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Capturing the bad guys may be the easy part.
At 530 on a quiet Saturday morning, 5 Nomber 2005, a hail of automatic weapons fire rained down on the Seabourn Spirit. Piercing the hull, a rocket-propelled grenade crashed into a cabin of the luxury cruise ship. For the 302 passengers and crew, there was no police or coastguard to provide immediate assistance. They were under attack by pirates in international waters and far from help. Despite the damage, the ship was able to evade her persuers.
Less than a year later, a dhow plying the ancient trade route between India and Africa was taken over in international waters by ten Somali pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles. Fortunately for the 16 Indians on board, there was a U.S. warship nearby. When the USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81) encountered the besieged dhow, her immediate mission was clear: gain control of the vessel and detain the pirates.
Once the pirates were in custody, the way ahead became less clear as the destroyer's commanding officer, and more broadly, the American government and the international community confronted the myriad diplomatic and legal challenges of piracy suppression in the 21st century. Who would investigate and prosecute the case? Where would the pirates be held, and by whom? What about the Indian crew members, all of them witnesses to the crime, and what would happen to their ship and cargo?
The successful interdiction by the Churchill sparked a global effort to develop a modern playbook for confronting piracy. In the United States, the Bush administration began to develop a policy consistent with national maritime strategy, which culminated in a comprehensive piracy policy governing diplomatic and legal action and signed by President George W. Bush in 2007. This establishes a framework for warships that encounter or interrupt acts of maritime piracy and armed robbery at sea, as well as for agencies charged with facilitating the prosecution of perpetrators and the repatriation of victims and witnesses. But because much of the ocean's surface is beyond state jurisdiction, effective piracy repression demands international action and coordination.
The Response
Since 2006, the United Nations and its agency for maritime matters, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), have aggressively confronted piracy. This action...