On Pirates and Strategies (SWJ)

The attached article is an excellent thought-piece recently published in Small Wars Journal.  Bateman uses pirates and piracy as his case study, but the article is essentially about how to think in terms of strategy rather than tactics.

On Pirates and Strategies
by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bateman

On Pirates and Strategies (Full PDF Article)

Let us talk about pirates, and piracy and viable options. But first, and most importantly, let us consider the ways to think about the problem. At least, from a military perspective. What follows is a brief primer that may help each of you form your own opinions about the various options offered by pundits left, right, center, military, political and everything in between.

For starters, lets get really basic. There are a lot of people now who read Small Wars Journal, and not all of them are professional military. Moreover, despite the existence of some damned fine doctrinal definitions, we have all seen examples where the same word means different things to different people. So to remove that area of potential error let me start by pointing out that no matter what Joint Publication 1-02 says, there are not just three levels of war, there are four levels of war. These levels are: Tactical, Operational, Strategic, (the only three the military acknowledges) and the highest, the Political level of war. That's easy, right? So that we all understand each other, let's do a quick hash of what these levels mean.

On Pirates and Strategies (Full PDF Article)