Piracy is a basic and fundamental concern for all navies. From almost the beginning of state-sponsored navies, piracy suppression has been one of their major responsibilities-when Julius Caesar was captured by pirates in 76 BCE, the first thing he did after paying the pirates' ransom and being released was to fit "out a squadron of ships to take his revenge." Despite piracy's importance and the continued frequency of piratical attacks, however, relatively few scholarly works have been written analyzing cases of modern piracy and piracy suppression in terms of varying strategic, policy, and...

The powerful underwater earthquake that occurred off the coast of Sumatra on 26 December 2004 generated the most destructive tsunami ever recorded, drowning more than 150,000 people without warning in exposed littoral areas from Indonesia to South Africa. The destruction was particularly severe in the Aceh Province of Indonesia, at the northwestern tip of the island of Sumatra. There entire villages were destroyed within minutes as waves of thirty feet or more advanced far inland, while destruction of the main coastal highway made the entire region virtually inaccessible to Indonesian...