It would be interesting to see if a modern day Letter of Marque could be devised to allow private attack on Somali pirates, including confiscating their loot/bank accounts. Could clean the problem up very quickly.
I suppose the bleats from the "human rights" crowd, UN and EU would never allow it.
Methinks judicious and frequent issuance of Letters of Marque would solve a whole lotta problems. Piracy and spam, for two.
If the Straits were just closed to all traffic other than authorized trade vessels — by authorized, I mean, authorized by the countries which move the freight through there, closed to all other traffic, all under the auspices of the UN — and all other ships either boarded and seized or sunk on sight, there’d be no Somali pirates.