By Joshua Arnold

The U.S. Navy has been battling pirates since our nation’s founding era, and its running battle against Houthi terrorists in Yemen is only the latest round — albeit an unusually intense one. Iran and the Houthis “are all saying that they’re going to hold us responsible for what we do, seemingly trying to act as though we’re somehow the aggressors here,” described FRC President Tony Perkins. In reality, the U.S. Navy has an inherently defensive mission: to keep the world’s major waterways open to commercial shipping (especially American shipping).

The Barbary Wars

In fact, America’s history of confronting piracy predates the Navy, and even the U.S. Constitution itself. In 1784, Moroccan Sultan Sidi Muhammad seized an American merchantman, an incident the confederated states eventually resolved in the Moroccan-American Treaty of Peace and Friendship, dated June 28, 1786.

Meanwhile, Dey Muhammad of Algiers declared war on the U.S. in 1785 and captured several vessels, when British diplomats signaled he was free to do so. The cash-strapped confederation lacked the means to field a navy, although fortunately for the states the Portuguese navy kept Algerian pirates (as well as pirates from Tunis and Tripoli, which were all technically part of the Ottoman Empire) pinned up in the Mediterranean.

In 1794, the U.S. Congress finally authorized the construction of the first six ships in the U.S. Navy.

A full decade after Algerian piracy began, America under President George Washington concluded treaties with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli in 1795 that secured the release of 83 American sailors. In exchange, the U.S. paid tribute to the pirate states.

In 1801, Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli of Tripoli demanded additional tribute from the U.S. and began seizing American ships once again. Three ships dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson landed U.S. Marines into their first ever combat (immortalized in the first line of their hymn, “the shores of Tripoli”) in 1805, forcing Tripoli to negotiate a peace treaty that included a ransom for American captives, but no tribute.

Under President James Madison, America found itself at war with the African pirate states once again. In 1812, Algerian Dey Hajji Ali started seizing American ships yet again. Ali coordinated this action to take advantage of America’s war with England, which led to the burning of Washington, D.C. and the heroic defense of Fort McHenry, which inspired our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

America was so pre-occupied with the war that Congress did not declare war on Algiers until 1815, after it concluded the Treaty of Ghent with Great Britain. Now, a more muscular American navy sent a whole squadron to the Mediterranean, which forced the pirate states to accept new peace treaties.

America’s problems with the African pirate states (called the Barbary States) eventually went away as European empires divided up Africa among themselves, with France taking over Algeria in 1830.

Other Piracy Conflicts

America’s troubles with piracy were not confined to the Mediterranean. In the country’s first decades, piracy in the poorly policed Caribbean reached such a height that Congress passed a law to punish piracy in 1819. Pirates even captured ships in the Florida Keys. It took the combined effort of the American West Indian Squadron and the British Royal Navy to finally defeat pirate marauders in the late 1820s.

Since then, the U.S. Navy has battled pirates in Liberia (1843), the Comoro Islands (1851) and the Gulf of Siam (1945). Piracy became a global issue again in 2007 when Somali pirates captured a Danish cargo ship and received a lucrative ransom. In 2009, Somali pirates captured the American vessel Maersk-Alabama, leading to a daring SEAL team rescue.

Somalia lies just across the narrow Gulf of Aden from Yemen, the place where Houthi pirates continue to plunder the same global shipping lane.

“About 15% of the world trade goes through there,” observed Rep. Tim Burchett on “Washington Watch” Monday. “The main thing that we get through there — we’ve transferred our goods going in another direction — is our oil supply.”

America Versus Pirates

“We need to put it down as quick as possible and get trade back,” Burchett continued. “It’s not worth a world war. … We spent $250 billion unchecked to Ukraine … and yet we allow these kind of shenanigans to go around the world. And we hardly do anything about it until Donald Trump got in the White House.”

It’s tempting to view piracy as a temporary nuisance, a distraction from the more important work of facing down America’s geopolitical adversaries. In part, that’s because the pirates are merely a nuisance. But America’s longstanding conflict with global piracy also stems from something more fundamental in our national character.

In imitation of the English model, America has long been a commercial and maritime powerhouse, trusting in wide oceans to keep potential adversaries far from our shores. Like the English, the Founders recognized the importance of national security, but they feared that a standing army could threaten liberty in a way that a navy could not.

This is reflected even in the U.S. Constitution itself, which gives preferential treatment to a standing navy over a standing army. Article I, Section 8 authorizes Congress “To provide and maintain a Navy” with no further restrictions, while the power “To raise and support Armies” comes with the restriction that “no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.”

America meant to trade with the world, but that required that it also have the means to defend its trading fleets. “If we mean to be a commercial people, or even to be secure on our Atlantic side, we must endeavor, as soon as possible, to have a navy,” wrote Publius (Alexander Hamilton) in Federalist No. 24.

For a century, America could count on the partnership of the mighty British navy in keeping world trade routes free of pirates and other hazards. But, since World War II, America has been the undisputed master of the seas (although with assistance from England, France, Australia, and other allies).

This means that the job of ridding world sea lanes of piracy still falls on the U.S. Navy, just as it has done since our country’s earliest years. We do it to protect our own commercial interests in making world trade routes safe. We do it as one of the most American duties ever.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.