There is a relationship between the decline of empire and the rise of piracy; one precedes the other. There were no pirates off the horn of Africa when British gunboats bobbed at anchor in Aden and carabinieri lounged on the verandas of the better hotels in Mogadishu.
Lieutenant Stephen Decatur Boarding a Tripolitan Gunboat during the bombardment of Tripoli, 3 August 1804
Nor were there any in the Mediterranean after the newly formed U.S. Navy
finished off the pirates there in the early 19th Century. The BBC (of all people) have
an excellent review of how Britain and the United States successfully used gunboat diplomacy to get rid of pirates around the world. But then the article goes on:
No such action against the "wasps' nests" along the Somali coast is possible today, even though the UN Security Council has authorised the use of the "necessary means" to stop pirates on the high seas and hot pursuit into Somali territorial waters. However, the resolutions that made these actions permissible (1838 and 1846) also contain restrictions.
Everything has to be done in accordance with "international law" and this is interpreted as complying with the conditions of the International Law of the Sea Convention.
This convention, in article 105, does permit the seizure of a pirate ship, but article 110 lays down that, in order to establish that a ship is indeed a pirate vessel, the warship - and it may only be a warship - has to send a boat to the suspected ship first and ask for its papers.
Got that? In the past when a pirate vessel was spotted, it was attacked and sunk. Now? Well, now we ask politely for their papers. Or to put that another way; the restrictions of international law make ending the scourge of international piracy a practical impossibility. International law is really international lawlessness.
I'm going to quote again from
Modern Times by Paul Johnson, my bible on all things historical. He's talking about piracy in the Mediterranean on page 687:
Pompey had ended piracy in the first century BC, and it was a sinister sign of Rome's fading power when the pirates returned in force in the middle of the third century AD.
A different empire, the same pirates. Indeed, the Arabs were pirates before they were Muslims! The important thing here is that they returned when Rome began to decline. Just as the Somali pirates have returned as British and American power has declined in the Indian ocean.
It makes no difference what the reason: a lack of warships or a lack of will to use the warships available. Either results in the same outcome, pirate attacks.
America and West are in steep decline because we don't use the power we have, because we have bowed low to 'international law' and because we lack moral fiber.
One more thing; the original expansion of Islam was a kind of land-based-piracy; pillaging, raping and looting and then dividing the spoils and cowing the invaded. There is no difference really between that and what's happening today.
Our leaders are wimps and our enemies are sharpening their swords for the time when they will be at their throats, and ours.
