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koheripbal

I don't understand the cost argument. Enforcement is only expensive if you offer minimal punishments.

Other countries have in the past literally board and scuttle trespassing fishing vessels.

Do that, even only a couple times, and few foreign boats will risk the trip. It is cheap to do.

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You underestimate how utterly corrupt a lot of authorities are in Argentina.

Once bribes, 'personal cuts', etc. have been made/taken, there's not much left. Not to mention the kind of culture that breeds.

That’s a different argument than cost.

One perspective is that these authority positions need to offer better payment to reduce the need for taking the bribe. This will increase costs.

You need a strong military to enforce rules between countries. Bodies such as the UN and WTO just aren't strong enough to do much if anything beyond a press release. Even if those international bodies were strong enough, I do not feel that they are immune to corruption.

In reality, Argentina would either need to buy or build a respectable navy (too poor), OR publicly ally with the US AND petition that the US Navy enforce Argentina's territorial rights (the US military and its navy are overstretched already).

I'm sure the Argentine Navy isn't the best by a long margin. But it should be more than capable of catching and scuttling fishing ships.

That they don't do this suggests they don't care about the problem or don't want to risk the diplomatic consequences with China.

The Indonesian navy does it to Chinese fishing vessels. They do this with primitive resources and without "help" from the US military.

Why does Argentina need the US navy? Why not Brazil?

Based just on the Wikipedia pages for both the Indonesian Navy and the Argentine, it appears the Indonesian Navy is much much larger (74k vs 18k active) and has vastly superior equipment to the Argentines.

Argentina's GDP is less than half of Indonesia's. Argentina's EEZ waters generally have more extreme weather conditions and thus require larger vessels to patrol.

Is there a word for these sorts of “why don’t they just...” type of suggestions?

Uninformed.

It would be great if there where a way to ask “why don’t they just...”, with an emphasis on the “why” so rather than coming off as an uniformed blowhard one could inform themselves. I suppose a more circumspect way to ask might be “is there a reason they don’t ...?”

Leaving out the word "just" does just fine.

yeah, just guarantee that everyone rocks up to a conversation already enlightened. problem solved, no more questions like that.

"Oversimplification" and "trivialisation" come to mind.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27417079

"whynotism"

Credit/blame: greyface

China will retaliate. China sends naval escorts with its fishing fleet when it goes to Indonesia and countries fear this happening. Chinaa is not shy of threatening economic sanctions either.

The disputes China is having with its neighbors are different. China's official position is that a large part of the South China Sea is their territory, a view that isn't exactly shared by the other nations of the region or most of the international community.

Sending the Chinese Navy into territorial waters off of South America to secure theft of Argentinian natural resources would be a completely different move, and arguably an act of war.

>China's official position is that a large part of the South China Sea is their territory

Unfortunate that it's literally called The South China Sea. This dispute will likely never go away.

Good thing that India doesn’t use this logic (Indian Ocean)

Why would China care about starting a war? The UK had no problems defending the Falklands from Argentina.

That was a fight over land the UK considered theirs. This would be China going to war over their right to commit theft.

Even China would not bother.

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