11 ms·

The big question is what can a nation do to stop this? The normal diplomatic and legal avenues don't seem to do much. A ship here and there can be seized but mu

The big question is what can a nation do to stop this? The normal diplomatic and legal avenues don't seem to do much. A ship here and there can be seized but much like fines that are slaps on the wrist for large corporations, there's too much economic value in violating the rules. A seized ship now and then is a small price to pay for access to everyone else's fishing areas. There don't seem to be any good escalation paths that aren't morally unconscionable.

weatherlight 5y ago
Time to start sinking ships.
- op00to 5y ago
  Start accrediting privateers to protect the waters!
  - narrator 5y ago
    Letters of Marque and Reprisal.[1] This is how the early U.S fought the Barbary pirates in the Barbary Wars[2] in the early days of the republic. This power is actually authorized explicitly in the U.S Constitution. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
    - splitstud 5y ago
      Our 21st century take: sell the rights to the history Channel for a pirates reality series
    - hef19898 5y ago
      And abolished since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, if memory serves well. And thus illegal. It would be better to fight the defacto slavery of the crews (agencies, owners and so on), the abysmal conditions in these crews home countries and sanction the hell out the owners of these ships and the people / companies making a healthy profit from them. But why bother, because you would just end up with more expensive shipping im general and more expensive fish.
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        The 1856 Paris Declaration, in fact. Also the 1907 Hague Convention. The US was not a signatory to the former, and did not agree to the provision against privateering in the latter, so for the US, at least, privateering is still on the table. Argentina, however, was a signatory to the Paris Declaration. Perhaps they can change their minds, but probably they won't for something like this.
        hef19898 5y ago
        I do see a pattern here. The US didn't ratify the court in The Hague neither.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Or some kind of tech like microwaves that causes the fisherman (or the fish?) to scatter.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    Hire the CRACKEN!!!!
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    This tech exists, but is probably too expensive for argentinia, but what is wrong with a good old warning shot in front of the ship? Fisherboats do not want to fight gun ships - and just retreat if they see, the threat is serious.
- stanislavb 5y ago
  I think it’s too late to stop China
  - Leader2light 5y ago
    Bingo, US is fading out.
  - myfavoritedog 5y ago
    The very reason you're downvoted is the reason you're right. People have their heads in the sand. They don't realize that there's no political will to oppose China because China has already bought the needed to control to tamp down on any efforts to oppose them. Hell, we're witnessing in-your-face genocide of the Uighurs, takeover of Hong Kong, imminent takeover of Taiwan, support of North Korea's psychopathic regime, destruction of the environment in every way possible (as in this story), etc... and the rest of the world sits on its collective hands. China knows how to boil frogs nice and slowly.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    And Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia... The list is long. Western democracies don't seem to care of all the sweet dollar that is to be made in these countries. At least Russia used to pretend to play by established rules. The problem with these rules, IMHO, is that they were created to serve the interests of western powers. Hard to force other countries to play by them, then.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      You are very right. The "our bastard" doctrine was an idiocy on massive scale, and continues to be one. The West has bred all the snakes in the snake pit they ended up in now itself. > "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard." There is no yours, or their bastards, there are just bastards.
- Seanambers 5y ago
  It is kind of amazing that the Chinese gets away with this.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  There are obvious reasons why killing people with one’s military isn’t the most desirable way to protect one’s national waters.
- ioseph 5y ago
  Killing civilians many of whom are effectively slaves from other countries probably isn't a great look
  - garmaine 5y ago
    The rules of engagement are such that killing usually isn't required. They would announce who they are and tell the boats to turn around and exit territorial waters. Those who do not comply, or repeat or suspicious offenders, might get stopped, boarded, and their cargo confiscated, perhaps even their boats sold at auction. Any sailors aboard could request amnesty if they are truly in an effective-slave situation. The only way it turns to shoot-and-sink is if the boats flagrantly disregard orders through multiple points of escalation. Even then the attempt would be to disable the ship, not destroy it (by shooting out the engine or rudder, for example).
    - heartbeats 5y ago
      Wouldn't this just cause them to leave and come back another day? Sinking them without warning wouldn't have this problem.
      - lostapathy 5y ago
        You’d probably have to offer the sailors a ride before the sinking the ship to be humane. Odds are not good the average crew member has much control of the fact they are fishing somewhere illegally.
        heartbeats 5y ago
        That sucks for them, but would that be feasible? I don't know how much crew each vessel have, but say there's 20 people on each vessel. If there's 100 vessels, that's 2000 people you have to deport. Considering they might be lack identity documents, it seems like there would be a lot of red tape involved in deporting them properly. Especially if China will not have them. Since you can't execute prisoners once you've taken them, it seems like a very big risk to capture them, buying the pig in the poke so to speak. Is this correct?
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Or just confiscating them... steel is expensive.
tpmx 5y ago
Individual nations can't do much on their own. Groups of nations can wage economic warfare.
nostromo 5y ago
Commandeer the ships and auction them off for scrap at home. Arrest and charge the fishermen. If they flee, sink the ship. They’ll catch on.
- silexia 5y ago
  I agree, this is the only effective solution.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  The crew will likely be desperate and / or slaves. So how about: Sell the ship, let the crew live in a nice hotel, book them a 1st class flight back home, then bill the country under who's flag the ship was operating. If they can't / refuse to pay, import sanctions. That way, you're not punishing the crew, yet making such behavior financially uninteresting. That's the only way because the person who decided to send that ship there is probably far away and busy counting profits. Also, it's a lot easier to capture the boat if that's a positive experience for the crew. They might flee from a trip to prison but few people run from a paid vacation offer.
  - heartbeats 5y ago
    This costs a lot of money, though. If it costs too much money, it won't be done. So the solution has to be cheap to be put into place.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > They might flee from a trip to prison but few people run from a paid vacation offer. They may still run if accepting the paid vacation offer would be followed by imprisonment at home. So offer them permanent residency instead. And then prepare for the logistics issue of managing a great fleet of boats racing straight to your ports.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Send them to Taiwan, because then the Chinese government can’t admit that they don’t have jurisdiction there internationally.
jdasdf 5y ago
>The big question is what can a nation do to stop this? Thats why navies exist. You send a handful of frigates and bombers there and start sinking ships.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Yes, I’m surprised at how little the Western countries use their military (and police) when facing an obvious act of territorial dispute. The border police’s role now seems to be to prepare meals for immigrants rather than turning them back, just as it is common to let the fishers fish for 10 years (the problem clearly isn’t new) until the population starts noticing that our ecosystems are destroyed, rather than arresting/sinking ships. Like any navy is supposed to.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    Democracies do tend to have rules preventing military action at home, yes. And they also tend to sign on to things like human rights treaties, that say arbitrarily killing people (even foreigners breaking the law) is not ok.
  - istjohn 5y ago
    > The border police’s role now seems to be to prepare meals for immigrants rather than turning them back Nations like ours with low birth rates and aging workforces depend on immigrants to maintain vibrant economies. The alternative is to become like Japan, where the economy stagnates and abandoned houses litter the countryside.
    - kewrkewm53 5y ago
      At least in European context, many migrants who cross the border illegally lack sufficient education to do well in modern labour market, and end up having a very low employment rate & high dependency on welfare. Even those who do find employment are likely to have low salary that doesn't bring much tax income. Thus uncontrolled migration can never be a solution to our population issues. Instead effort should be put into attracting more skilled workforce that is in demand, and they should come in legally.
rasz 5y ago
this seems to work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRyCsv7CcnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRyCsv7CcnI
- chkaloon 5y ago
  Awful lot of ammo that misses completely. Not a very efficient weapon or just poor targeting it seems.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  This video claims to show the Russian navy firing on Somali pirates. One narrative concerning piracy off the coast of Somalia is that incursion of foreign fishing fleets took away the opportunity for lawful livelihoods for those living in Somalia. Which in the context of this post is ... troublingly ironic.
  - narrator 5y ago
    If the Somalis were just attacking illegal fishing boats, they'd have a lot more moral authority for what they're doing.
    - pineaux 5y ago
      They were attacking fishing boats (they didn't have a navy because there was no real government, so these attackers were pirates). The Somali pirates should get more respect from most hardliners. This is basically people grabbing guns to protect their land and create a livelihood instead of lying down to die.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Somalia shows nicely why we, as the West, has a hard time combating illegal fishing. We ignore large scale illegal fishing in Somali waters, ruining the local economy. We also ignore that our fishing fleets aren't that innocent. When the locals, for lack of a standing Navy, defend their waters, we call them pirates and send our Navy to fight them. No surprise, that these pirates went after bigger ships, realizing that being more profitable than fishing. Now imagine a world, in which our Navies would defend Somali waters against these intrusions. While at the same time, we did some real, like non-military, backes nation building through the UN. I guess that would have been a much better way to combat piracy there. But who gives a shit about some poor bastards in a failed state somewhere in Africa?
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> The big question is what can a nation do to stop this? Really the only nation that can stop this is China.
salawat 5y ago
Torpedos. I assume self-preservation instinct kicks in after the first instance of someone calling your bluff, but it can't really be helped. Trained giant squid and dolphins would be the next impractical idea. Final option: pull a Captain Nemo. Putting the inner 10 year old away now.

weatherlight 5y ago

Time to start sinking ships.

op00to 5y ago
Start accrediting privateers to protect the waters!
- narrator 5y ago
  Letters of Marque and Reprisal.[1] This is how the early U.S fought the Barbary pirates in the Barbary Wars[2] in the early days of the republic. This power is actually authorized explicitly in the U.S Constitution. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
  - splitstud 5y ago
    Our 21st century take: sell the rights to the history Channel for a pirates reality series
  - hef19898 5y ago
    And abolished since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, if memory serves well. And thus illegal. It would be better to fight the defacto slavery of the crews (agencies, owners and so on), the abysmal conditions in these crews home countries and sanction the hell out the owners of these ships and the people / companies making a healthy profit from them. But why bother, because you would just end up with more expensive shipping im general and more expensive fish.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      The 1856 Paris Declaration, in fact. Also the 1907 Hague Convention. The US was not a signatory to the former, and did not agree to the provision against privateering in the latter, so for the US, at least, privateering is still on the table. Argentina, however, was a signatory to the Paris Declaration. Perhaps they can change their minds, but probably they won't for something like this.
      - hef19898 5y ago
        I do see a pattern here. The US didn't ratify the court in The Hague neither.
bobthechef 5y ago
Or some kind of tech like microwaves that causes the fisherman (or the fish?) to scatter.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  Hire the CRACKEN!!!!
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  This tech exists, but is probably too expensive for argentinia, but what is wrong with a good old warning shot in front of the ship? Fisherboats do not want to fight gun ships - and just retreat if they see, the threat is serious.
stanislavb 5y ago
I think it’s too late to stop China
- Leader2light 5y ago
  Bingo, US is fading out.
- myfavoritedog 5y ago
  The very reason you're downvoted is the reason you're right. People have their heads in the sand. They don't realize that there's no political will to oppose China because China has already bought the needed to control to tamp down on any efforts to oppose them. Hell, we're witnessing in-your-face genocide of the Uighurs, takeover of Hong Kong, imminent takeover of Taiwan, support of North Korea's psychopathic regime, destruction of the environment in every way possible (as in this story), etc... and the rest of the world sits on its collective hands. China knows how to boil frogs nice and slowly.
- hef19898 5y ago
  And Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia... The list is long. Western democracies don't seem to care of all the sweet dollar that is to be made in these countries. At least Russia used to pretend to play by established rules. The problem with these rules, IMHO, is that they were created to serve the interests of western powers. Hard to force other countries to play by them, then.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    You are very right. The "our bastard" doctrine was an idiocy on massive scale, and continues to be one. The West has bred all the snakes in the snake pit they ended up in now itself. > "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard." There is no yours, or their bastards, there are just bastards.
Seanambers 5y ago
It is kind of amazing that the Chinese gets away with this.
tshaddox 5y ago
There are obvious reasons why killing people with one’s military isn’t the most desirable way to protect one’s national waters.
ioseph 5y ago
Killing civilians many of whom are effectively slaves from other countries probably isn't a great look
- garmaine 5y ago
  The rules of engagement are such that killing usually isn't required. They would announce who they are and tell the boats to turn around and exit territorial waters. Those who do not comply, or repeat or suspicious offenders, might get stopped, boarded, and their cargo confiscated, perhaps even their boats sold at auction. Any sailors aboard could request amnesty if they are truly in an effective-slave situation. The only way it turns to shoot-and-sink is if the boats flagrantly disregard orders through multiple points of escalation. Even then the attempt would be to disable the ship, not destroy it (by shooting out the engine or rudder, for example).
  - heartbeats 5y ago
    Wouldn't this just cause them to leave and come back another day? Sinking them without warning wouldn't have this problem.
    - lostapathy 5y ago
      You’d probably have to offer the sailors a ride before the sinking the ship to be humane. Odds are not good the average crew member has much control of the fact they are fishing somewhere illegally.
      - heartbeats 5y ago
        That sucks for them, but would that be feasible? I don't know how much crew each vessel have, but say there's 20 people on each vessel. If there's 100 vessels, that's 2000 people you have to deport. Considering they might be lack identity documents, it seems like there would be a lot of red tape involved in deporting them properly. Especially if China will not have them. Since you can't execute prisoners once you've taken them, it seems like a very big risk to capture them, buying the pig in the poke so to speak. Is this correct?
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Or just confiscating them... steel is expensive.

tpmx 5y ago

Individual nations can't do much on their own. Groups of nations can wage economic warfare.

nostromo 5y ago

Commandeer the ships and auction them off for scrap at home. Arrest and charge the fishermen. If they flee, sink the ship. They’ll catch on.

silexia 5y ago
I agree, this is the only effective solution.
fxtentacle 5y ago
The crew will likely be desperate and / or slaves. So how about: Sell the ship, let the crew live in a nice hotel, book them a 1st class flight back home, then bill the country under who's flag the ship was operating. If they can't / refuse to pay, import sanctions. That way, you're not punishing the crew, yet making such behavior financially uninteresting. That's the only way because the person who decided to send that ship there is probably far away and busy counting profits. Also, it's a lot easier to capture the boat if that's a positive experience for the crew. They might flee from a trip to prison but few people run from a paid vacation offer.
- heartbeats 5y ago
  This costs a lot of money, though. If it costs too much money, it won't be done. So the solution has to be cheap to be put into place.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > They might flee from a trip to prison but few people run from a paid vacation offer. They may still run if accepting the paid vacation offer would be followed by imprisonment at home. So offer them permanent residency instead. And then prepare for the logistics issue of managing a great fleet of boats racing straight to your ports.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Send them to Taiwan, because then the Chinese government can’t admit that they don’t have jurisdiction there internationally.

jdasdf 5y ago

>The big question is what can a nation do to stop this? Thats why navies exist. You send a handful of frigates and bombers there and start sinking ships.

laurent92 5y ago
Yes, I’m surprised at how little the Western countries use their military (and police) when facing an obvious act of territorial dispute. The border police’s role now seems to be to prepare meals for immigrants rather than turning them back, just as it is common to let the fishers fish for 10 years (the problem clearly isn’t new) until the population starts noticing that our ecosystems are destroyed, rather than arresting/sinking ships. Like any navy is supposed to.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  Democracies do tend to have rules preventing military action at home, yes. And they also tend to sign on to things like human rights treaties, that say arbitrarily killing people (even foreigners breaking the law) is not ok.
- istjohn 5y ago
  > The border police’s role now seems to be to prepare meals for immigrants rather than turning them back Nations like ours with low birth rates and aging workforces depend on immigrants to maintain vibrant economies. The alternative is to become like Japan, where the economy stagnates and abandoned houses litter the countryside.
  - kewrkewm53 5y ago
    At least in European context, many migrants who cross the border illegally lack sufficient education to do well in modern labour market, and end up having a very low employment rate & high dependency on welfare. Even those who do find employment are likely to have low salary that doesn't bring much tax income. Thus uncontrolled migration can never be a solution to our population issues. Instead effort should be put into attracting more skilled workforce that is in demand, and they should come in legally.

rasz 5y ago

this seems to work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRyCsv7CcnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRyCsv7CcnI

chkaloon 5y ago
Awful lot of ammo that misses completely. Not a very efficient weapon or just poor targeting it seems.
dredmorbius 5y ago
This video claims to show the Russian navy firing on Somali pirates. One narrative concerning piracy off the coast of Somalia is that incursion of foreign fishing fleets took away the opportunity for lawful livelihoods for those living in Somalia. Which in the context of this post is ... troublingly ironic.
- narrator 5y ago
  If the Somalis were just attacking illegal fishing boats, they'd have a lot more moral authority for what they're doing.
  - pineaux 5y ago
    They were attacking fishing boats (they didn't have a navy because there was no real government, so these attackers were pirates). The Somali pirates should get more respect from most hardliners. This is basically people grabbing guns to protect their land and create a livelihood instead of lying down to die.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Somalia shows nicely why we, as the West, has a hard time combating illegal fishing. We ignore large scale illegal fishing in Somali waters, ruining the local economy. We also ignore that our fishing fleets aren't that innocent. When the locals, for lack of a standing Navy, defend their waters, we call them pirates and send our Navy to fight them. No surprise, that these pirates went after bigger ships, realizing that being more profitable than fishing. Now imagine a world, in which our Navies would defend Somali waters against these intrusions. While at the same time, we did some real, like non-military, backes nation building through the UN. I guess that would have been a much better way to combat piracy there. But who gives a shit about some poor bastards in a failed state somewhere in Africa?

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

> The big question is what can a nation do to stop this? Really the only nation that can stop this is China.

salawat 5y ago

Torpedos. I assume self-preservation instinct kicks in after the first instance of someone calling your bluff, but it can't really be helped. Trained giant squid and dolphins would be the next impractical idea. Final option: pull a Captain Nemo. Putting the inner 10 year old away now.