While all eyes were on Obama to announce a winning strategy against pirates off the coast of Somalia this week, I had complete faith in his team to choose the right tactic. After all, with such a diligent team they couldn’t miss historic naval strategy of Pompey the Great against pirates: cut off their land ports.
Somalia has no government. Despite international outcry against entering a sovereign state, the fact remains that Somalia doesn’t have one, or that’s all they have; no matter how the denizens of this anarchist country may feel about this state of affairs, (“The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”) its lucky for us.
Similar Historic Battles
Caesar vs. the Cilician Pirates
When pirates captured and hatched a plan to ransom a young Caesar back to Rome for 20 gold talons, he laughed at them for not knowing who he was, and said, “I’m worth fifty, at least.”
After he’d been ransomed back, he rallied a fleet and went back and destroyed the pirates to a man, crucifying the lot of them.
While he was in captivity in the pirate camp, the other pirates said that, although a prisoner, he acted like he owned the place, joining in all their pirate games
Caesar vs. the Gauls
In another example of this ploy by land, in his Gallic Wars Caesar was already familiar with a tactic wherein he would double his troops back to the next town that the Gauls received grain from and then seized it, ensuring that the Gauls went without supplies in their own land.
Pompey vs. the Pirates
- Pompey vs. the Pirates The above quote from a famous classicist is from this link, an article by another famous classicist. The article is about how a September 11 like event, wherein consuls were kidnapped by pirates in Rome itself, so after brushing himself off from Cilicia, Pompey hatched a plan emptying the treasury for a campaign it only took him three months to complete.
- Pompey vs. Ancient Piracy from militaryhistoryonline.com,
- Piracy in the Greco-Roman World –shows that even after Pompey used the hype to make himself “Great,” “pirate” remained a buzzword in the senate, and indeed, this issue has created a lot of buzz in the news. The pirates were further important because they threatened the sanctions of Pax Romana; likewise, modern pirates threaten the United Nations, which has banned piracy. Moreover, they have adopted a very modern strategy , which is to use this as an excuse to restore order and a republic to Somalia, which is for anarchists as Dubai is to libertarians: a living example of the failure of their theories.
Originally posted 2009-04-12 09:57:59. Republished by Old Post Promoter
Now is the future. Once the old system crumbles, we’ll need to project new models and systems of reality. We need to reanalyze our form of government – but most will try to look at the current state of affairs to project the future, rather than looking again to the past and seeing where our own model deviated from the ideal.