Pirates aren’t front-page news anymore, but they continue their predations. The latest news: Somalian desperados ventured 800 miles off the coast of Africa to seize a tanker loaded with $20 million of Saudi oil headed for the United States. The New York Times report notes: “The Somali pirate business appears to be back in full swing after a brief lull this summer that some attributed to increased naval patrols but that may have had more to do with the monsoon season. Now that the seas are calm, the pirates have resumed operations, acting with even greater sophistication.”

The increase in piratical activity is hardly surprising considering how poor most Somalis are and how much money they can make in this lucrative racket. As the Times further notes: “The vast ransoms paid for commercial vessels seem to be drawing more and more Somalis. Piracy used to be dominated by two clans, the Saleban, based in Xarardheere, and the Majeerten, who brought hijacked ships back to a small beach town called Eyl. Now, according to witnesses in Somalia, many other clans are involved, even Bantus, a minority group best known as farmers. ”

The underlying problem here is the toothless response of the international community, which won’t give orders to its warships to sink suspected pirate vessels on sight and won’t pursue the pirates into their onshore lairs. Nor will Western nations give pirates the kind of quick and merciless justice meted out by our ancestors in prior centuries. As I argued in this Foreign Affairs article, there is no secret solution to combating piracy. Western states defeated the pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with a variety of tried and true measures. Our failure to heed those lessons today means that the piratical plague will continue to grow — and could wind up helping to finance the Islamist groups who are attempting to take over Somalia.