Holmes: No easy military solution for piracy

It's fitting, considering the ship's illustrious namesake, that the destroyer USS Bainbridge took down three pirates off Somalia, freeing the captain of the freighter Maersk Alabama. But the life of Commodore William Bainbridge, a frigate captain during the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812, suggests that quelling piracy off the Horn of Africa will demand far more than the occasional deployment of Navy SEAL marksmen. It will be a long, arduous endeavor.

Those who waged the Barbary Wars had it easy by contrast.

Bainbridge's encounters with the Barbary states reveal important differences between piracy then and now. Pirates are out for private gain. The Barbary "pirates" were not pirates in any strict sense. They were agents of the rulers of Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis, who themselves fell under the loose jurisdiction of Ottoman sultans. Wringing tribute from passing ships was government-sanctioned activity, however loathsome Western mariners found it.

The Barbary corsairs resembled toll collectors on a highway where the motorists deny their authority to collect tolls. Citing the international legal theorist Hugo Grotius, Americans and Europeans insisted that seafarers enjoyed a right to free navigation on the high seas. The deys, beys and pashas of the Barbary Coast rejected this view, levying tribute for safe passage through Mediterranean waters. The two visions of the maritime legal order were irreconcilable.

The upside was that official sponsorship of objectionable activities created opportunities for diplomacy. Governments can be deterred, coerced or negotiated with.

So Capt. Bainbridge found. In 1800, on his first voyage to North Africa, he foolishly steered into the harbor at Algiers, anchoring within range of the fort's guns. The dey of Algiers prevailed on him to carry tribute and an ambassador to Sultan Selim III - under the Algerian flag, no less! Bainbridge was in little position to refuse. Once at Constantinople, on the other hand, he persuaded Selim to free 400 captives from Algerian prisons. From lemons, he made lemonade.

No such luck in the Horn today. Somalia has long been a "failed state." No effective, sovereign government can command - or restrain - pirates plundering along Somali shores or sheltering on Somali soil. Working the diplomatic angle, then, would avail the Obama administration little. Bainbridge's diplomatic feat in Constantinople won't be repeated in Mogadishu.

Nor is there an obvious, straightforward military solution.

The U.S. Navy is patrolling the Gulf of Aden in company with European, Chinese and Indian warships, but gaps in coverage will persist. It was relatively simple to strike back at Barbary pirates: U.S. forces went to the source. In 1804, Lt. William Eaton commanded a Marine contingent that marched through the Libyan desert with Arab allies. Eaton's army seized the town of Derna, near Tripoli, inducing a newly pliant Pasha Yusuf Karamanli to settle on U.S. terms.

A similar effort at coercion or regime change in Somalia would be of little use. Counterpiracy operations projected ashore would seek to eradicate pirate sanctuaries along the Somali coast. Such an expedition would quickly come to resemble a counterinsurgency - an enterprise for which the U.S. and allied governments have little appetite. Statistically speaking, piracy poses too small a threat to warrant another drawn-out counterinsurgent campaign.

Thomas Jefferson also has put in frequent appearances in commentary on the Maersk Alabama, with pundits applauding Jefferson for defeating the scourge of piracy.

To name one, retired Gen. Tom Wilkerson, CEO of the U.S. Naval Institute, has talked up a "Jefferson model" for combating piracy. By 1804, President Jefferson was fed up with payoffs. His "response was clear and successful," Wilkerson says: "Build a strong naval task force, equip it with a sizeable contingent of Marines, and send it to attack and defeat the pirates in their lair."

That's true, but it's not the whole story. Jefferson did act forcefully, summoning the resolve to vanquish the Barbary corsairs. But until the conflict flared up, he was poised to disband the U.S. Navy altogether, saving the government the expense of maintaining a fleet. And the expedition he ordered won the United States only a temporary reprieve. By 1815, the Madison administration was forced to mount a new expedition to bring the Barbary states to heel.

Our options? Jefferson's approach seems to be out. Barring the use of sustained, overwhelming force against pirates ashore, and until Somalia has a government able to impose order, Washington should persevere with naval patrols while arming merchant crews. Self-help may be the best remedy for maritime anarchy.

• James Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the Naval War College and a faculty associate at the University of Georgia Center for International Trade and Security.

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