A crisis, as Barack Obama has frequently observed, may also be an opportunity. Obama’s reference was to the worldwide economic plunge, but it also applies to global diplomacy. The explosion of piracy off the Horn of Africa is a perfect case in point: a rare opportunity, shrouded in crisis, that could open a new chapter in geopolitics – and give new life to its principal but demoralized institution, the United Nations.
Put simply, the UN should take command of a multinational airborne campaign against piracy, with a clear mandate and the necessary firepower to secure peace on the high seas.
After years of haphazard and ineffectual UN peacekeeping missions, a step toward serious international maritime policing is likely to attract broad support. It would cost far less than the current expedient of disjointed, scattered naval patrols, replacing them with a rapid-action strikeforce that could bring the piracy crisis to a decisive halt.
A BASE 20 MINUTES AWAY
There is no need to search for a multinational operations center. For the past seven years, French and U.S. army, navy and airborne forces have leased bases on the Horn of Africa from the small nation of Djibouti, a former protectorate of France that gained its independence in 1977. The bases lie at the entrance to the Gulf Aden, less than 200 miles from the international waters off of Puntland, the semi-autonomous province of Somalia from which the vast majority of pirates launch their attacks.
Supersonic air power is the only feasible way to police these 1.1 million square miles of strategic waters. One naval expert estimates that several hundred warships would be necessary to cover an area that size. The current haphazard fleet at the task numbers 20.
The successful liberation of Captain Richard Phillips on April 12 by U.S. Navy Seals on the destroyer Bainbridge, which steamed to the aid of the beleaguered freighter Maersk Alabama in six hours and found the ship itself recovered by its crewmen, cannot be viewed as a useful precedent.
More often, it can take a warship a day or more to reach the site of a reported attack, by which time pirates are in control of a targeted merchant vessel and its entire crew, making military action inadvisable.
Captain Phillips was the sole Maersk Alabama hostage, and however skilled the Navy sharpshooters may be, luck played a key part in bringing down his three captors with three nearly simultaneous shots. One miss would probably have resulted in Phillips’ death and a public relations debacle for the Obama Administration, which ordered the rescue attempt, as well as a setback for the battle against piracy in general.
By contrast, jet aircraft scrambled from a UN installation at Djibouti could be over the scene of most assaults in less than 20 minutes, before hostage-taking is underway. A single missile from an American F-15, French Mirage or Russian Sukhoi fighter would almost certainly put paid to the pirates, and with them the absurd picture of a major world shipping lane – transited annually by 20,000 freighters and tankers – at the mercy of primitive outboard motor boats equipped with small arms. Since January 2008, Somali pirates have attacked at least 180 ships and seized 60 of them.
The legal framework for air strikes has been in place since last year. Security Council Resolution 1816, adopted unanimously in June, authorized UN member states to use “all necessary means…to repress acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia.”
Naval vessels from the United States, Russia and France have participated in UN-authorized patrols on the Gulf of Aden and the western Indian Ocean for months, along with warships from other NATO and European Union states, China, Japan, India and Malaysia.
In short, the usually antagonistic NATO, Moscow and Beijing are already engaged in unprecedented combined military operations offshore from the Horn, but with far less satisfactory results than could be achieved from the air.
THE LOGIC FOR JOINT ACTION
Although significant tensions still divide East from West, they are united as never before in the need to combat threats to global trade, concerns that are as crucial to China and Russia today as they are to the United States, Japan and Europe.
On a regional level, Saudi Arabia, which sends much of its oil through the Gulf of Aden and boasts a first-rate airforce, would be an essential addition to the proposed UN squadrons. Down the road, if the global community is ready to think even more creatively, it might consider a role for Iran and – why not? – for the most sophisticated air power in the Middle East, Israel.
Everyone has something to gain, even more from the foreign relations breakthrough as from safer seas. The natural cornerstone for a genuine “new world order” lies here, and the use of joint force in defense of trade could be an immense stride forward to an era of greater cooperation.
Logistically, the plan would not be difficult to implement. Each southbound merchant ship exiting the Suez Canal could be provided with basic, dedicated communications gear preset to transmit a mayday signal directly to the Djibouti base.
The composition and command hierarchy of the squadrons could be alternated on a rotating basis, with three or four nations – carefully scheduled for diplomatic balance – participating at a time. Aircraft employing mid-level technology (American F-15s rather than F-16s, for instance, and their 1990s French, British and Russian counterparts) would be sufficient, without exposing more recent state-of-the-art military secrets to security leaks.
Acting unilaterally, each of 24 nations that sponsored the UN anti-piracy resolution faces two alarming risks: assuming longterm responsibility for a huge policing task, and carrying the full weight of blame if something goes wrong. Acting together, in the common interest, they neutralize both.
PRECEDENTS
There are precedents, good and ill, for broad intervention and a rotating multinational military hierarchy. The most notable was the United Nations Protection Force in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNPROFOR), which put the ground troops of 38 nations under a commanding general from India, who was succeeded in turn by a Swede and a Frenchman.
I can speak with uncomfortable authority on one of its few successes. In 1992, renegade militiamen took me and Dutch photographer Jeremy Stigter captive in the ruins of Vukovar, a Croatian city that had been leveled by Yugoslav artillery and occupied by Serb insurgents. A UN company of Royal Jordanian legionaires led by Russian officers was rushed in to surround the building where we were held, and a Russian colonel and a Swedish diplomat negotiated our release.
Without that tri-nation cooperative effort, Stigter and I might not be alive to tell the story.
On the negative side, UNPROFOR never won approval for full-scale military action or the use of weaponry to match the arsenals of the war’s combatants. The Serb militiamen at Vukovar were armed only with assault rifles, and it was sheer chance – like the three remarkable shots by the Navy Seals on the Bainbridge – that a Russian officer was near enough to have watched our capture through binoculars.
A UN anti-piracy campaign must have an unambiguous mission and real teeth, or it too will founder. But given the mandate and the means, air operations off the Horn of Africa could redeem the very concept of international policing.
Frank Viviano – barganews staff reporter – World View CBS5
While I do think that “international policing”, has tremendous merit, indeed Canada has long been a supporter of and a participant in NATO and UN police forces around the world, I would submit that unleashing “Supersonic air power” on pirates would require a certain nuance at best.
“A single missile from an American F-15, French Mirage or Russian Sukhoi fighter would almost certainly put paid to the pirates”
Yes and a single missile would also destroy a small fishing boat mistaken for pirates as well.
I have to say that as I watched the freighter Maersk Alabama scenario unfold I more than once found myself saying; “why can’t we just blast these guys out of the water!!”? Which is not a normal response from me. But I have also heard much in recent days about ship owners working on alternative means to protect their ships from pirate attacks, and not a single one included guns. Water canons, slippery foam sprayed on decks, and devices that could deliver audible messages that could be heard for several miles warning that any ship (pirate or fishing) that came close would be treated as pirate ship, are but a few of the suggestions.
My take on this is that “supersonic air power” may not be the only solution.
Two points, caro Beauly. First, the suggestion is not at all to put guns into the hands of merchant sailors, which would only lead to needless bloodshed. It is to send professionally trained fliers over the reported scene of an assault as quickly as possible. The second point is made by that word “reported” — the squadron would be responding to a ship in distress, and not idly patrolling for “suspicious” vessels that may turn out to be fishing boats. It’s worth reiterating that a unanimous UN resolution, backed by the entire Security Council, has endorsed using “all means necessary” to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia. Air power is the most effective, most rapid, least costly answer. But far more important is the potential precedent of an international body, backed by such normally antagonistic powers as Russia, NATO and China, undertaking police action in the common defense of mutual interests. Opportunities like this present themselves very, very rarely. No one can afford the ridiculous spectacle of world trade held at ransom by a few speedboats full of small-time thugs. Every contemporary head of state, from Moscow and Beijing to Brussels and Washington — including Mr. Harper up there in Ottawa — recognizes this, and is on board for joint operations. A fleet of 20 warships from 20 countries already proves it. Air power would simply improve, quite significantly, on an existing mandate.
Yes fviviano. I did not take there to be a suggestion of guns aboard… way too much hassle for ship owners and ships… refused in certain ports if carrying arms etc.
Also I did pick up on the “reported” aspect, in fact that was the main point I was driving at. When a ship equipped with special communications gear has a group of pirates swarming up the side, or at least along side, call out for the air support. What happens then? Within minutes the F-15’s are screeching over head, now what? I did like the idea that of using the super sonic megaphone that would shout out in 100’s of languages to surround boats (fishing and potential pirates) that if any one of them came near a ship passing through that they would be ‘considered’ to be a pirate ship and treated as such.
Your point about;
“the potential precedent of an international body, backed by such normally antagonistic powers as Russia, NATO and China, undertaking police action in the common defense of mutual interests.”
This is where things are very interesting… because I think that you are suggesting that the Pirate effort could almost be an excuse to bring together an otherwise antagonistic group… in a “common” cause… which would have far broader implications (positive) than dealing with small groups of desperates invloved in piracy.