Fighting Pirates With Privateers

Since the case last week of the Somali pirates taking Captain Philips hostage and trying to hijack a container ship, there has been a considerable amount of talk on what should be done. I proposed that the world needed to come together and really figure out a way to get rid of the pirates. If that meant sending in more ships, so be it. However, something about that didn’t sit right with me. The idea of the United States going in with more destroyers to try and prevent piracy was a suitable idea, but one that had the potential of drawing us into another conflict.

After reading a lot of the comments, one thing I said in a reply was that all we had to do was wait for some private company to start offering protection against pirates. They’d charge a considerably less amount of money than the pirates demand from ransom and in return, the ships would be safe. It’d get rid of the problem. Now, the idea of this brings about some questions and it even produced question in my head because how do you legally allow a ship that is not a navy ship to do military actions?

Representative Ron Paul from Texas made that clear for me. He spelled it out in something called a Letter of Marque.

What a Letter of Marque does is allow Congress the constitutional right to give permission to people to become privateers. They were private pirates basically that went around and did war against the pirates. Their reward was only what they found on the ships they hijacked. In essence, it was government supported piracy against a common enemy.

The application makes sense. I tell people that they can go out and kill pirates to protect our interests and in return, they get to keep anything they find. That’s nice and all, but there is one problem. Typically, these ships don’t have a chest full of gold like pirates did in the old days. So, where is the reward? Furthermore, how exactly do you prevent these privateers from doing anything illegal? I don’t want America to become a nation that is known for their government sanctioned bandits.

If the United States decides to go with this route, there is one of two routes. The first is that the United States can front the bill and pay for the head of each pirate that is killed. Basically, if you bring back pirates, dead or alive, you get paid a certain amount of money. The second thing is that the companies could front the bill. Now, I am leaning towards the companies doing it because it’d be nice for the United States government not to have to pay for something.

If a company was told that they need to pay ten thousand dollars for every dead pirate or, instead, that they needed to pay fifty thousand dollars to have a fast moving ship there with them for the last part of their ride, I bet they’d be willing to pay it rather than having to pay the obscene amount of money in ransom fees. It would be the free market actually doing something for itself. Perhaps the United States could pay for the deaths of the pirates and the companies could pay for escort service.

However they went about it, it is obvious that there is a potential conflict beginning to come from this. The pirates are saying that they are going to get revenge. That’s all fine and dandy, but the United States needs to respond just as firmly. That means giving the privateers permission to do what is necessary to protect the assets.

However, these privateers need to follow the same rules of conduct as the United States military. If they are going to be doing anything under the name of America, they had better follow the rules of engagement, the rules of surrender and all of that jazz. We all know what happens when you give too much power to PMCs. There were incidents in Iraq where civilians were blatantly killed and there was no way to do anything about it.

If these privateers, PMCs, caring citizens, or whatever you want to call them follow by the rules of the military and also are given the correct compensation, it could be a tremendous idea. What is imperative, though, is that the United States government ensures that all the rules are being followed. If you give too much power to these private organizations, they’re going to take them. Have the navy continue their patrols; however, this will bring a capitalistic gain into play and that’s always a nice thing.

The image is an example of a privateer boat: Blackwater USA’s MV MacArthur.