Pirates!

Piracy has become a problem that's so big it's now almost comical. The problem runs far deeper than the loss of a few ships off the coast of Somalia. There are several reasons why piracy is such a big problem:

1) There are many other areas around Africa where piracy is rampant. There are even more historically active pirate hotspots in and around Indonesia.

2) Piracy is connected to terrorism. It's not that the pirates are terrorists, exactly. But consider this: the people who shot up Mumbai recently came in on boats. In fact, they hijacked a fishing boat somewhere near India, which they used to get into port. This is a colossal problem.

Imagine if a hijacked tanker were blown up at the mouth of the Port of Long Beach. This could disrupt the flow of imports and exports to and from the entire US west of the Mississippi for days or weeks.

Right now, there is a hijacked Ukranian boat in the hands of pirates loaded with tanks and other heavy weapons. There is also an oil tanker. It would be simple to cause an Exxon Valdez-caliber disaster in an incident of eco-terrorism.

Even worse, a large boat makes the perfect mobile weapons laboratory. If kept in the right place, there would be no one who could even legally board/search it.

For all these reasons, and many others, I was excited to see this story today, about how the UN has authorized operations at sea and on land to get at the pirate menace.

3) Piracy creates a need for rapid-reaction forces to interdict sea traffic. India, China, the US, Japan, Great Britain, Australia, and others will obviously need to plan how they will deal with a remote hijacking five thousand miles away. Will pirates be able to hijack Chinese missile shipments near China and then get into Indian waters? If so, will the Chinese try to attack the ships? Will the US be able to push India to board a Chinese flagged ship full of military equipment? The potential for international military and political incidents is immense.