Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
So you broadcast one message on a radio band that you know that the pirates use, you declare a 1000 mile maritime exclusion zone, and anything that enters the zone with no permission is killed without warning.
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You do realize this is one of the busiest maritime traffic zones in the world? There are literally thousands of vessels in the Straits at any time, including smaller ships like trawlers and pleasure craft, so how are you going to enforce this exclusion zone? You'd need half the US fleet to even try, and that's going to cost far too much money considering the dubious return on value you're going to get.
The problem is that all you need is a couple aluminum boats with decent size engines and some AK-47s to start your pirate career there - so maybe a few thousand dollars at most - compared to billions of dollars for a warship and millions of dollars a month to keep it on station. Realistically the only way to permanently eradicate the pirates is to remove their base of support, which means imposing order on the country from the outside.
Since, as has been said, the Americans aren't going to try again as they got the crap kicked out them the first time, the only option I can see is picking the least offensive of the warlords and backing him to take over the place and end the chaos. Of course this isn't easy to do properly and we really COULD use the expertise of the Russians in skulduggery to make such a strategy effective... if they cared about the piracy, which they don't.