"If Captured, Pirates Could Easily Be Tried for Their Crimes"

Guess again. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea notes that "every State may seize a pirate ship or aircraft ... and arrest the persons." Yet, no single country has jurisdiction over international waters -- where many of the recent hijackings have taken place. More importantly, no country wants to prosecute pirates in their domestic court system for fear those arrested might request asylum. That concern is particularly acute when it comes to Somali pirates desperate to flee the dismal conditions in the Horn of Africa. Most captured pirates end up being released.

To fill the judicial vacuum, Egypt has called for the creation of an international tribunal to prosecute pirates. There is sufficient international law to bring charges, but there are no courts, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, or investigators dedicated to the task. And as other international tribunals on war crimes have illustrated, this path will create its own set of challenges. With the international community stepping up land and naval activities to combat piracy, the legal void will have to be filled or pirates will simply have to continue to be released. Just last week, France transferred custody of 8 pirates to the Puntland region of Somalia, which is home to pirate bases. In other words, don't hold your breath for the pirates to walk a plank or remain locked forever in a brig.

"The World Needs a War on Piracy"

Absolutely not. Wars against commodities, tactics, or phenomena are rarely, if ever, truly won. Just look at the war on drugs, or the war on terror -- both dragging on with hard-to-quantify results. Such wars misdirect scarce resources and cannot address underlying conditions. Under a war on piracy, merchant ships will still be hijacked and pirates will continue to extort money from commercial shipping companies.

Beyond the fact that absolute victory against piracy is a fallacy, there are the logistical problems. No country or naval coalition has the capacity to monitor the Gulf of Aden, an area four times the size of France. Vast amounts of intelligence -- and moreover, intelligence swapping -- are required to locate pirates. And most of the time, pirate ships do not stand out from other fishing vessels, so identification only comes after an attack has taken place.

All this comes at a time when naval budgets have shrunk to just a fraction of their former strength. U.S. President Ronald Reagan's famed 600-ship navy is down to 283, including submarines, and the British Royal Navy's decline has left just 25 destroyers and frigates for action. There are well-identified pirate anchorages and towns in northern Somalia, but a land war into the country is not what the international community has in mind. Instead, with a smarter fight against the conditions onshore that foster piracy -- the country's instability, the illegal fishing that puts Somalis out of work -- the world will come to find the high seas a great deal safer.