Interesting. It seems some variation of game theory makes an appearance too, as, in your opinion, the best options in order are: international nation-building, do nothing, USA nation-building.

 

The difficulty being that determining the order of best options depends on whose interest is being considered and how they determine their interest. But, yeah.

President Barack Obama says America is “resolved to halt the rise of piracy”. But controlling the problem would require a great many warships. Some 15-20 warships now patrol 1.1m square miles of ocean—roughly the area of the EU. “There is a lot of water out there. Twenty assets does not make much of an impact,” says Commodore Tim Lowe, the British deputy commander of the American-led naval coalition. He says one assessment estimated it would take about 140 warships to secure the Gulf of Aden; several times that would be needed to protect the seas off eastern Somalia.

 

One Western naval officer says placing all the warships under a single command, perhaps of the UN, and adopting the same rules of engagement would help to make them more effective. Ultimately, though, the solution is on land: the creation of a Somali authority to control its territory and patrol its shores. That is a long way off.

 

Perils of the sea