Insurance rates may be rising again for shippers, at least those wild enough to test the waters around the Horn of Africa. As Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff put it a few days ago, the Somali pirates’ seizure of the Saudi ship Sirius Star was shocking not so much for the size of the target—a supertanker—but the range of the action—400 miles southeast of Mombasa (I spell, Mike-Oscar-Mike...)* The Times of London reports today that Maersk, the world's largest shipping company, has announced that it would reroute, for the time being, its tankers around the Cape of Good Hope, rather than risking passage near the Horn to make use of Suez. The problem may indeed be getting out of hand.
Sentiment against paying tribute seems to be rising. The Saudi and British foreign ministers separately observed yesterday, admittedly unnecessarily, that paying pirates’ ransom demands may recover ships and crews, but absolutely encourages more piracy. One merchant captain, Russell Davies of Interorient Line, told the Wall Street Journal this week that he would welcome privateer marines aboard his ship. Blackwater has already proposed just that. After all, the pirates have been bold and splendidly equipped with Kalashnikovs, but they have also been stupid. On the 18th, a Somali pirate ship, hailed for inspection, threatened to blow up the Indian frigate Tabar. The Indians sank the opposite quickly with heavy gunfire.
Call that a red shirt demonstration, like the kind from the opening of a Star Trek episode. More governments are beginning to take a firm line against this sort of behavior. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Egyptian government is conferring with neighboring ones over what to do about the problem. The UN Security Council has approved more sanctions, for what that’s worth. The Moscow Times reports that the Russian Navy will keep the frigate Neustrashimy off the Horn, to which she was dispatched after pirates captured the Ukrainian freighter Faina, loaded with Russian tanks, in September. Her 100 millimeter main gun will be more than enough for any vessel the pirates put to see. The Royal Swedish Navy plans to send the corvettes Stockholm and Malmö, and the support ship Trossö to the Horn for a cruise from April to July of next year. The aim is specifically to protect World Food Program shipments into Somalia, but pirates are fair game for anyone on the high seas.
What’s fascinating, from an Anglo-Saxon perspective, is that the Swedes are recruiting sailors for the mission, presumably because this sort of duty falls outside the terms of service for the draftees who typically comprise half the complement of Swedish ships. The issue is another illustration of the need in Europe to devolve more territorial defense and security roles to home guard and militia forces, and to professionalize fully air and naval forces. A navy tethered to the shore is really just a coast guard.
A navy that can range cost-effectively across the global commons to deter or defeat threats as these, however, is quite a navy, no matter how small. There haven’t been many engagements in the past few decades like those of 1916 or 1942, but there have been a few like those of 1799 (the Quasi War with France, for example). What sorts of ships might a navy want for those, were it still interested in participating the big fight, in being more than a coast guard? It could call the shipbuilders, or it could even just take out an advertisement:
In short, the classic frigate, in the Patrick O’Brien sense, updated for the 21st century. That’s not to denigrate the importance of missile cruisers and aircraft carriers. It’s just to point out that most navies have relatively shifted from ordering destroyers to frigates, and from frigates to corvettes. We are likely to see more of this in the future, for there is no job more easily agreed upon as a naval priority than the suppression of piracy.
Meanwhile, USS Freedom, the first littoral combat ship (frigate, corvette, whatever) is making its way across the Lakes toward the Atlantic. None too soon.
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*If you don’t get the joke, ask any US Navy officer above the rank of lieutenant commander. And incidentally, I would understand the name Sirius, and the term Dog Star, but Sirius Star? Isn’t that redundant?
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