Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Guardian writes about the Impotence of Might:

There are few more startling illustrations of this impotence of might than the pirates, or the country they come from. A hundred years ago, any one of half a dozen imperial powers could have conquered Somalia in a matter of weeks with a couple of gunboats and a few battalions.

Today Somalia has been a collapsed state for nearly 20 years, in lawless confusion that no outside power can or will subdue. It harbours bands of men in light craft armed with rifles who can seize 50,000-tonne tankers flying the flags of western states. And there is almost nothing anyone can do, despite Sunday’s escapade…

Nothing is more frightening to us than suicide bombing. It is indeed repugnant, but it also proves what the Roman philosopher Seneca said long ago: "The man who is not afraid to die will always be your master." That applies, above all, to prosperous, sybaritic, modern western societies, which no longer have any appetite for sacrifice and suffering. Is it any wonder we are mighty but weak at once?

A gloomy thought, although in fact it would be fairly easy to bottle up the Somali pirate problem through armed guards on sizeable vessels plus ruthless use of fast patrol boats and a busy shoot-to-kill no-questions-asked policy. Plus maybe one or two of these. All this might entail renouncing various human rights and other legal norms for this limited purpose.

Is the problem worth the cost and the likely progressive obloquy when some more or less innocent people get shot in the ensuing confrontations? A matter of Determination, not Might?

Nor does Mark Steyn cheer us up this time:

I doubt "Pirates of the Caribbean" would have cleaned up at the box office if the big finale had shown Geoffrey Rush and his crew of scurvy sea dogs settling down in council flats in Manchester and going down to the pub for a couple of jiggers of rum washed down to cries of "Aaaaargh, shiver me benefits check, lad." From "Avast, me hearties!" to a vast welfare scam is not progress.

In a world of legalisms, resistance is futile. The Royal Navy sailors kidnapped by Iran two years ago and humiliated by the mullahs on TV were operating under rules of engagement that call for "de-escalation" in the event of a confrontation. Which is to say their rules of engagement are rules of nonengagement.

Likewise, merchant vessels equipped with cannon in the 18th century now sail unarmed. They contract with expensive private security firms, but those security teams do not carry guns: When the MV Biscaglia was seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden last year, the Indian and Bangladeshi crew were taken hostage but the three unarmed guards from "Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions" in London "escaped by jumping into the water." Some solution. When you make a lucrative activity low-risk, you get more of it.

… Unlovely as it is, Pyongyang nevertheless has friends on the Security Council. Powerful states protect one-man psycho states. One-man psycho states provide delivery systems to apocalyptic ideological states. Apocalyptic ideological states fund nonstate actors around the world. And in Somalia and elsewhere nonstate actors are constrained only by their ever increasing capabilities.

When all the world’s a "distraction," maybe you’re not the main event after all. Most wealthy nations lack the means to defend themselves. Those few that do, lack the will. Meanwhile, basket-case jurisdictions send out ever bolder freelance marauders to prey on the civilized world with impunity.

Don’t be surprised if "the civilized world" shrivels and retreats in the face of state-of-the-art reprimitivization. From piracy to nukes to the limp response of the hyperpower, this is not a "distraction" but a portent of the future.

Back to our old friend Negotiation.

Negotiation is partly about Might, but no less about Resolve to deploy it. Likewise it is about the Credibility of that Resolve – if you are ready to inflict pain/pressure on your adversary, does he think that his capacity to absorb that pain is greater than your willingness to sustain its application? Who’s tougher than whom?

In the case of Cuba, President Obama is easing (somewhat) US measures on the worn-out Communist regime. A good move from a position of overwhelming strength – open the door a bit and let them see how impoverished they are. Cuba is inevitably part of the Western civilisational space and will end up reverting to a sort of quirky Miami Lite. Nothing much at stake, whatever Castrovian bluster might say.

But Somali pirates and North Korean rocketeers and Taleban murderers are different. They are confronting Western standards/values and (eventually) interests head-on: "We reject everything you stand for – and we are in your face, so whatcha gonna do about it, eh?"

Strategy Page helpfully gives us the broad policy options for dealing with pirates, which boil down to three: put up with and contain the problem, or attack it in a limited but tough way, or attack it in a much more ruthless way.

And broadly speaking those options apply to how we tackle other anti-civilisational forces too.

We are all the beneficiaries of the civilisational stability inherited from decades or centuries ago, when violent forces were quelled and order imposed using whatever methods it took. But that inherited capital is being drawn down, as various forces for reprimitivisation creep back and stake out claims to control parts of the earth’s surface in the face of a bemused and uncertain international reaction.

Shooting a few pirate-terrorists and Talebanists is a good way to catch their attention. But probably not anything like enough to deter them. Just as sanctions against North Korea have no consequence – they look more like a sign of weakness than strength.

Maybe we’ll just have to sigh and watch all such problems grow and grow until the costs of not squashing them are so obvious and pressing that our own public opinion compels the deployment of both Might – and Resolve – once again?

One problem with that is that an angry public opinion so aroused may make other demands which are not so easy to accept, but no less vociferous..?

Or maybe others such as China, Japan and India who see their key interests being challenged by such forces will step in and take resolute action, rather than wait for Western ditherers to stop dithering.

That will be a real turning-point as and when it happens. Egad, it may even call for an urgent EU high-level meeting.