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Comment by hdivider | Hacker News Reader

Agreed -- and I should point out I don't personally support this piracy idea at all. Just 1) entertaining, 2) intellectually interesting to see how old school, Blackbeard-style piracy with letters of marque is actually still a possibility.

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Yeah, intellectually it is interesting. I just fear that this will, ultimately, backfire. Privateering works better against an abundance of targets. Russian oligarchs and Russian Naval assets are lower in number than, say, Western shipping. So nothing would block Russia from issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal against, e.g., shipping going to the EU and the US. Which would tie down a load of naval assets, and could hurt the West more than Letters of Marque would hurt Russia, once their assets are seized there's nothing else to be seized.

But hey, Pirates, harr!

EDIT: Now that I think of it, any prospective privateer is facing a couple of challenges (privateering is business after all): If you operate under an US Letter of Marque you have a limited number of prizes. Those prizes are comparatively easy to capture, legitimacy isn't your immediate concern and selling the prizes is a solved problem.

If you operate for the Russians, potential prizes are plenty. Legitimacy is a major concern, so. As is selling those prizes for money. Capturing a container ship is easy (just ask the Somalis), piloting it to a friendly port as well, crews are really small nowadays. Selling 10k TEU is a different story so, especially if the party issuing your Letter of Marque is short on hard currency. And has a limited number of deep sea ports. Those ports are, lucky for any potential privateer, close to the largest ports of origin in the Pacific. One just has to be careful to not piss of the Chinese. resorting to Letters of marque could turn the Pacific into a, almost, hot war zone resembling the Caribbean during the golden age of piracy.

Unlikely scenario, but stranger things have happened. It would make a great military fiction novel so!

It may be able to reverse global warming, if the Pastafarians are right.

> So nothing would block Russia from issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal against e.g., shipping going to the EU and the US

Nothing except the US Navy patrolling shipping lanes, as they already do.

If Russian had a global navy they might have a stronger position. But as it is now, pirates will never encounter a Russian ship. They will likely encounter a US ship, especially if they try to disrupt that tanker full of Cheetos (or whatever).

Ah, despite all the patrolling Somali pirates had a quite successful run. Now scale that up at least ten fold. And the US Navy would then be the privateers' problem, not the problem of the Russian Navy, which could stick to the Russian coast where it can operate under aerial protection.

If anything, the Russians could benefit most from a full-blown privateering program.

I think you may be confusing the existence of Somali pirates to mean the US Navy doesn’t depress pirates. There would be many more than that without the Navy.

Privacy still exists [0] with more in the Straits of Malacca than off Somalia.

This piracy is much less due to the actions of the US Navy. I’m not sure why you think it would increase 10x if Russia endorsed privateering.

I think Russia’s position is moot since their fleet would never stop this in the first place. So their privateering position doesn’t seem to matter. While there’s lots more US (and US-bound) ships, I don’t think Russia’s navy is preventing any piracy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_21st_century

Will backfire? I think that there remain enough grownups in the Congress that this guy's idea will never get a vote on the floor of the House.

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