Shiver Me Timbers

No, it’s not International Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s just that I’ve seen another indicator that we as a planet are taking great strides backwards into history. I happened upon a story on Intermanager, a site for ship owners, about a plan to deploy a fleet of private ships to protect cargo vessels from the Somali pirates.

Somalia, the long term East African basket case, is home to enterprising individuals who are making money kidnapping and ransoming ships' crews. They have invested in ever larger boats and are roaming farther offshore in pursuit of commercial vessels. Five years ago the pirates hadn’t ventured more than 200 miles off the coast, but this year they have attacked ships over 1,000 miles out. The naval forces of several countries are patrolling the region, but they can’t quite put a lid on the piracy. Short of some kind of massive long term intervention in Somalia I doubt they will ever be able to eliminate it.

The insurance companies seem to realize this, and so it’s back to the swashbuckling days of old. The Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT) insurance-brokerage firm is organizing what it calls the Convoy Escort Program (CEP). It will start out with patrol boats manned by private security forces escorting vessels through the Gulf of Aden. They will be heavily armed, but with no “fixed machine gun positions.” How long the Somali pirates will tolerate this before they escalate to heavy weapons is uncertain. They already carry rocket propelled grenades. I can see this developing into an arms race, with shoulder launched rockets being met by small bore artillery, and so on, to the limits of the international arms market.

I take special note of this development because so much of our economic life is dependent upon globalization. Globalization, in turn, is dependent upon a number of assumptions, among which are cheap bunker fuel and safe passage across the oceans. Neither of these assumptions is solid these days. Oil has definitively passed the $90 mark and could head past $100 without too much provocation. Safe passage for cargo ships is a realistic assumption across most of the globe, but it is shredding around the edges.

The South China Sea is home to a swarm of pirates. Some of them are simple waterborne muggers, while others hijack fuel tankers and sell the fuel in ports where they have bribed local customs officials. The South China Sea is important because it carries much of the China trade to and from the Indian Ocean, plus 80% of cargo destined for Japan, plus about 15% of the world oil supply. As mentioned above, a swath of the Indian Ocean from the west coast of Africa to the Persian Gulf is under threat, including the coastlines of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman.

Anti-piracy efforts are hampered by pirate safe havens such as Somalia. There are gaps and conflicts in maritime law concerning piracy, overlapping claims to territorial waters, and extraneous political maneuvering that interferes with international cooperation. No straightforward solution seems to be forthcoming. Our period of unrestricted global shipping may be slowly drawing to a close. I can’t imagine global shipping shutting down, but security and fuel issues could make it much more expensive, slower, and less sure.

Letting my imagination run a bit, but only a little bit, I can foresee a time when cargo ships rely on wind once more and when cargo is only as safe as a set of well trained gun crews can make it. Perhaps it’s time to for shipping companies to start reading Patrick O’Brian on the vagaries of privateering and the management of armed cargo vessels.



Comments

[Brian Hipwell]

Currently there are over two hundred ships 'captured' by these scurvy knaves...argh. Some of these ships have been held prisoner for years. Their crews are still hostages. I doubt that 'civilized people' are aware of the magnitude of these actions. Africa is home to the most failed countries in the world. Eastern Europe follows next.

It's just great to be an American.....home of the LARGEST ARMY in the world, (count all the hunters and legal gun owners).