Adding Context to Piracy Debate

In most of the current debate about piracy, there's been one thing missing: any serious context. To wit: how many pirate attacks happen per year? How much money is extorted? What are the trend lines? (See here, to start.) Why are shipping companies still traversing the Gulf of Aden instead of exploring alternative shipping routes, where possible? Is it, as CATO's Peter Van Doren suggests, merely a "nuisance tax" on shipping? Is it a second order-distraction to the more important items on the U.S. agenda, as Stephen Walt argues? Or is it an intolerable threat to the global commons that demands shelling Somalia's coastline, as hinted at by Tom Mahnken?

Despite the mythologizing of the U.S. response to Barbary piracy, the U.S. paid off the Barbary Coast pirates under two U.S. administrations until the cost/benefit analysis finally tipped in favor of attacking them. We may well be at the point where it's wiser to bomb pirate hideaways on land than to employ other measures. Unlike jihadists, who can't be deterred, military action might raise the costs enough to make pirates think twice. But let's at least have a full accounting of the costs and benefits before the shelling begins.

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Photo of the Bombardment of Algiers via Wiki Commons.