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Originally Posted by jammies
Exactly. The point is that the countermeasures involve committing huge amounts of resources to a fight against an enemy that is more or less getting their resources for free. If they have to steal a trawler to get further out to sea, they will. If they need to put hostages on the ships they are using, they will. If they start getting sniped during negotiatios and need to use deadman's switches and explosives to ensure the hostages always die, they will.
It is very similar to how the US fought in Vietnam - they didn't understand that no matter whether the casualties were 10-1 or 20-1 or 40-1 in their favour, and whether or not they completely controlled the airspace and the cities and most of the countryside, the enemy wasn't willing to fight according to the traditional rules of warfare and wasn't going to give up when they were "beaten" as long as they still had men to fight with and bases to fight from.
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The problem with being a superpower or a 1st world military is that your expected to fight by the rules of war while your enemy isn't. America lost Vietnam because the civilian government wanted to set the objectives of the war, something that they weren't suited to do, and they weren't willing to fight the war it needed to fight. A Special Forces vet once stated that they should have gone out of their way to be inhuman and to scare the hell out of the enemy. To engage in their type of warfare and make the NVA and the Viet cong hear footsteps.
Its the same in this situation. instead of going after the pirates in the boats, they should go after the people that pay them. They should knock down the mansions that these leaders live in. Sneak special forces units in to snatch their families and ransom them off. Plant limpit mines on the bottom of the mother ships and time them for when they return to their ports. You can't fight a conventional war because its the poor dumb son of a bitch of a bitch in a speedboat with an ak-47 that gets cranked and they're easy to replace. But you make it hard to function as a leader or positively detrimental to a leaders existence and you have a chance to break the back of the movement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
With the Somalis, how can you ratchet up the punishment you are willing to deal out high enough to discourage men who are likely to die anyway? I don't think it's possible. Yes, the threat can be mitigated somewhat by attacking their bases and vessels, but in the end the only real way to end the piracy is to end the anarchy that induces men to think that even a remote chance of success is better than a certain death of starvation.
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So how do you do that? You can't throw money at the problem because the money ends up in the hands of the most corrupt? Do you invade and replace the government as it were? These pirate kings or war lords are quite content with their people starving and the lawless country so your going to end up with another insurgency that your not willing to fight on their level.