Our long history of violating international law continues...
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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Words have meanio, and in this case the word doesn't mean what some people want it to mean.
But yes, piracy is committed by a non state actor.
Except for all the times it happened. All the colonial countries hired ships to attack merchants of the other nations in the Caribbean and Atlantic. The age when that happened? The golden age of piracy! There were more pirates on the payroll of states than those stealing for themselves.
That was a privateer. And it wasn't exactly considered all that legitimate at the time, and definitely isn't legitimate activity today.
Sir Francis Drake was legitimate enough to get knighted. And when he captured and ransomed Cartagena de Indias he gave 100,000 pesos to the crown of england. You know what the people in Colombia call that event? A pirate raid.
I agree there is a differentiation and privateer is a more precise definition. But the people getting attacked could not give less of a shit if the guy robbing them is state sponsored or not. To the victims its just pirates. Just as the US is sending pirate ships to do piracy in Venezuela.
I mean, if you want to say enforcing sanctions is piracy, but that makes a whole lot of countries guilty, not just the us.