Summary

Back on May 1, at an event in West Palm Beach, President Donald Trump quipped that the U.S. Navy was acting “like pirates” while seizing ships as part of the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. “We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump bragged. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates, but we are not playing games.” As someone with a 2-year-old son who likes to play pirates—and who spends a lot of time writing about the shifting maritime order under the Donroe Doctrine—I decided to take the president at his word. Let’s review what has happened over the past nine months in foreign policy through the lens of piracy. On September 1, 2025, the Pentagon launched “Operation Southern Spear,” a campaign of airstrikes and interdictions in the Caribbean Sea—ostensibly targeting drug cartels and smugglers from Venezuela. It has since expanded to Ecuador’s Pacific Coast, where local fishermen have been killed, kidnapped, and tortured. The death toll is over 170 people so far. Then, on January 3, 2026, U.S. Special Forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in an operation that killed over 100 people, and replaced him with Delcy Rodríguez—a fellow Chavista, though presumably a more pliant one. Following negotiations in Caracas geared at opening up the country’s energy sector to foreign investment, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum flew home with $100 million in gold—for domestic refiners. On January 30, the Panamanian Supreme Court revoked a decades-long concession held by the Chinese shipping company CK Hutchison at the Balboa and Cristóbal container terminals. This ruling was widely interpreted as a capitulation to diplomatic pressure from the U.S., resulting in the dispossession of CK Hutchinson’s port infrastructure—which was handed over to the Danish firm Maersk. The U.S. has also been running a similar playbook in Peru, over the port of Chancay. Then, on February 28, Trump launched “Operation Epic Fury,” resulting in a near-immediate strategic loss. Amid a fragile ceasefire, a bizarre new maritime status quo has emerged. Iran charges tolls for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. Navy attempts to interdict any ship that has filled up at an Iranian port—while simultaneously threatening to sanction entities that pay the toll. From what it seems, the U.S. is using a diverse and flexible set of military, legal, and political tactics, including murder, torture, abduction, coercion, and theft, to intentionally disrupt maritime trade flows—forcing rival capital out, while trapping allied capital in. Still don’t think so? Check out this map showing just how many tankers are lining up at American refineries. It’s a pretty remarkable coincidence that Western supermajors are dipping their toes in Venezuela and capitalizing their investments in Guyana while the U.S. keeps Hormuz blocked. All this sounds pretty piratey and out of character for a nation state, right? In the Captain Phillips/Pirates of the Caribbean/Muppet Treasure Island sense of the term, yes. But Trump’s comparison ultimately distracts from a simple fact: This is how empires have always acted. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish empire used the same interdiction tactics in the Mediterranean against the Ottomans, while mired in conflict with the Netherlands over South American port access—all while constantly fending off pirates (many of whom were privateers). In those days, as today, piracy was not one thing. It could be an act of political rebellion. It could be a survival strategy. It could be directed by rival powers. (It could even be all three at once.) Another thing that hasn’t changed is that the label “pirate” has always been selectively applied within the context of great power struggle between maritime empires. In the Netherlands, Piet Hein is a national hero. In Spain, he is remembered mostly as a pirate. Viewed in this light, Trump’s remark wasn’t unique because of its seeming honesty. Rather, its rootedness in a common misbelief about piracy has offered us a rare insight into how an imperial power in decline rationalizes its own violent actions—which are progressively unjustifiable under international laws. Earlier in the week, the U.S. put out a statement in defense of Panama’s “sovereignty” against Chinese “economic pressure” and asked allies to join a multilateral “Maritime Freedom Construct” with the goal of unblocking the Strait of Hormuz. Then on Friday, Trump’s piracy quip revealed that the global maritime order is just lofty rhetoric obfuscating the persistence of a centuries-long status quo. The truth is that the empire has always behaved like the “pirates” we’ve been taught to fear. Because the pirates of yore, much like the “narco-terrorists” of today, are how empire has always justified its barbarism, its murder, its torture, its abduction, its coercion, and its theft. Pirates, of course, have a colorful way of articulating the same dog-eat-dog vision of power: “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!” Trump has a more blunt way of characterizing his high-seas misadventures: “To the victor go the spoils.”