Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
If conventional weapons do not work, yes. And if the costs-effects calculation in your eyes is such that the operation is favourable in your opinion.
If it is not, then you will need to live with growing piracy int he future. And it will spread, and infest more and more places of Africa and SE Asia, like we have seen it spreading and growing in recent years, due to Western indifference and lack of resolve, the modern scourges of the Western world. Because you set the example that piracy is a model that pays off.
Note this, Oberon, what I said on the military options does not rule out to rebalance world affairs and global business in such ways that there is fair trade, social perspective and all that, if this ios the policies somebody wants to try. But the daily news on burning textile factories in Bangladesh, Foxcon suicides and revolts in China and slave work in third world countries in general, supported by our own major producers, does not make me optimistic on that to happen anytime soon. And it is not what in this thread, for the most, has been talked about. When you discuss military ways do not feel provoked when I show you weapons. Talk was about how to fight pirates. I gave my idea on how to fight pirates. In principle it is this: bring the war to them, and destroy their means to act like pirates.
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Military options, in Somalia, are not feasible, for multiple reasons.
Let's start with an operation to hit the pirates bases, first you need to find them, and then you need to destroy them. Not particularly difficult, but then you'll need to do the same thing all over again in about a fortnight because the next wave of pirates will have set up new bases in a new area, and you'll have to continue this for an indefinite period of time. No-one in the west can afford such an operation right now, the US might be able to, but it's pretty broken at the moment and I don't think anyone in America would agree to military action against...well...anyone, after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The EU is similarly broken and would be lucky to agree on what to have for lunch, let alone a sustained offensive, and Russia and China don't really care enough at the moment, particularly since a lot of the Somalian pirates are carrying weapons saying 'Made in Russia' or 'Made in China'.
So, that's out.
So let's go to the other end of the spectrum, and take the General Ripper approach and nuke 'em. We'll use America in the scenario since they have the most active nukes (officially), and theirs are more likely to actually hit Somalia, whereas Chinas would hit the Pacific Ocean and Russias would probably hit Washington. Somalia has a coastline of 627,00km2, it's the 37th biggest coastline in the world. The W88 warhead has a yield of about 455kt, at airburst height it would have an air blast radius of about 90km2, and a thermal radiation range of 251km2. So, saying that you'd like to turn the entire coast of Somalia into a sea of radioactive fire, you would need approximately...2500 W88 warheads, or about half of the entire US arsenal of nuclear weapons. That's just for the coastline alone.
Of course, once you've done that then every other nation in the world will be queueing up to declare war on you, so those other 2500 warheads are probably going to get used pretty quickly and then you'll have very little country left at the end of it.
This is not Warhammer 40k, nukes are very rarely an option, not because of their destructive power (which is more limited that people realise) but because of the political side-effects of using one in a multi-nuclear environment.
So, if you can't hit them from the coast, and you can't nuke them, and let's face it, any land based attempt is just going to be another Afghanistan, and political suicide. What's left to do?
Exactly what they are doing right now.
Sod all.
Aid missions won't work, military options won't work, either on land or sea, so you just have to factor in a loss ratio based upon a rate of possible piracy action in the area. Warships might get lucky from time to time and catch some pirates or sink them, and they might lob a TLAM into a pirate base from time to time to generate some good headlines, but to actually stop it dead...not possible.