> Navy's reputation has been squandered in the last year

I don't understand how anything that has occurred in the last year would make a Somali pirate think it's less likely they would be killed if they chose to resist an American boarding party. If anything, they would think it's more likely they'd be killed and that there might be unpredictably severe reprisals against their clan, supporters, etc.

What events were you thinking of?

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.

The response can, and historically has, come from any nation, not just the one the ship is registered in.

For instance in the last (Somali) attack before this, a Maltese flagged tanker was boarded, and a Spanish warship arrived the next day and retook the ship.

I have friends who have been those mercenaries, and I think your comment underplays it a bit… they are all ex-SBS and not somebody I’d want to fuck with!

So you can just steal any ship registered to some nation with little naval presence and no one knows how to handle it? It just becomes the spiderman meme of insurance and corporate and nations pointing at each other and meanwhile you’ve successfully stolen a ship in 2026? Crazy world we live in. The modern age is strange.

Which navies though? The reality is that very few countries still have the expeditionary navies capable of doing that. The US Navy (plus Coast Guard) can do it. A few others like China, Japan, India, and France can do it on a limited basis. The remaining countries can maybe send a token frigate on a temporary basis. That's about it. Even the UK, Russia, and Germany no longer have functioning expeditionary navies.

Is an RPG enough? I feel like the crew of the oil tanker would want to defend themselves from armed pirates even if it might damage the ship some. And modern ships can be quite sturdy.

In 2020 a Venezuelan patrol boat (1500 tons) tried to stop an Arctic cruise ship (6000 tons). The patrol boat rammed the bow of the cruise ship and sank. The cruise ship received superficial damage to the bow.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-52151951

Pretty soon the RPGs will be replaced by FPV drones. Put an explosive drone into the bridge of a merchant ship and it's going to be a mess. I predict that there will be a growing market for drone defenses on merchant ships such as radio jammers and nets over vital spaces.

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.

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.

Many ships carry very heavily armed private security. You're describing a world that does not exist.

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

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

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.

>"δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν"

That's all Greek to me so I had to translate.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Very appropriate. Thanks.

Trump was quoted in the last day as saying "We’re like pirates" in reference to the US Navy.

> the US will probably take action against Yemen and Somalia

So we’re losing 1 war, and your solution is to start 2 more?

The US and its allies are likely the biggest sponsor of terrorism and genocide worldwide