Sovereignity belongs to states. If a specific country has a ‘state’ only on little pieces of paper but it is actually powerless, it’s better for the UN to be basing policy on reality than convenient fictions.

Adrian: I completely agree.

von K: I don’t think its particularly interesting. The entire world has a huge stake in the safe transit of goods via the oceans and everyone’s ships from the US to EU to even North Korea have been hijacked and attacked there. It’s simply a rare instance of an issue being that clear cut.

Chirol, Elambend, you’re right, but let me be more precise – of course commerce and geopolitics are linked. That is obvious. The replies above also hold that it is obvious (and not interesting) that these interests are the ones that get the whole security council together to make the move to suspend the sovreignty of a state. Indeed Adrian rightly points out that it if the nation state is failed (it’s only on paper) then there is not much to annul. But what we have been seeing in these “gaps” lately is conflicting geopolitical interests playing out at the faultlines, leading to anything but accord at the SC in many other situations of lawlessness. It is interesting that in this part of the world it happens that everyone on the SC’s commerical interests gel, and that one or two powers are not in a position to advance a different agenda. The question that comes to my mind is whether there is no way to develop, encourage, advance or just “rig” these interests somehow to effect change in different situation where a lot of people are in need of protection – Darfour for example (this is not in any way to suggest a parallel with Darfour in the piracy situation; I am just wondering whether commerce can be advanced in such a way as to create equitable SC resolutions in general.)

The main problem here – especially from the point of view of the West – is that by asking the UNSC for permission you are implicitly granting that body the right to deny you the right to intervention. France recent did undertake military action in this region without UNSC permission because its citizens and property were abducted. A wise state will engage in such actions only when necessary – as is clearly the case here, since Somolia doesn’t have the power to enforce its sovereignty – but sovereign states have the right to take action to save the lives of their citizens regardless.

Nice thing, though, is that laws can and are adjusted to make such maneuvers harder. Witness this UNSC resolution as an example of that: by targeting trading vessels, the Somali pirates got onto the shitlist of all the permanent UNSC members. The only restrictions left for dealing with the pirates are those the World’s navies put on themselves.