Over the last month one can open the world news and see yet another country despatching it’s navy to deal with Somalia’s pirates. China was the most recent, and in a way that is bad news for the pirates.
If you consider every country now has to deal with getting past the Horn of Africa with one thing or another being oil or goods, seeing a global armada working for a single cause does send a feeling of global unity down your spine. It is not often that you see so many countries pulling together to deal with a single issue. NATO has even gotten involved.
If you take a look at each countries global personality, you can get some idea on how they will deal with the pirates. The US is very by the book and actually may trip over themselves while reading the book. This is all done while taking care not to violate any rules of the road in international waters.
China on the other hand is not so concerned about human rights and other such annoyances. So how each navy deals with the pirates will be uniquely different. A warning shot from a Chinese destroyer may just leave assorted toothpicks and kindling wood of what was once a pirate intercept boat. Not to say that would be a bad thing, that is one impressive warning shot.
One or two stories like that getting back to the pirate base and the pirate Que at the dock will get short in short order. With the thought of it being a one way trip to become shark food, the psychological discouragement factor is on the high side. That will be doing battle with greed inside their head along with the gamble that they won’t get caught.
What has happened is this game has now moved up to the big league and the stakes are much higher. The global economy has put a strain on everything including the shipping companies. So to deal with that and the desire to go after more Muslims with guns who shoot at other people and look to harm them, there was plenty of incentive to go and play sink the pirate.
How this will all pan out in the end is hard to say. It is likely to turn into a cat and mouse game for the next few months. The German navy has scored a few points along with other countries, so this does look to be a every man for themselves game at the moment. If they all pooled together and worked as a team, the problem would be more quickly minimized. Japan is also giving some thought to go and play too.
With the changes in Somalia’s government including resignations of top officials, it leaves the door open for some land operations if need be. But be it said, setting foot in Somalia opens another can of worms that the world does not need at the moment. This move is not likely and just dealing with things off shore in Somalia’s waters will be about as far as they go.
Next story on Somilia pirates here.
