The Charlie Rose Show: A Conversation About Somali Piracy
CNAS Authors: Robert Kaplan, Dr. Andrew M. Exum
Original Post: A Conversation About Somali Piracy
Type: Interview
April 13, 2009 — April 13, 2009 - Center for a New American Security Fellows Robert Kaplan and Andrew Exum discussed the links between Somali piracy, failed states, and al-Qaida, and the implications of piracy for international security with Charlie Rose.
Transcript as follows:
CHARLIE ROSE: Over the weekend, the U.S. Navy rescued American ship captain Richard Phillips. He had been kidnapped as you know by Somali pirates last week in the Indian Ocean. President Obama authorized force against the pirates which led to Sunday’s raid. During a visit to the Department of Transportation, President Obama praised the servicemen and servicewomen involved in the rescue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I’m very proud of the efforts of the U.S. military and the many other departments and agencies that work tirelessly to resolve this situation. I share a nation’s admiration for Captain Phillips courage and leadership and selfless concern for his crew. And I want to be very clear that we are resolved to halt the rise of piracy in that region and to achieve that goal we’re going to have to continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks. We have to continue to be prepared to confront them when they arise and we have to ensure that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: The kidnapping is the latest sign of instability in Somalia where pirates continue to hold more than 250 hostages from several countries. The impoverished country has endured nearly two decades civil war and the government today remains gripped in war with Islamic militants including some accused of having ties to al Qaeda.
Joining me now from Washington, Robert Kaplan of "The Atlantic" magazine and Andrew Exum, they are both fellows at the Center for New American Security in Washington. I am please to do have them both as we take a look at this and what it means.
Andrew Exum, tell me what we know now about the rescue and how the president participated and what kind of advice he was getting and how miraculous this is or is not as a military endeavor.
ANDREW EXUM: Well I try to stay pretty dispassionate when I analyze special operations missions. Myself, I led a platoon of Army Rangers in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But I have to say in this case, I’m pretty impressed.
I think this was, first off from an operational standpoint, it established a model for partnership between special operations forces and what we call general purpose forces. In this case, the United States Navy, the USS Bainbridge which was the battleship owner at the time. I think it was pretty effective employment of those special operations forces and I think the president is probably feeling pretty good about himself. His only role really was to set the parameters for the commander on the ground and to tell him under what circumstances he could take action.
Having said that, the ball was then passed into the court of the special operations forces on the ground as well as the commander of the Bainbridge and we can all thank God on Easter Sunday that things turned out well.
CHARLIE ROSE: But it could have again wrong?
ANDREW EXUM: Yes, it sure could have. Just to give you some perspective, shooting a pirate from 25 meters away is not in itself a difficult endeavor. Doing the same thing on rolling seas gets a little bit more difficult. Doing it at dusk gets a little bit more difficult. And shooting three pirates at the exact same time, well that’s pretty impressive. So the snipers on the ground or on the sea, as it were, did quite a good job. And again, I’m pretty impressed.
CHARLIE ROSE: And what do we know about the way the president executed the plan? I mean, you suggested he gave it off to the military and to the Special Forces, said go do this, but was there a lot of consultation at the White House? What do we know about that?
ANDREW EXUM: Well, what we know is there were two decisions that were made. There was decision made on Friday night and then there was a decision made on Saturday morning. It looks like the White House was monitoring this situation off the coast of Somalia pretty carefully. I think they were probably pretty cognizant of the way in which White Houses and administrations can be characterized by blunders early in the administration, whether you’re talking about President Clinton and Haiti or the disaster actually in Somalia and Mogadishu with the deaths of the Rangers and other special operators in 1993.
I think that was probably going to the head of the administration. Having said that again, their primary role was really to monitor the situation. And then make the call about, OK, here are the circumstances under which you can take action to recover Captain Phillips. It seems to me that quite
honestly they excelled by actually delegating authority. In this case the last thing you want to do is have that 10,000 mile screwdriver where you’re trying to micromanage the situation from Washington. The smartest thing to do is put the situation and the responsibility for that situation in the
hands of the commanders on the ground or at sea.
CHARLIE ROSE: As we know from our history certainly early on in terms of the latter part of the Clinton administration, early part of the Bush administration, there were cases in which the CIA was prepared to move and somebody in Langley said or somebody in the White House on the National Security Council said not now, correct.
ANDREW EXUM: Yes, certainly. In this case, I think when you, what you have to do as the commander on the ground is again set these conditions for here are the conditions under which you can act, here are the conditions under which you can’t act and then really you have to do the toughest thing,especially for the White House which had to have been hyper aware of the political risks involved. They were already getting criticism from some in the media and including the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for their handling of the situation.
So they understood the political risks involved and they deserve credit on Monday morning for having made the correct decision and for having once delegated authority for having stepped back and allowed the commander on the ground in the sea to develop the situation.
CHARLIE ROSE: Robert Kaplan, speak to the way the president handled it and the implications for the United States in the future.
ROBERT KAPLAN: All right. Well two things we should bring in. First of all, the commander of the USS Bainbridge I think made the final decision for the SEAL snipers to take out the three. Also, the very name Bainbridge, that destroyer happens to be named after a U.S. naval officer who fought pirates in the two Barbary Wars in the early 19th century. It’s really symbolic the way this happened.
I think when you put together the fact that they took this action against piracy and was very successful. And President Obama’s statement later that the United States is resolved to deal with this problem puts us in a whole new ball game. Because historically piracy is endemic to the Indian Ocean. The Romans launched regular expeditions against pirates, so did the British, the Dutch, the Portuguese. So this is - and there has been Somali piracy for years.
Piracy is just the ripple effect of anarchy on land. And Somalia as you said, Somalia has been an anarchic state since the mid 1980s in fact, and has the longest coastline in Africa. But the implications of this raises a lot of other questions. For instance, does that mean that an international
military coalition is going to go ashore at these rabid feral cities which is the hearth places of piracy. Where you have local warlords who are under no state authority essentially sending out armed teenagers to troll for loot from containerships, ships carrying hydrocarbons, etc.
So are you going to occupy parts of feral cities, are you going to try to limit piracy to make sure it does not become a platform for terrorists, for instance. Because piracy makes a very convenient platform for terrorism. So far the pirates have not been ideologically motivated. It’s been
organized crime at sea essentially.
But you do have al Qaeda-like elements operating in the Somali political sphere, the Islamic Courts movement, the Shabab Movement, which all can run in a parallel track with the views of al Qaeda. If there were ever a merger between people in those movements and these pirate warlord confederacies then you could have a whole new level of scenario presents itself.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Has the president by this action put halting piracy on his plate along with Afghanistan and Iraq and the economic crisis?
ROBERT KAPLAN: Well, it seems that he has based on his statement but I would not jump to conclusions. There’s a way of handling Somalia that may be different than handling Iraq and Afghanistan. First of all there’s the multilateral approach. We can have authentic robust multilateralism off the coast of Somalia with international navies that we didn’t have since the early days of the Afghan War in late 2001.
Also historically, navies of different countries tend to cooperate better with each other than armies of different countries. It’s sort of a brotherhood of the sea. So the sea itself lends itself to international coalitions. So we may see a combination of things. Tighter coordination between - like at the moment you have Combined Task Force 150 and 151 off the coast of the Horn of Africa where you have navies from Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan, I think the Netherlands, Denmark, all cooperating and you even have two Chinese destroyers and a supply ship which are helping out in the Gulf of Aden. So the building blocks are there for real robust international response. But I don’t think we’re likely to see like a unilateral American landing on
any of these pirate cities at this point.
CHARLIE ROSE: Andrew you’re nodding in affirmation. Before I call on you Andrew, is anybody recommending that in the public space that has an
official position?
ANDREW EXUM: No, and I think that’s really interesting and bob touched upon this but in a lot of ways our response to the problem in the Horn of Africa and our response to this other ungoverned space, the Pashtun tribal belt straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan they’re really interesting. The two strategies challenge one another. In Afghanistan and Pakistan we’re using maximalist means to achieve maximalist ends, we’re basically saying we’re going to extend governance to this space using a variety of lines of operation, both combat power, economic development, improved governance, training and equipping host nation security forces.
In Somalia we’re seeing none of that. But the problem in essence is exactly the same and Bob touched upon the way in which they power vacuum can lead to terror groups. So in both cases you’ve got this ungoverned space. But interestingly if you look at the white paper the administration proposed for Afghanistan and Pakistan again you’re looking at maximalist means. Again if you’re looking at our response to Somalia, we’re basically looking at it as a criminal issue.
So that’s interesting. I think the two strategies very much highlight varying options and it’s perfectly reasonable to look at Somalia and say
well, if we’re not trying to he can tend governance in Somalia, why are we trying to do that in Afghanistan and Pakistan or vice versa. If we’re doing this in Afghanistan and Pakistan why aren’t we trying to do it in Somalia?
CHARLIE ROSE: So what’s the pressure building if any on the president today, Bob?
ROBERT KAPLAN: I don’t see that much pressure. There’s an admission that the public is basically in this space that we have enough on our plate Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re very thankful that this situation has worked out well but I think there will be less public pressure on the president to take means that involve landing inside Somalia. Keep in mind that the more you can use your navies and even air forces and the less you can use your armies the better off you are because navies and air forces have no footprint on the ground in the country. And therefore it’s much more of a sanitized operation where you don’t get in trouble of fighting insurgency.
Because remember there’s a history to this. In 1992, the American public was four square in favor of landing troops, Marines, etc, in Somalia at the end, at the very end of the George H.W. Bush administration. And the public was 95 percent in favor of feeding starving children by landing troops. But the minute we had, you know, a dozen or two dozen American troops killed, suddenly it was 95 percent about getting out. So you have
to be very leery.
The public is with you until you start suffering significant casualties of your own. So I think the president, you know, the president is going to be very cautious about this. There’s a lot more, there are a lot of steps that can be taken that do not involve landing troops on the mainland of
Somalia.
CHARLIE ROSE: Somalia is the classic definition now of a failed state?
ROBERT KAPLAN: Well I’ll tell you, I was there in the mid-1980s when it was officially governed by Siyad Barre, when it was a pro-Soviet client
state, still, when it was officially a real state and I can tell you it was in complete utter disarray and chaos. The only way to get from one part of
the country from former Italian Somalia to Puntland to British-held Somaliland was within the U.S. auspices. So it was in effect a failed state in the second half of 1980s and became officially a failed state since 1992 onwards.
CHARLIE ROSE: So - go ahead .
ROBERT KAPLAN: You know, I have been, you know, in many parts of Africa and the world and I have rarely encountered such utter anarchy as I have inside Somalia.
CHARLIE ROSE: That is the ultimate fear, isn’t it, in terms of in an age in which certain groups who do not wish us well are looking for failed state as a safe haven.
ROBERT KAPLAN: Well, exactly. Remember that what a group like al Qaeda thrives on is weak or zero governance married to a government cultural milieu so to speak. And Somalia has that. The utter fact about Somalia is the official Somali government is not in Somalia at all as we speak, it’s in neighboring Djibouti. Because it’s afraid to go next door to Somalia.
CHARLIE ROSE: You agree with that, I assume, Andrew.
ANDREW EXUM: Absolutely. That’s the big fear. Again, the problems of Somalia are essentially the same as the problems of Afghanistan before 9/11. We’ve got a vulnerable state, a failed state, essentially large swaths of ungoverned space that can be exploited by transnational terrorists groups, absolutely.
CHARLIE ROSE: There’s this and I want to broaden this thing out, what does this do for the president’s standing in the world in terms of anybody who might have had any question about his instinct to use appropriate force. Andrew?
ROBERT KAPLAN: I think it really boosts his standing tremendously.
CHARLIE ROSE: Go ahead Bob and I’ll come to Andrew.
ROBERT KAPLAN: All right. First of all Democratic presidents over the last few decades have always been under the pall of not being strong under
national security. That’s the thing that Republicans throw at them. But this president, you know, gets a real boost early in his term, you know, he signs off the order to take action, violent action is taken. It’s completely successful.
And in addition, he’s been careful wherever he’s been on vacation in Hawaii, in Chicago, everywhere, to always visit nearby American military bases. So there’s a sensitivity and a sensibility in this administration that’s very pro military that’s, you know, that sets him up very well in
both a domestic and international context.CHARLIE ROSE: Andrew?
ANDREW EXUM: I think that’s correct. I just want to add one caveat to that. First off I think it helps him domestically more than it does internationally. Internationally you’ve got a bigger problem right now because this was just an operation. This is not a strategy, this is not a policy. How we’re going to address piracy is a big problem. Historically, the Navy does four things. Two of those things are allowing for the movement of armies and allowing for the movement of commerce.
Right now, whether you can do that along the coast of Somalia is very much in doubt. So how you’re going to address that bigger issue, I think is going to take a lot of coordination in community. The second thing is quite honestly you’ve got two competing incentive structures right now. You have got the navies saying we’re going to take violent action against any pirates that attempt to interfere with commerce but on the other hand you also have private corporations who have a completely different incentive structure they set up with the pirates, right?
What they’re trying to do -- Their preferred action is to buy the pirates off. That’s going to be a lot trickier for the president. While at the same time Iagree with Bob he’s gotten domestic kudos for his action over the weekend, I think the policy going forward is a little more difficult. Secretary Gates joked before the Marine Corps War College today to a group of assembled marine officers that heavy weapons in the hands of teenagers are never a good thing. Of course the Marine Corps officers got a good laugh out of that.
But in all honesty he did say this is something that the Obama administration was going to be thinking about heavily going forward. I think formulating long term policies and strategies is going to be a lot more difficult than making the operational choices they had to make this weekend.
CHARLIE ROSE: I want to come back to that idea in a moment. But Bob, you talked about the way this president handled this crises. What you did not see here going into this action was a lot of threats and a lot of boast and a lot of .
ROBERT KAPLAN: Bravado.
CHARLIE ROSE: Bravado, exactly, coming out of the White House. They were quiet and controlled and, go ahead, Bob.
ROBERT KAPLAN: Yes. They were quiet and they were controlled. They made a decisive decision and they did not try to micromanage the situation. So it’s been an utterly professional response and I think the way in which they handled it will earn as much kudos as the positive result that emanated from it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Many people are basically saying there is a new definition of what power means and what power can do for you.
ROBERT KAPLAN: I think Bob made a really good point in the op ed of "The New York Times" this weekend which is that we may have the capability for this Blue Water Navy, the Navy that exists in the high seas but we’re not very good encountering these asymmetric threats such as those run by Iran’s small boat maybe or these pirates. I’m not sure it might be a capabilities problem. I think it’s really a matter of policy. I think the real challenge that the Obama administration is going forward is not whether we’re going to restructure the Navy to combat these pirates but rather how
we’re going to set a policy as an international community and get buy-in from not only the international community as far as state actors but also as far as the shipping industry, as far as how we’re going to approach these pirates. So I think it’s a policy problem. I don’t think it’s a capabilities problem. And that’s a challenge that’s in front of the administration.
CHARLIE ROSE: Bob what you said was, "In a sense America needs three navies. As this crisis reveals it may have only two. There’s a blue water
force for patrolling the major sea lanes, thus guarding the global commons. It packs enough precision weaponry on its warships to project power on land against its adversaries like North Korea and Iran but it still does not have enough of a sea-based counterinsurgency components to deal with adversaries like Somali pirates or Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy."
ROBERT KAPLAN: Yes. It is partly a capabilities problem. We need to emphasize a more scrappy street fighting Navy going into the unconventional threats of the future where future naval warfare is unconventional as the land warfare we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is program for 55 new littoral combat ships which are multi-operational ships that can perform a variety of functions, they have low drafts, they’re fast. They can get into brown and green coastal waters and they’re smaller than frigate and they’re more flexible. Secretary Gates said in his budget that they’re going to build a few of them and endorse the whole program in general.
But when you have a destroyer that can destroy a medium side city and go up
to a group of three or four pirates, even though this situation worked out
excellently, that’s not a clever use of resources in general.
CHARLIE ROSE: My impression though, it’s just simply awakened their eyes to an ongoing consideration to counter insurgency and how to wage that kind of warfare which seems to be in part what drove, in part what drove Gates’ budget proposals. Andrew?
ANDREW EXUM: That’s exactly right. The budget proposals - as Gates put it himself, look only about half or only about 10 percent of the budget was really focused towards low intensity conflict and counterinsurgency. About fifty percent of the budget was focused towards conventional threats and 40 percent was about dual use. This wasn’t necessarily a counterinsurgent’s budget but for the first time the counterinsurgents had a seat at the table was the way that Secretary Gates put it. In this case again, I think the fundamental problems are not, you know, how you’re going to destroy these pirates. We have the capability to sink pirates, we have the capabilities to attack safe haven. I really think the problem is to kill or not to kill and how do you coordinate an international response?
CHARLIE ROSE: Some people raised the question whether some kind of air strike might be under consideration against pirate bases.
ROBERT KAPLAN: Well there actually have been American air strikes inside Somalia in recent years against al Qaeda affiliated radicals and such. So
that would not really break a new mold except this time it would be against pirates rather than against terrorists.
CHARLIE ROSE: So therefore it’s likely to happen?
ROBERT KAPLAN: It might happen, yes.
ANDREW EXUM: Yeah. We’ve certainly conducted special operations raids in the Horn of Africa. It’s kind of flown under the radar with respect to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
CHARLIE ROSE: Andrew Exum, Center for New American Security, Robert Kaplan from "The Atlantic" and the Center for New American Security. I thank you both very much.
ANDREW EXUM: Sure.
ROBERT KAPLAN: Thank you.
CHARLIE ROSE: We’ll be right back, stay with us.
Related:Topic(s): Terrorism, Irregular Warfare and Crime, Development and Diplomacy, U.S. Military Forces & Operations
Project(s): Contested Commons
People: Robert Kaplan, Dr. Andrew M. Exum
