Ships coming through the Gulf of Aden to reach African ports south of it are advised to head east until they were south of India (past the Maldives) before heading south, and then head due west to reach their destination. It's really expensive advice though, and not everyone follows it.
I was on the USS Momsen's VBSS team in the Gulf of Aden back in 2010-2012. We showed up with overwhelming force and they knew they'd survive if they didn't fight back. It was relatively safe and boring. We had protection from our reputation.
I think the US Navy's reputation has been squandered in the last year and I've worried it would make VBSS a lot more dangerous.
Edit: we also didn't hear much from the Houthis while I was there. Things got worse in Yemen after my time.
https://www.maritime.dot.gov/msci/2025-012-red-sea-bab-el-ma...
These types of actions are not perfect, they cannot stop everything, so you still see successful attacks happen.
And no one wants to try to intervene in Somalia itself. The world tried that in the 90s and got completely burned.
So the answer is that "other countries are not allowing it" in the same way that no country allows murder, and yet it still happens.
America was the global hegemon. Under the "rules based order", where America safeguarded international trade in exchange for having the US Dollar at the center, we had the largest period of stability the world has seen.
Now that everyone wants to displace America, we're pluging back into chaos. America is abdicating its role and turning into an isolationist power.
There's going to be an increase in war as countries try to claim territory and resources.
Piracy and blockades will come back. Trading alliances and trading blocs will form.
The world will turn into a powder keg. This time with nukes.
The vacuum left behind as America shuts itself off will create lots of power struggles. There will be a lot of trade disruption to energy, goods, and food inputs. It's also going to be incredibly violent.
> ...America is abdicating its role and turning into an isolationist power.
Good thing America is one singular entity with everyone living in it both equally benefiting from it and also responsible for it's current state.
What we are seeing is neoliberalism gone rancid and the predictable fallout.
The crew are rarely trained and equip to respond to an armed attack. If they have anyone to defend the ship, at most it's a handful of mercenaries hired for the high risk part of the trip.
For instance in the last (Somali) attack before this, a Maltese flagged tanker was boarded, and a Spanish warship arrived the next day and retook the ship.
That said, when mercenaries are defending a ship, it's often trying to stop a small runaway boat loaded with explosives. It's a very small moving target they have to hit with little time. Meanwhile the small boat just needs to be pointed somewhere in the direction of the oil tanker.
Once the ship is captured, it's held for ransom, the insurance company gets their negotiators to minimize the price, they eventually pay the negotiated ransom, and insurance rates go up.
If you're expecting someone to prevent piracy, you need to first run the financial cost/benefit analysis. How much would need to be spent on a military operation, and what's the return that would be seen from the country sending their military to rescue a private ship registered to a foreign country, staffed by foreign crew, with cargo destined for a foreign country?
UNCLOS permits any country to intervene in case of piracy. Because piracy attacks the public good of assured, consistent, low cost maritime transit and commerce (which the entire developed world is addicted to), and successful piracy begets piracy, there are a lot of countries with a lot of resources deeply interested with intervening.
Affordable drone defense is something of an unsolved problem right now.
In 2020 a Venezuelan patrol boat (1500 tons) tried to stop an Arctic cruise ship (6000 tons). The patrol boat rammed the bow of the cruise ship and sank. The cruise ship received superficial damage to the bow.
See, the hijackers can't actually sail the ship. So they can't kill the crew, or at least can't kill very many of them.
Sailing the ship safely takes some skill.
Sailing the ship at all takes about 5 minutes of watching youtube worth of learning.
And they can certainly sink the ship as a warning to the next ship. Indeed attacks in the area have a history of sinking ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_attacks_on_commercial_v...
In this scenario you are standing on a ship that is full of highly flammable oil.
There are more outcomes than just the hijackers gain control of the ship or they leave you alone.
If gaining control is no longer an option they could decide "fuck it" and just fire into the side of your hull.
No, he isn’t. He’s sitting in the speedboat with the guys with rifles protecting the guy on the ladder.
> See, the hijackers can't actually sail the ship.
You think Somalia has zero people with experience working on a cargo ship?
Its pretty dumb to assume that.
Somali commercial sailors and merchant mariners do exist. Information and simulator software is available also in Somalia.
Uh? Stay 100m away and send a "park your tanker over there or we fire at you" message.
Start dealing with pirates like they did in the 18th century, and watch how fast it ends. It would only take a few dozen publicly hung pirates to make the point.
It's my understanding it was more about the loss of favorable basing and the reduction in Spanish shipments of treasure that caused the decline.
We've killed plenty of would-be pirates recently. Doesn't seem to have ended the problem.
It did in the early 19th century. Check out the first and second Barbary Wars. They were not permanent solutions but they had lasting effects. The real blow was the French conquest of Algeria after that.
You can put a high wall at a border but desperate people will try to scale it. No matter how high you make it. People are willing to cross things like the Darien gap [0], they'll do a lot of things.
If you have nothing to lose, and I mean nothing, you might be willing to take the gamble.
Those crimes correlate with poverty.
You want less crimes? Provide social security to get rid of the criminals out of desperation
So we’re losing 1 war, and your solution is to start 2 more?
Talk about mischaracterization. The head of the Department of ~~Defense~~War has called it a war many times. The President has called it a war many times. Members of Congress of both parties have called it a war many times. It's a war my dude.
The US navy uses helicopters and ship mounted canons.
Occasionally they double tap "drug smugglers" with missiles. Or sink inadequately armed "enemy" ships with a torpedo, followed by a second one after 19 minutes.
The difference is minor between piracy and war crimes: "δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν"
That's all Greek to me so I had to translate.
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
Very appropriate. Thanks.
2. ??
3. Profit
What is step 2? Normally, I would assume you try to minimize the incentives in buying stolen goods. In this market, nobody is above buying dubiously sourced oil, but what is the likely destination? Do the pirates patiently sit at the oil depot while the ship gets pumped dry, hoping the check clears and nobody shoots them on sight? Once you have an empty $100MM tanker, how do you unload that vessel?
Is it possible the Indian/Japanese/other-petroleum desperate government strike a deal with the pirates?
The economics of Somalian piracy is well documented. How the money is distributed, how they finance the operations and the hostage costs etc
Didn't the Evergiven do this years ago showing that blocking one highly trafficked route would cause chaos?
The GP's comment is a well repeated piece of propaganda, but it was never true.
We have freedom of navigation because every country everywhere wants it. Change that situation and the freedom goes away, the US's position is irrelevant.
Plus on a ship everything is constantly corroding and breaking. If nothing else you need trained crew on board to do preventive maintenance and repair. When a ship loses power in some remote area it's tough to bring in technicians before the ship ends up on the rocks.
Trump on US Navy Seizing Ships:
> It’s a very profitable business. We’re like pirates.