PIRATES OF THE EMPIRE

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 27 Dec 2008

Vithal Rajan

‘Pirates!’ have formed a popular, even affectionate, theme in British pantomimes, which usually are performed with good-humored laughter around Christmas time. Captain Hook is as much a favourite with children as is Peter Pan. All this is culturally understandable if we remember that piracy, as practiced by Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, started this ‘fog-grit’ North Sea island on the long sea-lane to maritime power, which in turn enabled it to establish the largest empire of all time.

Now this theme is back on the centre-stage of world politics, with all its attractiveness of exotic danger and the snatching of untold wealth. We hear quite extraordinary tales of a rag-bag collection of poor Somali pirates suddenly raging free over the Arabian Sea and near the Horn of Africa, at the very mouth of the Suez Canal, capturing ships and demanding -and getting- huge sums in ransom money. They defy not only the U.S. Fifth Fleet entrenched there with missiles and nuclear capability, but the navies of ten other countries, mostly belonging to NATO. The naval ship to engage them seriously seems to be our brave INS Mysore, which proudly sank a pirate ‘mother ship,’ while all the other navies hung around helplessly.

The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed other extraordinary political events. The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York provided the fuse for a series of military operations across the Middle East. America invaded Afghanistan, and drove out the benighted Taliban, but so far has not effected stable regime change in that war-torn country. Next, Iraq was invaded in the mythical search for weapons of mass destruction, and the unlamented Saddam Hussein captured and executed. Again, American occupation has produced no stability, but only further exacerbated sunni-shia relations.

These unparalleled invasions of countries that were not at war with America, or attacking them in any sense, were justified by the bald statement that America was acting in the interests of the civilized world, and that all it was doing was flushing out terrorists. Few world leaders had the guts to point out that the religious passions of these selfsame semi-literate tribal terrorists had been inflamed by the Americans themselves, and that the terrorists were funded, trained and armed by America to fight the Soviet Union and the communist menace to unbridled capitalist greed. Once the Soviet Union was destroyed, America turned to protect its real interests in the Middle East.

George W. Bush’s war in the Middle East was but a logical follow-through for a well-planned American strategy to gain complete control over the Middle East’s great oil and gas reserves. It had already secure control over Saudi Arabia, its loyal client, where the greatest reservoirs of oil are to be found. When Saddam Hussein was gullible enough to be drawn to attack Kuwait, America got its chance to launch its first Gulf War under the elder Bush, establishing control over the oil-rich little sheikdom of Kuwait.

Its action in walking into Kosovo was not inspired by any humanitarian urge to protect Muslims there, as its media hype would have it; it was in its strategic interest to shut out Russia from the Balkans. Its rabid denunciation of ‘Islamism’ should lay to rest any doubts on that point. The ‘change’ that Obama will usher into the White House will in no way change its hostile stance towards Iran, which since the ouster of the hated Shah, has kept out of the American ring of influence, but for how long is not yet known.

These military actions of America are very much in keeping with its history of attacking and controlling smaller countries in Latin America and the Caribbean since the early days of the 19th century. No international law or fear of censure has ever stayed America’s hand from using force when it could do so safely in its own national interests. Within recent memory it has attacked independent Grenada, merely because it did not like the man who came to power there. Careless of the concept of national sovereignty it raided Panama, captured its president, Noriega, till recently its own man, and brought him to trial in its own courts. Lately, it has coined the obscure phrase, ‘extreme rendition,’ for the brazen kidnapping of people it suspects from foreign countries, and subjecting them to torture in other client countries.

All this is to say merely that the United States of America acts like an imperial power, and the rest of the world’s powers tacitly acknowledge that most of the world’s people live either within the American empire or in its shadow. How, then, can we account for the impotence of its Fifth fleet, defied repeatedly by a bunch of poor Somali pirates?

The US Fifth Fleet, it seems, restrains itself from entering Somalian waters in pursuit of pirates, though no such restraint is shown by American troops in their hot pursuit of the Taliban into friendly Pakistan. The British do not even wish to engage the pirates at sea. It seems the British Foreign Office has instructed the Royal Navy to stay clear of pirates in case any of them should ask for asylum and thenceforth be a burden on the state. The British government has shown few scruples in throwing out war-decorated Gurkhas, despite their undisputed services to England.   

When the Danish bulk cargo ship, the Danica White, was hijacked in June 2007, the USS Carter Hall tried to intercept it but could not follow it into Somali waters. The US Navy had suddenly become conscious of international laws, and desisted from attacking pirates, who are regarded in law as hostis humani generi, or in simple words, ‘the enemies of humanity’.

Later in April 2008, these daring pirates hijacked the French yacht, Le Ponant, and then the Ukrainian ship MV Faina, carrying a shipload of arms. The pirates even fought off a challenge from the missile destroyer USS Howard. Shades of Captain Blood! On November 15, 2008, the pirates seized Aramco’s supertanker, MV Sirius Star, as heavy as three American aircraft carriers, and carrying 300,000 tonnes of crude, worth 100 million dollars. The ransom fixed for ship, its crew and oil, is a mere 15 to 25 million dollars, which any of the owners are prepared to pay in haste.

Apparently, the modus operandi is simple: money in small denominations is sent over in sacks, which are taken to the hijacked ship in a boat, and simply handed over. Then the hijack is over. Most times several intermediaries are involved, including law firms in Europe. A Spanish ship-owner is reported as saying, “Sometimes one wonders whether the pirates are really in Somalia or perhaps in London.”

The navies of the world also seem to have insuperable tactical problems when facing pirates. Commodore Keith Winstanley of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy is reported to say helplessly: "The pirates will go where we are not. If we are patrolling in the Gulf of Aden, they’ll go to Mogadishu. If we are in Mogadishu, they will be in the Gulf of Aden."

“The pirates are fast, professional people," holds French Vice Admiral Gérard Valin. The Russians are demanding a ‘limited coastal action to extinguish the pirate strongholds’ in Somalia, which in 2008 alone have perpetrated 95 such dastardly attacks on the world’s shipping.

We are informed that 95% of the world’s goods are transported by ships, most of which use the Suez Canal, sailing past Bab Al-Mandab, or the ‘Gate of Tears’ at the very southern tip of the Red Sea, making it so easy for pirates. Ship-owners and oil companies are threatening to abandon the Suez Canal all together, and take the ancient route round the Cape of Good Hope, adding around a million dollars more to transportation costs of oil. Everyone anywhere hates oil price rises and the United Nations Security Council was seen to be acting in everybody’s interest when in June 2008 it unanimously authorized its nations to enter Somali waters to suppress piracy. It followed up this declaration by passing resolution 1838 in October calling on nations with navies to use military force when needed.

So by universal consensus the world’s nations are accepting the hard fact that perhaps, just perhaps, American bases need to be established permanently on the eastern coast of Africa, in everybody’s interest, of course. This removes the opprobrium of conquest, and prevents such denunciations as followed the start of the Gulf Wars. History works in the interests of empire.

Such farfetched conclusions seem to find support in conservative British opinion: Ex-SAS officers are employed to deliver ransom payments to pirates who are reported to behave ‘like perfect gentlemen.’ US Navy ships are said to enjoy friendly relations with the pirates, who were once ‘invited aboard a US Navy ship for a cup of coffee and a smoke, while the Americans showed gang members national flags of ships that should be left alone.’  

American conservative opinion tells us how the British managed to fight piracy in the 19th century when they ruled the waves. Britain, it seems, ‘learned from experience that "covenants without swords" were useless, and that the sheiks would stick to their treaty obligations only if "enforcement bases" were set up. Hence Britain found itself becoming a major power in the Middle East, with a colony and base in Aden, other bases up and down the gulf, and a network of treaties and protectorates with local rulers, whose heirs were educated at the British School of Princes in India.’  Britain did sign a treaty with the sheikdoms along the Trucial Coast in the Persian Gulf, recognizing their independence, but by 1892 imposed another treaty reducing them to protectorates.  

So there we have it, that is what is going to happen soon to Somalia and perhaps a few other African countries in the region, but under the new American Empire, and in the cause of protecting world trade.

Conspiracy theories are obnoxious to the liberal mind, not needed to explain the development of history. All that was needed in this instance, to expedite the establishment of American bases on the African coast, was that the navies should do the least to suppress the menace of piracy. World indignation, fear for trade, a request from the United Nations that force should be used followed as a matter of course, and soon there shall be the bases, nicely completing the protective American ring round what is now its Middle East oil reserves.

Notes:

1)  Der Spiegel, 24 November 2008.
2)  Ibid
3)  Aidan Hartley, The Spectator, December 3, 2008.    
4)  The Wall Street Journal , 6 October 2001.
5)  Aramco’s World, November/December 1973.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 27 Dec 2008.

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