I suppose you could be right, Carol. But I am not as receptive to the idea of cunning, competence or foresight of American or other Western governments. One could come up with a list of piracy "firsts" in Southeast Asia, with a lot more effort than is available from Google news.

Still, I think it's more likely that, rather than clever design, the sharp uptick of activity in combination with the lack of government in Somalia, and the activity being so close to the source of energy, presents a situation where something CAN be done.

The phantom ships described in the RAND paper I cited at the top suggest a spiderweb of amazing fraud reaching into governments of otherwise "stable" countries. (They take a ship, erase the name and change the flag, with a few other nice details, and then they go into port, load up, and sail away with all the merchandise.)