Similar, But Not...

According to Douglas R. Burgess Jr. who has an op-ed today in the New York Times, piracy is terrorism. This wasn't hard to see coming. The article takes an interesting path towards coming to that conclusion, it suggests the legal rule set to fight piracy is broken, but the legal rule set to fight terrorism works. Piracy and terrorism look the same, so they must be the same, right? Hmm...

Are pirates a species of terrorist? In short, yes. The same definition of pirates as hostis humani generis could also be applied to international organized terrorism. Both crimes involve bands of brigands that divorce themselves from their nation-states and form extraterritorial enclaves; both aim at civilians; both involve acts of homicide and destruction, as the United Nations Convention on the High Seas stipulates, “for private ends.”

Yes, there are similarities between pirates and terrorists, but there are also major differences. Martin Murphy wrote an excellent paper last year for the Navy Review at the Naval War College that discussed the differences. First he outlines piracy.

Piracy is a crime defined by geography that requires the presence of other factors, such as a permissive political environment, cultural acceptability, and the opportunity for reward, in order to flourish. Since the end of World War II such combination's have occurred in only a relatively few places: around parts of Southeast Asia and in the Bay of Bengal; off East and West Africa; and in a few ports of and off some stretches of coastline around South America. Most of the factors that encourage and sustain piracy are enduring. Although it can spring up in places where it has not been a problem historically—the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia, for example—it is generally the case that unless local or national leaders find reasons and resources to suppress it, piracy can persist in such areas, sometimes for centuries.

He also outlines terrorism.

Although we are living in an era when some terrorist groups are prepared to embrace annihilation as a legitimate objective, the age-old hunt for publicity, the “propaganda of the deed,” remains the primary objective of any terrorist group. In a world of mass, global communication, maritime terrorism need not, unlike piracy, be defined by geography. That it has been so defined, however, is due to the fact that (with the exception of al-Qa‘ida) the groups that have employed it so far have been, like most insurgent groups, geographically specific. Furthermore, few maritime targets have propaganda value, and the groups interested in using the sea have not yet found a cost-effective way of generating desired effects from those that do. Even the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), fighting for an independent Tamil homeland on Sri Lanka and drawing much support from the Tamil “diaspora” around the world, have not undertaken terrorist acts outside home waters.

That is a really interesting paper, about 20 pages and worth the read if you are among the confused. Do we really want to legally treat the acts of lethal intention associated with terrorism against civilians that leverages propaganda in the information space towards a political gain... the same as the non-lethal intent of hostage taking for profit?

Isn't this kind of like comparing "Whale Wars" with "Al Qaeda?" Terrorism is complex, piracy really isn't.

I don't think confusing the intent of enemy action and deluding the definition of terrorism is the best way to approach the real problem laid out in Douglas R. Burgess Jr.'s NYT op-ed, which is the broken legal rule sets associated with piracy today. I also don't understand why Mr. Burgess thinks the legal rule sets associated with terrorism are working well enough to be the answer, because I think Mr. Burgess forgot we still have problems there too. Confusing the definition of both will probably result in less effective rule sets for both.

Seems to me we should define both piracy and terrorism better, and produce legal rule sets accordingly.