Comment by asdff
4 hours ago
Seems like piracy is more about the land than the sea. I can't think of any major american military action against piracy aside from actions against somali terrorists. Seems piracy as it was known historically died out as the old historic pirate havens of say Tortuga or Outer Banks went from places of anarchy to places that were controlled by some government in some capacity. And that is exactly where we see the somali piracy today: here is a state that is unable to govern its land mass and thus there is piracy, even with the american navy directly taking action against this piracy. Seemingly this has nothing to do with the american navy at all, even though that is supposedly one of its mandates and it takes actions in the spirit of advancing these anti piracy goals. The fundamentals of why piracy does and doesn't occur don't really change. It seems it comes down to government capacity on land, not from projecting naval power.
> somali terrorists
Pirates are many things, maybe even criminals under international law, but terrorists they are certainly not.
> maybe even criminals under international law
Piracy has to be the canonical example of criminals under international law...
Are they not commingled with Al Shabaab, Daesh, and the Houthis?
By that standard, pretty much every nation state in the world would be considered terrorist. I'm not against that definition, but i'm rather sure you didn't mean it.
Sir do you just think all muslims are the same people? What else ties these groups together?
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I mean that is ignoring the American military experience with Islamic pirates and Islamic slavers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs
That also supports the government capacity argument. The US was able to make peace with the barbary states and extract a right of safe passage assurance from them. Why? Because the leadership of these states had enough government capacity to compel their domestic pirates into agreeing to the terms their government dictated. Today, in Somalia, we see what the lack of government capacity manifests as. I'm sure the government of Somalia does in fact have laws against piracy. The fact they aren't being enforced, and the pirate industry there exists, shows what happens when law and agreements meet the hard realities that there needs to be government capacity to see them enforced and heeded.
The Islamic governments there always had the capacity though contrary to your central point. As evidenced by the many treaties there were entered into by those governments, not by the Islamic pirates/slavers.
From the writings at the time 'Muslim sources, however, sometimes refer to the "Islamic naval jihad"—casting the conflicts as part of a sacred mission of war under Allah'
These Islamic pirate/slavers are the SPECIFIC pirates that "The Barbary threat led directly to the United States founding the United States Navy in March 1794.". These are the specific type of pirates that the US Navy was founded to combat to protect ships being seized and their crews sold into slavery.
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Let us not confuse north africa with the horn of africa. Two wholly different people with different cultures, motivations, and practices.