If we can, for a moment, move away from politics and religion and back to
piracy, the newswires this morning are reporting that the number of European warships patroling the pirate areas of the IO are likely to fall next year. This makes perfect sense from a budgeting point of view given the economic disaster that
Europe is becoming. The EU naval chief of staff,
Captain Keith Blount, is saying that NATO would provide 3-4 ships and the EU navies no more than 8 in 2012. Currently, if you add up the US,
China,
Russia and
India, there are supposedly 30 ships patrolling the area.
China takes control of the naval convoy coordination from January 1. Will they fill in the gap likely to be left by
Europe next year? How concerned are they about rich, idle westerners on yachts? Remember, the whole purpose of the naval patrols is to ensure
oil flows from the ME to Europe and
Asia. We are incidental to the operation.
As pirate "season" kicks off again now, it seems to me that the situation will continue to escalate and spread, likely rendering the entire
Indian Ocean off limits to safe cruising. If you are nuts and have to go, I wrote an article on
"How to Avoid Pirates," using the tactics we did when we passed through the region on our
boat which can be found on our blog.
Dhillen