Piracy Is Only Partially a Shore-based Problem

Herb Carmen, the Navy's Thinker in Residence at the Center for a New American Security and someone whose work I am coming to enjoy, has written a blog post that Tom Ricks has picked up on his Foreign Policy blog here.

All is well thus far for the unsuspecting reader--except that I was led to Ricks' post by a post by Carmen on Facebook in which he links to Ricks' post. Carmen appends the link with the following comment: "Gotta look ashore to stop piracy at sea."

I've heard this line of thinking before, and Martin Murphy (another friend, though not on Facebook) is growing prosperous as its leading proponent. That said, when I hear it, I cringe, not because it isn't partially true--because it is. But it has become one of those DC area "truths" that has become so firmly fixed in the lexicon of the piracy discussion that it is not often critiqued for completeness. More insidious though, is the fact that I have on more than one occasion--in person and on television--witnessed uniform wearing flag officers of the world's most powerful Navy hew to this line, generally in response to a question about "what is the Navy going to do about this?" Not wishing to get drawn into the argument/discussion of piracy as force structure driver, the flag officer tends to try and diminish the impact that Naval forces actually have on the problem, pointing rather to their organization, funding and logistics ashore.

I have used the line (which I alone seem to find funny) that calling piracy a shore-based problem is a little like the DC Chief of Police describing an open-air drug market as a "foreign policy problem". At some level of abstraction, the Chief of Police is correct--as are Carmen, and Murphy, and the unnamed flag officers. But at the level of action and consequences, that drug market is a local police issue, and piracy is an issue for sea-based forces. Will all the action take place at sea? No. Will capturing and killing pirates at sea have an impact? Absolutely. Empty chairs at pirate dinner tables (a.k.a the removal of incentives) whether through incarceration or expiration will serve as a message to others looking to join in the fun. Will forces from the sea likely be a large part of whatever action occurs ashore? Yes. Are such activities likely to be planned largely by representatives of the maritime forces? Yes.

Piracy has become the issue that "jumped the shark", taking us from a paradigm in which Jointness worship has been replaced by Interagency worship, the evidence of which can be seen in Naval Officers of various ranks not seeing the importance of OWNING a mission that is some ways is at the heart of the birth of all navies. The "piracy is a land-based" problem is tailor-made for the "Interagency", giving all sorts of opportunities for "root cause" discussions, diplomacy and development, and international cooperation. None of this is bad, mind you. None of it. What is bad is that the Navy seems content to join the orchestra, when it should be conducting it.

Bryan McGrath