longer enforce. The world behaves as if the USA were its older self, but it isn’t. Also, a large navy isn’t very useful when ships that cost more than a billion USD can be disabled by drones that cost less than ten thousand USD. As such, US ship movement in the area is limited by both Yemen and Iran.
The world before WWII was chaos. It has never been peaceful to be a human for much of our species' existence.
America was the global hegemon. Under the "rules based order", where America safeguarded international trade in exchange for having the US Dollar at the center, we had the largest period of stability the world has seen.
Now that everyone wants to displace America, we're pluging back into chaos. America is abdicating its role and turning into an isolationist power.
There's going to be an increase in war as countries try to claim territory and resources.
Piracy and blockades will come back. Trading alliances and trading blocs will form.
The world will turn into a powder keg. This time with nukes.
The vacuum left behind as America shuts itself off will create lots of power struggles. There will be a lot of trade disruption to energy, goods, and food inputs. It's also going to be incredibly violent.
> America was the global hegemon. Under the "rules based order", where America safeguarded international trade in exchange for having the US Dollar at the center, we had the largest period of stability the world has seen.
> ...America is abdicating its role and turning into an isolationist power.
Good thing America is one singular entity with everyone living in it both equally benefiting from it and also responsible for it's current state.
What we are seeing is neoliberalism gone rancid and the predictable fallout.
Many but not all tankers these days do have defensive equipment, e.g. jet sprays, but these probably can't stop too many boats, or if the tanker doesn't have such protection.
If you have a hose that you can fire from a fairly protected position and the guy with the RPG is completely exposed because he's trying to climb up the side of a tanker, yeah, I might.
See, the hijackers can't actually sail the ship. So they can't kill the crew, or at least can't kill very many of them.
> If you have a hose that you can fire from a fairly protected position and the guy with the RPG is completely exposed because he's trying to climb up the side of a tanker, yeah, I might.
In this scenario you are standing on a ship that is full of highly flammable oil.
There are more outcomes than just the hijackers gain control of the ship or they leave you alone.
If gaining control is no longer an option they could decide "fuck it" and just fire into the side of your hull.
Oil tankers only have like 20-30 crew on board, you’re not going to need that many men with AK47s to take over. Navies do patrol piracy hotspots like Somalia, freedom of navigation is kinda important to world trade, but they can’t exactly be everywhere at once.
All it takes is a world which has convinced itself that it is “time to be tolerant of all and punish none — all misbehavior is not a fault of the actor but instead the world at large is responsible”
Start dealing with pirates like they did in the 18th century, and watch how fast it ends. It would only take a few dozen publicly hung pirates to make the point.
It did in the early 19th century. Check out the first and second Barbary Wars. They were not permanent solutions but they had lasting effects. The real blow was the French conquest of Algeria after that.
I'm pretty sure that the typical HN reader doesn't understand what desperation is.
You can put a high wall at a border but desperate people will try to scale it. No matter how high you make it. People are willing to cross things like the Darien gap [0], they'll do a lot of things.
If you have nothing to lose, and I mean nothing, you might be willing to take the gamble.
You know that various navies have conducted operations that have killed many more Somali pirates than that, right? No idea what you’re quoting there, but it’s a bizarre caricature of the world we live in.
It's very simple. "Pirates" use small arms and small boats.
The US navy uses helicopters and ship mounted canons.
Occasionally they double tap "drug smugglers" with missiles.
Or sink inadequately armed "enemy" ships with a torpedo, followed by a second one after 19 minutes.
The difference is minor between piracy and war crimes: "δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν"
The whole global just-in-time supply chain depended on at least the illusion of the freedom of the seas guaranteed by the United States, which the US unambiguously spoiled this year. Piracy never went away altogether but a multi-polar world where regional powers sanction piracy and provide the pirates with sophisticated weapons isn't going to underpin the same kind of global economy.
I still don't get how this works. My world image must be pretty off at this point if this kind of thing is possible. A tanker is big, expensive, and not exactly easy to misplace. And for a nation to be able to send this kind of expeditions it must be both dysfunctional enough to allow this, but competent enough to be able to mount it. And other countries allow it? Why? Again with the "expensive and hard to misplace".
As other people have noted, Somali piracy is not "new". It's been happening since the 90s (Somali Civil war and failed international interventions). There were, and still are multinational (basically chartered by the UN) naval task forces operating in the area, to deter and interdict pirates. See CTF-151 (https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/ctf-151-counter-piracy/)
These types of actions are not perfect, they cannot stop everything, so you still see successful attacks happen.
And no one wants to try to intervene in Somalia itself. The world tried that in the 90s and got completely burned.
So the answer is that "other countries are not allowing it" in the same way that no country allows murder, and yet it still happens.
Much of the current state of the world is coasting on things done in prior eras, and this is always the case. A country needn’t be able to build a large boat now to have built one in the past. They can send that boat around the world until someone realizes that the US guarantee of safe water ways too is something it can no longer enforce. The world behaves as if the USA were its older self, but it isn’t. Also, a large navy isn’t very useful when ships that cost more than a billion USD can be disabled by drones that cost less than ten thousand USD. As such, US ship movement in the area is limited by both Yemen and Iran.
The world before WWII was chaos. It has never been peaceful to be a human for much of our species' existence.
America was the global hegemon. Under the "rules based order", where America safeguarded international trade in exchange for having the US Dollar at the center, we had the largest period of stability the world has seen.
Now that everyone wants to displace America, we're pluging back into chaos. America is abdicating its role and turning into an isolationist power.
There's going to be an increase in war as countries try to claim territory and resources.
Piracy and blockades will come back. Trading alliances and trading blocs will form.
The world will turn into a powder keg. This time with nukes.
The vacuum left behind as America shuts itself off will create lots of power struggles. There will be a lot of trade disruption to energy, goods, and food inputs. It's also going to be incredibly violent.
> America was the global hegemon. Under the "rules based order", where America safeguarded international trade in exchange for having the US Dollar at the center, we had the largest period of stability the world has seen.
> ...America is abdicating its role and turning into an isolationist power.
Good thing America is one singular entity with everyone living in it both equally benefiting from it and also responsible for it's current state.
What we are seeing is neoliberalism gone rancid and the predictable fallout.
For the « how », you can watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Phillips_(film) to get an idea of the pirate logistics
All you need is a dude with a small boat, an rpg and some kind of short range radio really.
Many but not all tankers these days do have defensive equipment, e.g. jet sprays, but these probably can't stop too many boats, or if the tanker doesn't have such protection.
If I have a hose and the other guy has an RPG I’m probably not starting shit.
If you have a hose that you can fire from a fairly protected position and the guy with the RPG is completely exposed because he's trying to climb up the side of a tanker, yeah, I might.
See, the hijackers can't actually sail the ship. So they can't kill the crew, or at least can't kill very many of them.
> See, the hijackers can't actually sail the ship. So they can't kill the crew, or at least can't kill very many of them.
Sailing the ship safely takes some skill.
Sailing the ship at all takes about 5 minutes of watching youtube worth of learning.
And they can certainly sink the ship as a warning to the next ship. Indeed attacks in the area have a history of sinking ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_attacks_on_commercial_v...
> If you have a hose that you can fire from a fairly protected position and the guy with the RPG is completely exposed because he's trying to climb up the side of a tanker, yeah, I might.
In this scenario you are standing on a ship that is full of highly flammable oil.
There are more outcomes than just the hijackers gain control of the ship or they leave you alone.
If gaining control is no longer an option they could decide "fuck it" and just fire into the side of your hull.
That might cause the oil to leak out. It's unlikely to start a fire unless the tank is fairly empty.
Fire is always a risk, but crude oil is not "highly flammable". Some refined products and LNG are more problematic.
>See, the hijackers can't actually sail the ship
Its pretty dumb to assume that.
Somali commercial sailors and merchant mariners do exist. Information and simulator software is available also in Somalia.
Oil tankers only have like 20-30 crew on board, you’re not going to need that many men with AK47s to take over. Navies do patrol piracy hotspots like Somalia, freedom of navigation is kinda important to world trade, but they can’t exactly be everywhere at once.
All it takes is a world which has convinced itself that it is “time to be tolerant of all and punish none — all misbehavior is not a fault of the actor but instead the world at large is responsible”
Start dealing with pirates like they did in the 18th century, and watch how fast it ends. It would only take a few dozen publicly hung pirates to make the point.
Did that work in the 18th century? Hanging a few pirates eliminated piracy?
It's my understanding it was more about the loss of favorable basing and the reduction in Spanish shipments of treasure that caused the decline.
We've killed plenty of would-be pirates recently. Doesn't seem to have ended the problem.
> Did that work in the 18th century?
It did in the early 19th century. Check out the first and second Barbary Wars. They were not permanent solutions but they had lasting effects. The real blow was the French conquest of Algeria after that.
Many ships carry very heavily armed private security. You're describing a world that does not exist.
And still there are drug traffickers in countries with the death penalty on drug trafficking.
Those crimes correlate with poverty.
You want less crimes? Provide social security to get rid of the criminals out of desperation
I'm pretty sure that the typical HN reader doesn't understand what desperation is.
You can put a high wall at a border but desperate people will try to scale it. No matter how high you make it. People are willing to cross things like the Darien gap [0], they'll do a lot of things.
If you have nothing to lose, and I mean nothing, you might be willing to take the gamble.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap
You know that various navies have conducted operations that have killed many more Somali pirates than that, right? No idea what you’re quoting there, but it’s a bizarre caricature of the world we live in.
It's very simple. "Pirates" use small arms and small boats.
The US navy uses helicopters and ship mounted canons.
Occasionally they double tap "drug smugglers" with missiles. Or sink inadequately armed "enemy" ships with a torpedo, followed by a second one after 19 minutes.
The difference is minor between piracy and war crimes: "δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν"
Trump was quoted in the last day as saying "We’re like pirates" in reference to the US Navy.
The whole global just-in-time supply chain depended on at least the illusion of the freedom of the seas guaranteed by the United States, which the US unambiguously spoiled this year. Piracy never went away altogether but a multi-polar world where regional powers sanction piracy and provide the pirates with sophisticated weapons isn't going to underpin the same kind of global economy.
> which the US unambiguously spoiled this year.
Didn't the Evergiven do this years ago showing that blocking one highly trafficked route would cause chaos?
US navy doing piracy does not help either
Related:
Trump on US Navy Seizing Ships:
> It’s a very profitable business. We’re like pirates.
https://xcancel.com/Acyn/status/2050368660360032561