What “Sid Meier’s ‘Pirates!’” Can Teach Us About Piracy
I don’t know how many of you have played the game “Sid Meier’s ‘Pirates!’”—either the old computer game or the newer XBox version—but for a while I was a devotée of the XBox game and I think it illustrates some key points about pirate policy that endure for the modern day. The main one is that anti-pirate military patrols are pretty much a lost cause. The ocean is just too big. A pirate only gets taken down this way because of hubris—you might deliberately try to attack and seize a military ship and wind up biting off more than you can chew. But the risks of actually getting caught are tiny relative to the rewards of successful piracy.
The only countermeasure that really works well is to escort a dedicated merchant vessel with small anti-pirate military craft. This, however, is rarely done for the exact same reason that we’re hesitant to do it today—it’s expensive. Arming the merchant vessels themselves is a geopolitically and legally dicey move in today’s environment. But “Pirates!” illustrates that this is inherently problematic as there are serious tradeoffs between cargo capacity, speed, turning performance, and cargo capacity that give dedicated pirate ships an intrinsic advantage against any kind of economically reasonable hybrid vessel.
So how can the pirates be stopped? Well, fundamentally the viability of your enterprise is “Pirates!” rests on the geopolitical chaos on land. The Caribbean islands are politically fragmented between Spanish, Dutch, French, and English colonies with possessions of different nationalities mixed together and everyone always at war with someone else. Consequently, out by the main range of islands you’re never far from a friendly port where you can duck in to resupply, to sell your wares, to recruit more crew, to fix your ship, whatever. When things can get problematic is if you start spending time in the parts of the mainland that are uniformly under Spanish control. Here, if the Spanish get hostile enough that they won’t let you dock in their cities you can get in real trouble. Not because the Spanish ships are so militarily formidable, but simply because the sheer distance to safe harbor reduces your options. If your pirate crew is actually strong enough to defeat the Spanish garrison on land, you’re fine. But if not, you might be done for.
To make a long story short, to curb the Somali pirate problem you need to fight them on land. This was recognized by everyone back in December but it hasn’t materialized since nobody really wants to try to mount a serious operation to bring Somali territory under control. And far be it from me to question that decision. I don’t want to either. But given that reality, while we can try to mitigate the pirate problem at sea, we’re never going to resolve it and suggestions that the Obama administration should snap its fingers and make this problem go away are absurd. What we need to do is wait until such time as someone or other establishes some kind of coherent control over Somali territory and then deal with piracy issues as part of our relationship with that person / group / organization or whatever it may be.
Unfortunately, the last time it appeared that a coherent de facto government was emerging in Somalia—the Islamic Courts Movement—we helped sponsor an Ethiopian invasion that plunged the country back into chaos. We need to stop doing that! You can read about Somalia in greater detail on the ENOUGH Project’s website, but the baseline point I would make is that we could start helping in Somalia by resolving to not do things that make the situation worse anymore.
103 Responses to “What “Sid Meier’s ‘Pirates!’” Can Teach Us About Piracy”
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April 10th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
ссылки…
I don’t know how many of you have played the game “Sid Meier’s ‘Pirates!’”—either the old computer game or the newer XBox[...]…
April 10th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
If I was running things, the pirates would just quickly learn not to mess with my ships, because at some point you just go on a controlled rage to make a point, these are rational actors, and you make the clearest communication you can that we’ll kill you, because you’re gnats.
That said, the overall piracy situation is not something I would be too worried about.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I don’t have a clue how to solve the Somali pirate problem, but the original Pirates! video game is one of the all time greats.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I still have the 5 and a quarter inch disks.
Played it endlessly. Always chose “wit and charm” as my advantage cause I liked getting married.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Let me put it more simply, commerce is commerce, we can deal with hangups, but they kill one of our family men, an example will be made. Maybe that’s more mafia than United Nations, I don’t care, it is what it is, violence is something we have to deal with, even though we’d rather not.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Even more simply, the day the US is painted as cowering to pirates…that day never happens.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Matt’s put his finger on it, it’s the tradeoff between cargo capacity and cargo capacity that’s the key.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
To make a long story short, to curb the Somali pirate problem you need to fight them on land.
I’ll second DTM… you’re going to reach conclusions about real-life piracy… from a videogame? Maybe you could start by explaining why arming the merchant ships in that part of the world a little better wouldn’t work. Obviously it has costs, but compared to pacifying Somalia it seems like a nice low-risk thing to try first.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
What MattY – in his rush to remember his fading childhood from just last decade – forgets is that an even better solution was offered by MichaelCaine.
But, seriously, whatever the laws are, if they’re strict enough and enforced publicly enough pretty soon piracy won’t be such an attractive occupation.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
After pondering it for a second, this is an honor issue, Barack should use every method at his disposal to punish these guys, and really go over the top with it, because our honor can’t be questioned.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I think the important question we need to ask is what are the other spheres of public policy that can be better understood through the medium of videogames? I mean, it’s my understanding that in 1984 or so nuclear war was avoided by teaching a supercomputer at NORAD to play chess with itself. We need more discussion of this can benefit our democracy.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I say just kill the bastards. Once they are getting shot, they won’t go into this business so easily.
Right now part of the problem is that it’s essentially risk-free; you rob a ship and nobody is shooting at you. Once you are getting shot, you become a lot more reticent and a lot less reckless.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Ultimately, we have bigger things to worry about, which doesn’t mean we ignore these guys, rather than taking them out (specifically dealing with our stuff, I’m not concerned at all about piracy in general, and know they can make this distinction, which basically comes down to don’t fuck with us, or you won’t be rich but dead, and the first funeral on our side will result in a long line of funerals for you guys).
If that sounds too much like Israel’s policy against Palestine, I’m sorry, the issues are clearly different, and Israel clearly wrong-headed, but the accounting of violence is the same, and a shame.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
#12:
Nuclear war was avoided through teaching a computer to play tic-tac-toe, because it learned that some games have no winning strategy.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
OMG, this game was fantastic. I played the old black and white Mac version, then the fancier color Mac version in the mid-90s. I put a lot of hours in, but I was never able to get up to Governor in the end-game. Haven’t played the latest yet—is it worth it?
April 10th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Why have we not heard the word “convoy” since this whole pirate business began? If several merchant ships (or a dozen or more) can be gathered together, then a single warship (and it doesn’t have to be a powerful one) can protect the entire group. The British learned this (the hard way) fighting U-boats, and had to relearn it (along with the US Navy) in WWII. But once it’s organized and in place, it’s mighty effective.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
“After pondering it for a second, this is an honor issue, Barack should use every method at his disposal to punish these guys, and really go over the top with it, because our honor can’t be questioned.”
Jimm
Right you indubitably are Jimm, but as Matt points out, these punitive expeditions can be expensive. Manpower, as always is the most costly component.
That’s why I have no doubt, Jimm, you will offer your services, and ships, to the US government gratis to exterminate these sea-going vermin.
If you have no ships, well, Jimm, that shouldn’t stop you from joining the Navy or Marines and dedicating yourself to this noble cause of honor.
Jimm, please send blog posts from Somalia, if you’ve got the guts!
April 10th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Isn’t this a recommendation for supporting ugly regimes in the name of convenience? The exact sort of thing liberals (mostly like me, but a bit older) were criticizing during 20 years of realist hegemony in the state department post-Kissinger?
It’s not exactly the particular instance that I find obnoxious – it’s the suggestion that this was always obvious and unerringly true.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Not sure if Matt is poking fun at himself or not. I suspect not, which is too bad.
Matt’s defining characteristic as a blogger (other than typos) is intellectual arrogance. He thinks he’s smart enough to speak authoritatively on any issue with very little (or usually no) research. And he’s right. He is smart. He’s smart enough to say reasonable sounding things on just about any issue you put before him. The thing is, though, that without a thorough knowledge or understanding of the subject matter, it’s hard to tell whether the reasonable sounding stuff he says is actually right. Lots of things really smart people say sound reasonable but are actually terrible ideas. To quote David St. Hubbins: It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever. Assuming it’s not self-satire, this post is classic Yglesian dilletantism. I once spent a few hours playing a pirate video game, so now I’m qualified to opine on anti-piracy policy. It’s like Matt sleeps in a Holiday Inn every night.
This doesn’t mean that Matt should stop opining on everything under the sun — that’s what makes the blog so fun to read, even when Matt is just talking out his ass. But it would be nice if Matt would occasionally recognize the limits of his knowledge and show a little humility when he’s talking out his ass.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
More seriously, this is what Matt was already saying needed to be done, like months ago. He’s not getting his strategy from the game like a 15-year-old (in 1988), he’s finding an illustration for a sensible position he already held.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
At no time has the Islamic Courts Union looked like it was a coherent, de facto government. They never even had any sway in northern Somalia. If they manage to take control in Puntland, they will not be an effective government. In the very unlikely event they take control of “Somaliland” there will be unrelenting guerilla warfare.
The ICU can’t be made into a boogey man or a saviour. There won’t be peace without them, or under them.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Yeah, this isn’t about putting a dozen 10′long, thick steel cylanders on a 300 ton wooden ship. This is about putting 6 AK-47s on a 20,000 ton cargo ship.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Led, being informed and ready to render an opinion on anything under the sun doesn’t compare to bravery and willingness to defend your country’s honor, which is more than she ever did. And Jimm is headed to Somalia right now to introduce the pirates to the business end of his .357 magnum!
Jimm, our illustrious military has failed miserably at every mission it has been given for years, what makes you think they can catch pirates without you to lead them?
Or are you content to live without honor, Jimm, as the pirate’s butt-boy? Yeah, I was afraid of that.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
What about Predator drones? This seems like the perfect use for such war machines.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
That’s why we don’t have drug dealers here in the US.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I have the NES version. I still play it on occasion, much to the chagrin of my wife.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
“Yeah, this isn’t about putting a dozen 10′long, thick steel cylanders on a 300 ton wooden ship. This is about putting 6 AK-47s on a 20,000 ton cargo ship.”
…which is filled with oil. And which would be severely delayed at every port if it was carrying guns.
People actually think that more firefights are the answer to this problem?
April 10th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Sweet! This was my favorite computer game growing up and to think it has real world implications for piracy policy is awesome. Although I was always able to take galleons with sloops and I remember reading somewhere that that is actually totally unrealistic. Also the fact that if your boat sinks you always wash up on a desert island as opposed to just drowning. So I don’t know that the Pentagon should draft Sid Meier just yet.
However–this post seems to be at odds with Matt saying earlier that safe havens don’t matter all that much in the case of fighting terrorism. But on the Somali coast, or in the computer-world Caribbean, the general anarchy and lack of law enforcement is what makes piracy possible. Doesn’t this suggest that we’d be better off if the Afghanistan/Pakistan border wasn’t a totally lawless region full of safe havens for terrorists? Not saying it would be easy to lay down the law here–although the Taliban were able to do so pretty well. If we could separate them from Al Qaeda we’d be getting somewhere. Does this mean that the solution lies somewhere in the realm of addressing Pashtun nationalism? The Taliban are basically a Pashtun movement. Could we put them in charge of their area in return for them turning over bin Laden?
One other thing; what the hell is the issue with that Russian dude/bot/whatever it is who has post #1 here?
April 10th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
More like 4 pintle-mounted 25mm Bushmasters or some twin .50cal MGs, but the idea is correct. A squad of marines (not necessarily US) on major ships would work just fine, too.
Or the Indian Navy could get off its ass and take care of business. It’s their ocean, and they’ve got a couple of carriers. Combined with convoys, this would solve the problem.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
By the way, I spent many hours playing High Seas Trader back in the day. Since somebody (laborlibert?) posted a link to the Pirates! website in the comments here yesterday, I’ve been jonesing to play it because it reminds me of High Seas Trader.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Sid Meier’s Pirates (the recent PC version) taught me that the beauty of a governor’s daughter is based on how much cleavage she shows. Also, Sid Meier has the unique gift of making incredibly boring and repetative games compelling.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Man this comment section isn’t the greatest I’ve seen on this blog.
Matt is right on in his analysis, even if he uses a video game. Several solutions were offered here that don’t really make sense. We cant arm merchant ships for many reasons. Fear of escalation is one. Pirates now aren’t using many explosives but they have access to rpg’s and the like. This would make the situation much more dangerous. Also right now the pirates are taking the crews hostage and not killing them. If you were to give the crew weapons the chance they would get killed would go way up. Also shipping companies would have to pay higher insurance rates for armed merchant ships. Add all that up any I think it still might be straight up illegal.
Convoys don’t work because you have a large number of different types of merchant ships going different places at different times. No shipping company is going to let a ship stay in port to wait for a convoy. Its a huge waste of money.
And finally the reason we are hesitant to kill the bastards is again fear of escalation. We kill them, they kill the crew of the next ship they take. Plus we have to find them first. Also there is a gap in international law for dealing with this kind of threat. Piracy in the Law of the Sea Treaty, which lays out the rules and regs for each nation on the oceans, says piracy is a affront to all humanity and any nations can prosecute them. Nations are not willing to do so because after that there is nothing specific and it would take lots of time and money to go through anyone’s court system. Oftentimes when pirates have been captured they were later released.
And Led if you are going to bash someone you should actually offer a batter solution for the problem. If you don’t have one then you offer nothing constructive to the discussion.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
For my money, this is the single greatest blog entry mankind has ever produced. And I’m quite serious.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
All we need to do is travel to enough Somali ports to find the Somali Treasure Map, once we’ve got the Somali Treasure, we can use the Treasure to finance a takeover of a Somali port by a friendly nation and once we’ve got a friendly port in enemy territory we can go to town raiding the Somali cities and ports and shipping, then we get big land grants from the King and get to retire as a very rich slave owning plantation manager.
Thanks for that Great Advice Sid!
April 10th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Jimm, our illustrious military has failed miserably at every mission it has been given for years, what makes you think they can catch pirates without you to lead them?
Or are you content to live without honor, Jimm, as the pirate’s butt-boy? Yeah, I was afraid of that.
You obviously don’t know me, because I would never have a butt boy, or be a butt boy, I’m really not sure how you even concocted that, aside from having your head up your butt, i.e. being your own butt boy.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Nuclear war was avoided through teaching a computer to play tic-tac-toe, because it learned that some games have no winning strategy.
We never needed a computer to learn that, and you’re honestly talking about retarded people, if you really believe nuclear war was avoided because it wasn’t a game-winner.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
More like 4 pintle-mounted 25mm Bushmasters or some twin .50cal MGs, but the idea is correct.
I’m a big fan of the M2-2 flamethrower, myself. Greek fire makes an impression. That’s how Constantinople held off the forces of Vladimir Sviatoslavich in the late 10th century.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
And Led if you are going to bash someone you should actually offer a batter solution for the problem. If you don’t have one then you offer nothing constructive to the discussion.
Urging Matt to improve the quality and information level of his posts has the potential to add a lot to this blog. I’m a commenter. I’m not pretending to be an expert on everything. I’m not going to offer an opinion on a subject I don’t know about. What will that do other than feed my own ego? The comments section is 90% full of people doing that already, and it’s not particularly constructive. As for criticizing Matt, I just want to read posts that teach me something rather than posts full of armchair musing.
It’s odd that you think offering uninformed opinions adds to the discussion but a reminder that maybe we ought to know what we’re talking about before we open our mouths “offers nothing constructive.” I’ll respectfully disagree.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Well Led by your logic if you don’t know anything about the problem then there is no way you can know if Matt’s opinion is good or bad. So you might as well not comment.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Piracy has to make a profit to work; terrorism doesn’t. Terrorists don’t have to survive to be successful; pirates do. That’s why pirates have to have safe ahvens, and terrorists don’t.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
“The ocean is just too big.”
Right: it’s not as if we have magical eyes in the sky that can see anything bigger than a rat, or could fly faster than sound.
Matt, you know nothing, and less than nothing, about modern military technology.
The current pirate problem is trivial and can be solved anytime we want to solve it, as has happened offtimes before. Except this time it would be easier.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Jimm @37:
I guess the reference flew over your head. It was about the 80s movie Wargames, in which a supercomputer was about to start a nuclear war to wipe out the Soviets, but after playing tic-tac-toe applied the same logic to its nuclear scenarios and realized there was no winning plan (because of MAD), and thus aborted its plans. There was no human logic involved in the decision.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Well Led by your logic if you don’t know anything about the problem then there is no way you can know if Matt’s opinion is good or bad. So you might as well not comment.
It almost as if I didn’t say this:
The thing is, though, that without a thorough knowledge or understanding of the subject matter, it’s hard to tell whether the reasonable sounding stuff he says is actually right. Lots of things really smart people say sound reasonable but are actually terrible ideas.
Matt, himself, would appreciate that meta-commentary on process and method is valuable. The point of blogging and reading blogs is (or should be) that we people actually learn something. Matt riffing on piracy policy based on a video game doesn’t further that goal. I’m not sure why you feel so strongly that video game-based policy analysis should not be denigrated.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
That’s ridiculous, gcochran. We can see boats, sure, but it’s not like they’re actually, you know, flying skull and crossbones flags. We have to wait until the ship does something piratical; the US can’t afford to go around blowing up ships that we can’t prove were pirate ships. The Indian navy already goofed that way a couple months back.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Piracy has to make a profit to work; terrorism doesn’t. Terrorists don’t have to survive to be successful; pirates do. That’s why pirates have to have safe ahvens, and terrorists don’t.
That’s true but only up to a point. Al Qaeda could just be a loosely organized movement, actually more of a philosophy than any sort of organization, and they would be able to inspire the random nut to blow something up. But 9/11 took a lot of coordination and money. When the Taliban was in charge they let Bin Laden set up an entire infrastructure, where sympathizers all over the world could either a) train to be a better terrorist, b) offer expertise to other aspiring terrorists, or c) send money. You don’t HAVE to have something like that to be an effective terrorist–9/11 could have happened without it–but it sure helps.
Maybe the solution to the Afghanistan/Pakistan safe haven problem isn’t charging in with a lot of troops to lay down the law, because basic insurgency 101 says that you will create more enemies than you kill, but it seems like SOMETHING needs to be done. Perhaps this involves tracking those who move in and out of the area, or stepped up security measures at home, or better human intel, or something.
I’m curious about the Pashtun angle; the Pashtun locals in southern Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan don’t like anarchy, so they support law in the form of the Taliban, who are Pashtuns for the most part. If they are willing to trust Pashtun rule, then maybe the thing to do is make peace with Pashtuns in charge (whether Taliban or other; maybe Pashtun areas could be set up as autonomous regions) and leave them alone if they turn over al Qaeda types. Of course the Northwest Frontier Province and nearby areas are already more or less autonomous zones so maybe this has already been tried. But if you look at a map of restive areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and another map showing where Pashtuns live, it’s basically the same map.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Why is nobody talking about the option of mining all of Somalia’s harbors and ports? If no ships can get in or out, problem solved.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
I guess the reference flew over your head. It was about the 80s movie Wargames, in which a supercomputer was about to start a nuclear war to wipe out the Soviets, but after playing tic-tac-toe applied the same logic to its nuclear scenarios and realized there was no winning plan (because of MAD), and thus aborted its plans. There was no human logic involved in the decision.
Still sounds retarded to me, hard to believe anyone actually dollar peddling that nonsense, but yea, I missed the reference.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
this is a Government created problem. If they didn’t prohibit merchant vessels from arming themselves the problem wouldn’t exist.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
This isn’t a real problem. If it was, we’d be seeing repressentatives from shipping companies threatening to stop using the Suez Canal unless the somali pirate problem is dealt with.
But they’re not, and business at the canal is still chugging along. These pirates haven’t even killed anyone (if they do then a different response would be reasonable). But the idea that we should bomb a sovereign country because 4 people decided to try and hijack a ship (which in this case they failed at) is absolutely insane.
I do think lightly arming these ships isn’t unreasonable though. Create some kind of liscencing system for crew members, have the shipping companies pay for the cost of training and liscencing, and be on our merry way. These guys aren’t Blue Beard’s, they’re a bunch of illiterate punks who clearly have no idea what they’re doing (since they got kicked off the ship by a bunch of unarmed crewmen). They’re a bunch of guys in dingies. You put 2 shots through the bottom of their boat and they’ll be swimming in no time.
And designating military escorts to convoys is also a dumb idea.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
and I meant Black Beard… Bluebeard is a fairy tail character
April 10th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Piracy is easily suppressed. Right now, we’re not even arresting the ones we catch – but we could, you know.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Gcochran– It’s legally permissible to execute pirates at sea. It’s not like they hijacked the ships by accident. We absolutely shouldn’t be arresting the ones we capture. That’s what the bottom of the ocean is for.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Why is nobody talking about the option of mining all of Somalia’s harbors and ports? If no ships can get in or out, problem solved.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I agree with those concerned about armchair analysts wielding arguments from the authority of a period-piece videogame.
My understanding of the pirate menace is that their ships are pitiful in size. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:060318-N-8623S-002.jpg) The transport ships, on the other hand, are immense. It is unclear to me how pirates are able to board the deck when it is many dozens of yards above their heads. Presumably when a target is utterly defenseless, anything is possible.
Those who suggest emplacing miniguns at strategic locations on the ship are surly correct that this would deter a certain percentage of pirates, as such guns would annihilate those skiffs in a matter of seconds.
To address some specific points:
“We can’t arm merchant ships for many reasons. Fear of escalation is one.”
The pirates, facing more fearsome weaponry, will more heavily arm their tiny ships and destroy the merchant vessels? I believe this is confusing piracy with terrorism, an admittedly easy mistake to make. However, pirates (thieves) don’t want to die for nothing (in the corporeal world). Terrorists often don’t mind so much.
It’s true convoys would not work in the least. We’re not trying to pool the world’s resources toward getting guns to Britain — a rather specific trade route. But, speaking of trade routes, this negates the concern that the oceans are simply too big. True, the world’s oceans are vast. However, this misses the point that ships follow routes just like cars follow roads. The gorgeous GPS animation (http://animation.videosift.com/video/Britain-from-above-Ships-crossing-the-English-Channel) of the situation in the English Channel (granted, a funnel which unfortunately exaggerates the point) illustrates the idea that ships follow the same routes all the time and leave much of the ocean irrelevant.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Why does Sid Meier put his name on all his computer games? Who really cares who Sid Meier is? I know it’s an effort to extend his brand or offer a signal of quality in a world of imperfect information or whatever, but it’s not like video game design is known for being a one-man show.
A related question is, who the hell is Tyler Perry and why is his name all over any TV show or movie that he’s involved with?
April 10th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
So, does anyone have ideas about ways of rescuing the captain in the lifeboat? Frogmen underwater at night?
April 10th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
lieutenant governor, FTW.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Great post. I especially like how everyone who objects says, but what about if you do X, or they do Y?? How is that any different from logic-from-videogame? In both cases, you are considering a set of scenarios and assessing them for the strategic implications. The only difference is, the computer simulation does it a bit more rigorously. It may be that it’s 19th-century assumptions don’t match the current situation — but even if you argue that, you are still arguing that your simulation (in your head) is more accurate. Unless you have actual statistical data at hand, it’s basically one simulation versus another. And IMHO, the game’s assumptions sound spot on. To fix the seas, fix the land. Escalation makes everyone worse off, and satellite magic no more works here than it does for the drug trade in the Caribbean.
Again: very nice blog post. I’d say I’m looking forward to a post on the bank bailout based on some banking videogame — but of course, all the mathematical models of the finance mess are already glorified videogames…
April 10th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Actually, mining the Somali coastline would be a great idea. Nothing would get out to sea.
Say we leave a very narrow harbour route(s) open for legit trade and monitor it closely; that could work.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
I love Sid Meier’s Pirates! Hit ‘em with the grapeshot! I also think I remember something about swordfighting while drunk.
“We absolutely shouldn’t be arresting the ones we capture. That’s what the bottom of the ocean is for.”
It’s kind of fun how we start getting all 18th century when we start talking about piracy. Why not, though?
The bright side of all this is that maybe in a hundred years or so Somalia could become as nice as Belize. Everyone’s got to make a living, right? Setting up a system of tribute for the Gulf of Aden might be a nice way to create some kind of stable revenue stream for the Somalian state.
More seriously, piracy is a type of criminal activity that comes pretty close to the activity of the state. Some of these pirate raids go as smoothly as a car getting pulled over and ticketed on the freeway. In the ancient world, piracy was at one time viewed as a respectable living. From a private business’s perspective, dealing with taxation and tariffs is sometimes about the same as dealing with pirates who just want some cash.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Again: very nice blog post. I’d say I’m looking forward to a post on the bank bailout based on some banking videogame — but of course, all the mathematical models of the finance mess are already glorified videogames…
Unfortunately, I think this blog’s host wasn’t even born when M.U.L.E. came out.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Mooser Says:
April 10th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Led, being informed and ready to render an opinion on anything under the sun doesn’t compare to bravery and willingness to defend your country’s honor, which is more than she ever did. And Jimm is headed to Somalia right now to introduce the pirates to the business end of his .357 magnum!
Jimm, our illustrious military has failed miserably at every mission it has been given for years, what makes you think they can catch pirates without you to lead them?
Or are you content to live without honor, Jimm, as the pirate’s butt-boy? Yeah, I was afraid of that.
===========================================================
Sorry dude, but you’re busy using this “put your skin in the game” defense on behalf of a guy (Yglesias) who was in favor of the Irag invasion in 2003.
Are you picking up Lt. Yglesias’ uniforms at the cleaners for him? Didn’t think so
April 10th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
And for everyone who’s saying ‘let’s mine the coast’
Somalia has around 1,800 mile of coastline. These guys are (mostly) operating off straight off the beach, so there’s no chokepoints. And in rubber zodiacs and wooden dhows, so mines don’t work anyway.
April 10th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I love Matt’s inability to grasp history. But he’s played a 1990’s era video game, so he’s an expert.
So let me guess: In the version of reality Matt dwells in, the British Empire did not wipe out piracy in the 18th and early 19th centuries using sailing vessels.
Right. And today, given weapons with pinpoint accuracy, satellites that can track pirate movements, and bombers and missiles that can reach anywhere, we’re helpless.
Perhaps Matt can explain how the British Navy of yore managed the trick that Matt thinks is impossible.
April 10th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Back when Sid first hit it big (the early 80s) video game design was very much a one-man show, which is why the “Sid Meier” name on a game came to mean so much — it was a mark of quality.
Over time, of course, making games became an effort requiring huge teams, and the “Sid Meier’s” brand became a bit like the “Tom Clancy’s” brand — an umbrella covering projects actually executed by an anonymous team whose output is loosely managed by the Great Man. (Civilization II, Colonization, and Alpha Centauri, for example — all games that carried the “Sid Meier’s” brand — were actually designed by Brian Reynolds, a great designer in his own right who has been struggling for years now to establish his own brand independent of Meier.)
April 11th, 2009 at 1:24 am
“ if you are going to bash someone you should actually offer a batter solution for the problem.”
Make a cake!
“ the US can’t afford to go around blowing up ships that we can’t prove were pirate ships”
If only the US gov’t had grasped that basic principle back in 02/03 . . .
April 11th, 2009 at 2:05 am
I think I can take a wild guess, and state with some certainty that the people holding the American hostage in the boat are pirates.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:42 am
To make a long story short, to curb the Somali pirate problem you need to fight them on land.
Actually, no.
How has no one mentioned why these guys turned to piracy en masse in the first place?
The excitement angle is definitely true for a bunch of khat chewing teenagers, but why do we see a bunch of older guys getting in on this?
Somalilanders used to be fishermen. Then Korean and Taiwanese trawlers literally stripped their waters to feed the Japanese market. Look, unless you’re willing to kill them all – their families, not just the pirates – you ought to realize that any military response will only be a temporary solution.
These fishermen live in a country with no natural resources, and no hope of an industrial economy. They will continue to be pirates because otherwise they and their families will starve. Crush the pirates, and you’ll have to do it again in a year and in five years and in ten.
Somalia is a great demonstration of the fact that life is hard and unjust. It should never have been allowed to have such a large population. But it has such a population, and what the hell do you think these people will do if their families are threatened with starvation? And how are they supposed to react when the West, which is so eager to protect foreign oil tankers and container ships, refused to enforce international maritime conventions in support of a sovereign nation too weak to defend itself?
April 11th, 2009 at 4:08 am
“So, does anyone have ideas about ways of rescuing the captain in the lifeboat? Frogmen underwater at night?”
From what I’ve heard on the news, that an American destroyer is close by, I’m not sure why snipers on the destroyer didn’t try to kill the pirates when the captain made his unsuccessful escape attempt.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:51 am
This isn’t true. They typically launch small rafts from fishing or small merchant vessels, not from shore. But that’s beside the point.
The real vulnerability is that there’s a developed piracy infrastructure at a couple of different large-ish ports. They even take some pirated vessels into port and hold the hostages there while negotiating. In port there are accountants and bankers, arms dealers and equipment suppliers. A significant portion of the piracy—the well-organized, larger operations—could be effectively eliminated by taking out the piracy infrastructure at these ports.
As Greg says, however, in the long-term the problem must be solved by stabilizing Somalia and putting those fishermen back to work (and eliminating the piracy that initially preyed upon them, before they embraced it in desperation).
<blockquote>In other words–Matt, are you stoned?
The unthinking claim that a computer game about piracy cannot teach us anything about actual piracy is ignorant. Verisimilitude varies, of course, but there’s a long and distinguished history of computer game simulations making complex real-world interactions more comprehensible. Maxis, the makers of SimCity, saw several of their games used for teaching and even created a simulation, SimRefinery, for training oil refinery personnel.
Pirates, of course, is a variety of simulated naval warfare—a genre of gaming (in a variety of media) that especially has a long history of being utilized by the world’s militaries for teaching purposes. It’s more likely that such a game would teach some important lessons about actual piracy than that it would not.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:31 am
looking forward to Matts take on how Taipan! explains
1)US trade deficit 2)how opium production funds jihad
3)how Wells Fargo exploited “negative debt” to post record profits
April 11th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Like everybody else here, I’ll pretend that I know something about piracy.
Modern cargo vessels normally carry a crew of between 12 and 20. Modern cargo vessels are very big, in fact they are rather like a medium sized skyscraper lain on its side. This makes the vessels very hard to protect and so they are usually taken with 10-15 minutes of the pirates boarding. Crews are rarely aware that their vessel has been boarded until it is too late.
Pirates have access to better weapons than the ships could ever expect to carry. The pirates currently don’t use such weapons because they don’t have to, that would change if conditions change.
Arming merchant vessels is dumb for a number of reasons, not least as been said because of the danger to volatile cargo and fuel, the expense of training, insurance and extra risk to crew. Also, how happy would people be about a ship from Yemen docking at Long Beach if they knew there were RPGs aboard.
Greg, is absolutely right, the West stood by and did nothing while the Somalian offshore fishery was strip mined. Now they are suddenly agitated that the fishermen have found a new profession that feeds their families. If you want to do something about the problem, start there.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Johann Hari has a very interesting perspective on the pirates. If true, it should force us to re-think the situation completely.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30116531
April 11th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Robertson is quite on the mark there.
If piracy cannot be wiped out except through land action, then how the hell did the British Empire wipe out piracy in the entire world with the venerable Royal Navy in the 19th century?
Whichever bleeding-heart liberal who dodges or cannot convincingly answer this question is a bullshit artist.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Send in the Royal Navy!
April 11th, 2009 at 10:54 am
And I would mention that in the 19th century there were a lot more places that were essentially stateless and lawless, and yet the Royal Navy still managed to tell those bastards to suck a big one.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Myles,
Screw your “Royal” navy. Only the Russian Navy can handle these jihadist barbarians. The age of p*ssified Britain is past, the age of Russia is just beginning.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:30 am
One wonders whether a big boat could sail further out to sea than a tiny boat could travel.
Oh yeah! Cheapskates!
April 11th, 2009 at 11:46 am
About the Russian dude: it have doubts, i never spotted a mistake, but he uses only the simplest vocabulary and grammar. For that matter, his English is similarly poor. It could be a teenager from some country.
About convoys: I thing that big majority of ships there are sailing to or from Suez Canal. That would make an average
of 25 ships each way, following the same root along Somalia’s northern coast and then fanning out in 2-3 directions.
The biggest problem in organizing convoys or anything else is that adding a day to the schedule of every ship en-route to Suez Canal could increase shipping costs by more that 0.5 $G.
So far, the damages inflicted by pirates are a small fraction of that.
So economics are roughly like that: decent countermeasures applied to every ship would increase the costs by 10-50k per ship, and pirates attack less than 1 ship per thousands, and inclict a damage/ranson which is on the average a small fraction of a million dollars, or about a million.
Thus humoring them is at least 10 times cheaper than doing something about it.
It is like having pickpockets at a train station.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
If piracy cannot be wiped out except through land action, then how the hell did the British Empire wipe out piracy in the entire world with the venerable Royal Navy in the 19th century?
A. The Royal Navy, along with the French and the Dutch, seized practically the entire coastline of the Eastern Hemisphere, while the Western Hemisphere’s coast was filled with nation-states.
B. Today international trade is a combination of large volume/relatively tiny number of ships. Each ship represents an enormously valuable target. The last time in world history anything like this was the case was during the years of about 1550-1650 when the Spanish were shipping bullion from their colonies. Thus these new container ships and supertankers are too enticing to pass up.
C.(By far most important) The technological situation was completely different. You’ll notice that every pirate ship has two things, an outboard motor and some variant of the RPG.
These give pirate boats (they’re not strictly speaking ships) enormous capability for speed and local firepower that only existed in the last few decades.
Yes, our lead over them is much greater than the lead held by the British in the 19th Century.
Except it’s not; merchant ships were either equipped with steam engines or very fast sailing ability starting around the same time piracy “vanished”. Royal navy ships, despite being an order of magnitude large than their opponents, were equipped with even better speed. Pirate ships were mainly junks, dhows, or galleys – absolutely no match for the RN on the high seas.
The problem is, as I said before, unlike previous pirates, these ones literally must fight or die – by starvation.
Moreover, the firepower of pirate ships on a local level far outstrips is disproportionate to the size of their vessels and crew.
Essentially, like our conflict in Iraq, we face an irregular enemy that is the last gift of the Soviet Union to the world. The cheap and unbreakable weaponry that the Soviets designed to be used by conscripts barreling through the Fulda Gap has now completely saturated the Third World. A lot of these weapons were designed to be used against some of the best shit NATO had. Why is it surprising that they can be used with deadly effect on merchant vessels?
One final note:
The areas that experienced the most piracy during the Age of Sail – the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea/Malayan Straits and the Caribbean – have seen the most resurgence.
I’m sure the final area, the Barbary Coast, would see a similar situation if the King of Morocco and the generals who rule Algeria weren’t despotic.
The British never did wipe out piracy; they just minimized it. They were, in large part, able to do this because international trade was carried by orders of magnitude more merchant ships that were all much smaller than anything we have today.
Now if we lose a boat, it represents potentially hundreds of millions of dollars worth of products. Back then, they could and did lose ships to pirates but that represented a much smaller monetary hit.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Greg, some decent points. But you also leave out significant advantages we possess today that they did not a century ago.
For one, while you used to be able to use the gold bullion stolen, and sell the pirated wine or jewelry or supplies or grain or whatever on the open market, now you cannot. Thus the only thing the pirates get is ransom. And ransom tends to be orders of magnitude smaller than the actual value of stores seized.
And another thing; while the Royal Navy had to shoot at pirates with cannos, now we can just blow them right out of the water with missiles and deny them even a grave.
At one level, it’s a matter of will. You haven’t made the case that we have to tolerate the pirates; in fact you have made the case that we are far stronger placed to deal with the pirates problem today. Rather, you have crawling back to the typical liberal tic of some sort of long-term peaceful solution, even when this can and should be solved militarily.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter what sort of circumstances those Somalis face at home; when you blow every single one of them out of the water they will learn not to mess with the big guns, and try robbing somebody else, perhaps inland, or something, which would not be our concern.
And another thing is, those pirates are very exposed. Machine gun fire would take them out. The Royal Navy did not have machine-guns. They had slow, inaccurate cannons. There is only so much you can do with AK-47’s and RPG’s when your opponent is blowing you right out of the water.
The short-term, and I think, realistic goal can be accomplished isn’t sort of reforming or changing or stopping or doing whatever to the conditions on land that breed piracy; world shipping can hardly wait for such slow minutiae. The urgent task is to make the fight against the Somalis sufficiently punitive to encourage them to exercise their desperate energies elsewhere, preferred somewhere inland in Africa as opposed to out on the shipping lanes.
And I think that is one task which can be accomplished with force. The pirates are not suicidal. Once we tilt the cost-benefit equation in such a direction that a pirate attack would make less sense, when you factor in the potential for not only death (for them it’s cheap) but more importantly the destruction of essential pirating capital (e.g. boats, rockets), than a land attack inland, you will see a lot less pirate attacks.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Also, another logical (and probable) consequence of a heavy and lethal crackdown on pirates, depriving them of their livelihoods, would be immigration away from the Somali coast which currently cannot otherwise sustain its population economy.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
What it amounts to is this: Matt and his like minded fellows cannot tolerate the notion of a machine gun pocked boat with young, dead pirates in the wreckage. Never mind how much death and destruction that young brigand dealt out; it’s the video on CNN Matt can’t take.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Re: What it amounts to is this: Matt and his like minded fellows cannot tolerate the notion of a machine gun pocked boat with young, dead pirates in the wreckage. Never mind how much death and destruction that young brigand dealt out; it’s the video on CNN Matt can’t take.
Especially if those young dead pirates are dark-skinned Muslims. Because we know that dark-skinned Muslims can, of course, do no wrong, poor dears. The problem with Yglesias is that he doesn’t like guns, and he shudders at the idea that it might ever be necessary to kill or die. how horrible, and how thoroughly out-of-date.
The thorough p*ssification of the Western chattering classes is complete, and it is time for the dying West to be superseded by Russia. At least the Russians are not afraid to shoot the hell out of a bunch of jihadist barbarians.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Except it’s not; merchant ships were either equipped with steam engines or very fast sailing ability starting around the same time piracy “vanished”. Royal navy ships, despite being an order of magnitude large than their opponents, were equipped with even better speed. Pirate ships were mainly junks, dhows, or galleys – absolutely no match for the RN on the high seas.
You got a good point here. The rise of the steam ship did a lot to contribute to the decline of piracy. Steamships, compared to sailing vessels are much more capital intensive, harder to maintain, and are tied to resupply by coal (and later bunker oil) networks. In other words, out of the means of most pirates.
But the rise of the marine diesel engine during /after ww2 leveled the playing field considerably, as they are relative cheap, have plentiful fuel options, can be put on the small and fast vessels,
April 11th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
This isn’t true. They typically launch small rafts from fishing or small merchant vessels, not from shore. But that’s beside the point.
The real vulnerability is that there’s a developed piracy infrastructure at a couple of different large-ish ports. They even take some pirated vessels into port and hold the hostages there while negotiating. In port there are accountants and bankers, arms dealers and equipment suppliers. A significant portion of the piracy—the well-organized, larger operations—could be effectively eliminated by taking out the piracy infrastructure at these ports.
Fair enough. The problem is still that this infrastructure, while vulnerable to direct attack, is still rather easy to reconstitute. WIth 1800 miles of coastline and all.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
The thorough p*ssification of the Western chattering classes is complete, and it is time for the dying West to be superseded by Russia. At least the Russians are not afraid to shoot the hell out of a bunch of jihadist barbarians.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
To again take a 19th century approach, you shell those support facilities a few times, and the people working in them start thinking twice about how good a career choice pirate support is.
Or, we can take Matt’s preferred approach, decide that such policies are too draconian, and watch piracy rise, and rise – until something finally does snap, and the reaction in the other direction is truly awful.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
To again take a 19th century approach, you shell those support facilities a few times, and the people working in them start thinking twice about how good a career choice pirate support is.
and
Also, another logical (and probable) consequence of a heavy and lethal crackdown on pirates, depriving them of their livelihoods, would be immigration away from the Somali coast which currently cannot otherwise sustain its population economy.
and
And I think that is one task which can be accomplished with force. The pirates are not suicidal. Once we tilt the cost-benefit equation in such a direction that a pirate attack would make less sense, when you factor in the potential for not only death (for them it’s cheap) but more importantly the destruction of essential pirating capital (e.g. boats, rockets), than a land attack inland, you will see a lot less pirate attacks.
No one ever wants to give up their land. The vast majority of Europeans never tried to get to the US, and so on.
You guys are just not getting it. These people have two choices, both of which lead to death.
Only one of those choices results in getting any money, so they will always go with piracy.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
They won’t always go with piracy if going with piracy brings certain death.
The real problem is that it won’t stop with Somalia. If piracy is shown to pay there, we’ll start seeing it rise elsewhere. It’ll go from being a “small price to pay” near the coast of Somalia to being a major tax on international trade.
At which point I’m sure that Matt will still think it’s hopeless, regardless of how history shows otherwise.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
They won’t always go with piracy if going with piracy brings certain death.
They already face certain death
April 11th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
until something finally does snap, and the reaction in the other direction is truly awful.
I wouldn’t mind that either. Give those stupid Somalis a good beating!
April 11th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Umm, Greg – there are some very, very prosperous towns on that part of the Somali coast now, funded by piracy. They don’t face certain death right now; they face certain profitability.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Myles,
Nonsense. What they need isn’t a good beating, it’s solicitous and welll-intentioned order and discipline. They need to be temporarily governed by a benevolent power who can restore functioning infrastructure, education, social services and industry as well as law and order, and who can rule with an eye only to the good of Somalia itself. Since the United States no longer has much respect for law and order, I suspect the Russians are the only ones up to the task. It may just be their historical mission to advance Somalia the same way they advanced the Kazakhs and Buryats.
April 11th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Apparently the pirates don’t see themselves as pirates – and neither do the Somali population.
Pirates’ Strike a U.S. Ship Owned by a Pentagon Contractor, But Is the Media Telling the Whole Story?
By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports. Posted April 8, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/audits/135716/%27pirates%27_strike_a_u.s._ship_owned_by_a_pentagon_contractor,_but_is_the_media_telling_the_whole_story/
April 11th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Apparently the pirates don’t see themselves as pirates – and neither do the Somali population.
I don’t, and nobody else, give a fuck what the Somalis think of themselves as doing. For I am concerned, they are committing piracy, et ergo they are pirates.
Let me say for the record that Al-Quaeda don’t consider themselves “terrorists” as well; they consider themselves holy warriors. Frankly, nobody gives a fuck what pirates or terrorists think of themselves; for all concerned, pirates and terrorists are simply that, pirates and terrorists.
Stop wasting time ringing up bullshit about whether a thief thinks he is a thief. Is anyone expected to actually take a thief’s self-conception into account? God forbid.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:17 am
I don’t, and nobody else, give a fuck what the Somalis think of themselves as doing.
Which is why they don’t let people like you into the diplomatic corps or military intelligence, or into any officer rank in the combat arms. If you can’t or won’t try to understand how the other guy thinks, you are too stupid to be of any use to them.
Stop wasting time ringing up bullshit about whether a thief thinks he is a thief. Is anyone expected to actually take a thief’s self-conception into account? God forbid
Cops are, if they are any damn good on the street. You would be a danger to yourself and a general menace if you were that narrow-minded and charged with maintaining public order. Of course, you’d be laughed out of the room if you were that block-headed and tried to apply for detective status.
April 12th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Midland, I much doubt the (very successful) Royal Navy cared much about what the pirates they hunted down thought of themselves. They were just targets to be shot, really.
April 12th, 2009 at 10:10 am
And by the way, Richard Steve Hack was insinuating that because of extenuating conditions we should somehow be soft on those bastards; that must resolutely not be the case.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I think it’s become pretty clear that a small, focused, pinpoint attack using tactical nuclear weapons is the only way we can reasonably solve this problem.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Solution to piracy:
1) Install figurehead captains replete with big, fancy uniforms that say, “Captain.”
2) Choose these “Captains” from the pool of execs at AIG’s financial assets trading branch.
3) Implant GPS devices in these “Captains.”
4) Activate missile targeting system upon kidnapping.
The only drawback to this plan is that we will run out of pirates before we run out of “Captains.”
April 12th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Midland, I much doubt the (very successful) Royal Navy cared much about what the pirates they hunted down thought of themselves. They were just targets to be shot, really.
Feel free to read up on the memoirs of successful pirate hunters. Or generals. Cops. It isn’t required that you empathize emotionally with the bad guys. Only that you understand them well enough to predict their actions.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Good evening. It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.
I am from Northern and know bad English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Com book cheap airline flights to some of the worlds favourite destinations.”
Best regards 8-), Benen.