美国铁血网站《国家利益》4月7日发表一篇文章：《糟糕的主意：用海上雇佣兵攻打（封锁）中国》。这篇网文对美国海军学院会议论文集一篇正式发表的由两位美军退役海军陆战队军官所写的学术文章进行了批判。
笔者按图索骥，在海军学院网站找到了这篇题为《放出私掠船》的文章（译文附后），确实被这两位美军退役军官的“奇思妙想”震惊了。概括说来，这两位退役军官出的思路很简单，启用盛行于17、18世纪的一项古老的海战法当中的“私掠船”制度，对中国的庞大商船队进行袭扰，从而达到破坏中国经济对中国进行封锁的效果。
原文翻译如下，爱好学习英文的也可看后附英文原文，有关评论作者另写一篇：
放出私掠船！放出私掠船！放出私掠船！
美国应签发“私掠船证书”，以对抗中国在海上的侵略。
美国海军陆战队Mark Cancian上校（已退休）和Brandon Schwartz
海军战略家正在努力寻找对付不断上升的中国海军的方法。最简单，最舒适的方法是要求增加舰艇和飞机的数量，但国防预算可能已达到顶峰，这可能不是可行的策略。经官方盖章授权的”私掠船”可以提供一种低成本工具，以增强和平时期的威慑力，并在战时获得优势。它将攻击中国的不对称脆弱性，中国的商船队比美国大得多。确实，对中国全球贸易的攻击将损害中国的整个经济，并威胁到该政权的稳定。最后，尽管普遍存在相反的神话，但美国或国际法并未禁止美国”私掠船”。
什么是“私掠船证书”？
“私掠船”不是海盗，它确有规则和授权，由政府向平民颁发，允许他们俘获或摧毁敌方船只。《美国宪法》明确授予国会发布它们的权力（第一条，第8条，第11条）。所捕获的船只和货物被称为捕获品，捕获法在美国法典中有所规定。在美国，奖金索赔由美国地方法院裁定，传统上将收益支付给私掠船员。（“私掠船”可以指私人商船的船员或船舶本身，也可以称为“私掠船证书”）
国会可能会制定政策（例如，指定私掠船的目标，程序和资格），然后授权总统监督”私掠船”制度。国会还可以使私掠船免于承担某些责任，并通过债券和最新行为法规来担保制止滥用和违反国际法的可能性。
可以在冲突开始后的几周内迅速发出私掠船证书，让私人船实施追捕。相比之下，为海军建造一个新的战斗员将花费四年。在独立战争和1812年战争期间，私掠船远远超过海军舰艇，一名美国官员称私掠船是“我们最便宜和最好的海军”。4尽管许多人丧生，但数千人航行并破坏了英国的贸易。英国官员抱怨说，他们不能保证民用贸易的安全。
“私掠船”是一种曾经被普遍接受，但现在已经完全超越常规的利用私营部门参与战争的方式。
崛起的中国海军
中国军队的崛起已经有充分的文献记载，但有几点强调了为什么”私掠船”将成为美国海军战略的有用要素。
中国在其周围建立了强大的防御网络，有时被称为反进入/拒绝区域（A2 / AD）。作为该战略的要素之一，中国已将海军从1980年代的一支适度的沿海部队扩展到至少200艘舰艇的远洋部队，并配备了先进的防空系统，反舰导弹甚至航空母舰。支持海军的是陆基导弹和轰炸机。
打破这种防御要求海军遂行的战役比美国海军过去70年来的要求更为苛刻，如果追捕中国的全球商船队，那就几乎没有能力执行其他任务。太平洋战役中可能会需要留下任何有限的海军力量，以留意俄罗斯，伊朗或朝鲜等其他潜在对手。
非对称漏洞
中国通过“一带一路”倡议积极扩大了其在全球经济和外交领域的影响力，但这种扩张造成了脆弱性，因为必须保护这些投资。中国的脆弱性更加严重。在中国航运出口的推动下，过去15年来，中国的经济翻了一番。中国的国内生产总值（GDP）的38％来自贸易，而美国的GDP只有9％。中国的社会稳定是建立在权衡的基础上的：中国共产党告诉人民，他们将没有民主制度，但他们将获得经济繁荣。
中国的商船队庞大，因为在中国建造和运营商船的成本很低，而且其出口驱动型经济创造了巨大的需求。 2018年，中国在全球商船队中拥有2112艘船，而香港又有2185艘船，此外，中国拥有庞大的远洋捕鱼船队，估计有2500艘船。
相比之下，美国的商船队中只有246艘船。该船队-建造和运营费用昂贵-主要由《琼斯法》维持，该法规定在美国港口之间运送货物的船舶必须在美国旗下。
这种不对称的脆弱性使美国获得了主要的战略优势。”私掠船”对中国经济以及共产党造成的威胁可以为美国提供主要的战时优势，增强和平时期的威慑力，从而减少战争的可能性。即使中国威胁要派遣自己的私掠船，美国的脆弱性也相对较小。
狗在战斗中的大小
通常的做法是让美国海军军舰从海上驱逐中国商船。不过，美国海军将全力以赴应对中国人民解放军海军（PLAN）。美国船队数量已降至295艘左右，尽管在2040年代初可能达到并超过340艘，然后再次下降，但355艘船的目标可能无法实现。与中国的冲突可能需要整个船队；确实，相比于一个有能力的捍卫自己家乡的中国海军，即使是355艘船也可能太少了。
相比之下，在第二次世界大战中，美国海军增加到6700艘，既不算英国庞大的舰队也不算其他盟友的贡献。而且，盟军，尤其是英国和法国，拥有全球性的殖民网络，拒绝了敌人的庇护，并提供了打击敌舰的基地。在以后的冲突中将无法获得可比资产。确实，一些前盟友和殖民地甚至可能为中国船只提供庇护所。
为攫取中国黄金巡逻大洋
利用中国的脆弱性需要大量船只，而私营部门可以提供这些船只。海洋辽阔，有成千上万个港口要掩藏或冲刺。尽管海军无法承受数十亿美元的驱逐舰在里约热内卢郊外等待中国船只离开数周的等待，但由于美国外交官对（可能是中立的）巴西施压，一艘私掠船可以耐心地在附近等待。
无论是招募船员还是武装船只都不会构成主要障碍。私掠船员无需全副武装，因为他们将轻装（或不武装）商船，选择易受攻击的目标，或与其他私掠船员合作行动。由于目标是捕获船体和货物，因此船东不想沉没船只，只是说服船员投降。有多少商人会倾向于战斗而不是投降并在舒适的拘留中度过战争？
现有的私营军事行业无疑会抓住机会成为私掠船企业。当前有数十家公司提供安全服务，从相当于购物中心的警卫人员到舰船上的武装反海盗特遣队。大量潜在的新兵已经表明愿意为私人承包商工作。例如，在伊拉克战争的高峰期，美国雇用了20,000名武装承包商从事安全工作。
实际上，已经建立了私人保安船，证明了该概念的可行性。私营安保公司黑水公司装备了一支武装巡逻艇，以捍卫索马里海盗的商业运输。在索马里海盗高峰时期，印度洋地区约有2700名武装承包商和40艘私人武装巡逻艇在印度洋航行。
正如奖金的前景诱使成千上万的海员在1812年革命和战争期间签约私掠船一样，类似的诱因（例如从一次捕获中赚取数百万美元的前景）将在将来吸引所需的人员。
需要新方法
“私掠船”的概念使海军战略家感到不舒服，因为它是一种战争中的作战样式，与1815年以来美国海军的作战方式不符。没有现代的使用经验，对法律基础和国际舆论也存在合理的担忧。但是，战略家不能主张采用开箱即用的思维来面对日益严峻的中国挑战，然后再转向传统解决方案，因为开箱即用的思维会使他们感到不舒服。
由于战略形势是新的，我们的思维也必须是新的。在战时，私有企业可能会淹没海洋并摧毁中国经济及其政权稳定所依赖的海洋产业。仅仅进行这种运动的威胁就可以增强威慑力，从而完全阻止战争的发生。与其他地方一样，在战略上，所有旧事物都将再次成为新事物。
Unleash the Privateers!
The United States should issue letters of marque to fight Chinese aggression at sea.
By Colonel Mark Cancian, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired) and Brandon Schwartz
April 2020
Proceedings Vol. 146/2/1,406
FEATURED ARTICLE
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For a discussion of the law regarding letters of marque, see: U.S. Privateering Is Legal
Naval strategists are struggling to find ways to counter a rising Chinese Navy. The easiest and most comfortable course is to ask for more ships and aircraft, but with a defense budget that may have reached its peak, that may not be a viable strategy. Privateering, authorized by letters of marque, could offer a low-cost tool to enhance deterrence in peacetime and gain advantage in wartime. It would attack an asymmetric vulnerability of China, which has a much larger merchant fleet than the United States. Indeed, an attack on Chinese global trade would undermine China’s entire economy and threaten the regime’s stability. Finally, despite pervasive myths to the contrary, U.S. privateering is not prohibited by U.S. or international law.
What are Letters of Marque?
Privateering is not piracy—there are rules and commissions, called letters of marque, that governments issue to civilians, allowing them to capture or destroy enemy ships.1 The U.S. Constitution expressly grants Congress the power to issue them (Article I, section 8, clause 11). Captured vessels and goods are called prizes, and prize law is set out in the U.S. Code. In the United States, prize claims are adjudicated by U.S. district courts, with proceeds traditionally paid to the privateers.2 (“Privateer” can refer to the crew of a privateering ship or to the ship itself, which also can be referred to as a letter of marque).
Congress would likely set policy—for example, specifying privateer targets, procedures, and qualifications—then authorize the President to oversee the privateering regime.3 Congress also could indemnify privateers from certain liabilities and curb the potential for abuse and violations of international law through surety bonds and updated regulations on conduct.
Letters of marque could be issued quickly, with privateers on the hunt within weeks of the start of a conflict. By contrast, it would take four years to build a single new combatant for the Navy. During the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, privateers vastly outnumbered Navy ships, with one U.S. official calling privateers “our cheapest and best navy.”4 Though many were lost, thousands sailed and disrupted British trade.5 British officials complained they could not guarantee the safety of civilian trade.
Privateering constitutes a once universally accepted but now thoroughly unconventional way of harnessing the private sector in war.
A Rising Chinese Navy
The rise of the Chinese military has been well documented, but a few points highlight why privateering would be a useful element of U.S. naval strategy.
China has built a powerful defensive network around its homeland, sometimes called an antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) envelope. As one element of this strategy, China has expanded its navy from a modest coastal force in the 1980s to an oceangoing force of at least 200 ships, with sophisticated air defenses, antiship missiles, and even aircraft carriers. Backing up the navy are land-based missiles and bombers.
Cracking open such a defense would require a naval campaign more demanding than anything the U.S. Navy has done in the past 70 years, leaving little capability for other tasks, such as hunting down China’s global merchant fleet. Whatever limited naval forces might be left over from a campaign in the Pacific would be needed to keep an eye on other potential adversaries, such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
Asymmetric Vulnerabilities
A print showing the U.S. privateer General Armstrong under attack by HMS Plantagenet, a 74-gun British ship of the line, in 1814. Though it has been two centuries since the U.S. government issued letters of marque, the prospect of a fight in the western Pacific makes this a good time to reconsider their use.
Library of Congress
China has aggressively expanded its global economic and diplomatic influence through its Belt and Road Initiative, but this expansion creates a vulnerability, as these investments must be protected. Chinese vulnerability goes deeper. China’s economy has doubled in the past 15 years, driven by exports carried in Chinese hulls. Thirty-eight percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) comes from trade, against only 9 percent of U.S. GDP.6 Chinese social stability is built on a trade-off: The Chinese Communist Party has told the people they will not have democratic institutions, but they will receive economic prosperity.
China’s merchant fleet is large, because the cost to China of building and operating merchant ships is low, and its export-driven economy creates a huge demand. In 2018, China had 2,112 ships in its global merchant fleet and Hong Kong had another 2,185.7 In addition, China has a massive long-distance fishing fleet, estimated at 2,500 vessels.8
By contrast, the United States has only 246 ships in its merchant fleet. That fleet—expensive to build and operate—is sustained mainly by the Jones Act, which mandates that ships conveying cargo between U.S. ports must be U.S.-flagged.
This asymmetric vulnerability gives the United States a major strategic advantage. The threat privateering poses to the Chinese economy—and hence the Communist Party—could provide the United States with a major wartime advantage and enhance peacetime deterrence, thus making war less likely. Even if China threatens to dispatch its own privateers, U.S. vulnerability is comparatively small.
Size of the Dog in the Fight
The ordinary course of action would be to have U.S. Navy warships drive China’s merchant fleet from the seas. However, the U.S. Navy would have its hands full taking on the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The U.S. fleet is down to about 295 ships, and though it may reach and surpass 340 in the early 2040s before declining again, the goal of 355 ships is probably out of reach.9 A conflict with China would likely require this entire fleet; indeed, against a capable PLAN adversary defending its home waters, even 355 ships might be too few.
By contrast, in World War II, the U.S. Navy grew to 6,700 ships, counting neither Great Britain’s huge fleet nor contributions from other allies.10 And the allies, Britain and France particularly, had a global network of colonies that denied adversaries sanctuary and provided bases for operations against enemy ships. Comparable assets will not be available in a future conflict. Indeed, some former allies and colonies might even give sanctuary to Chinese vessels.11
Cruise the Seas for Chinese Gold
Capitalizing on Chinese vulnerabilities requires large numbers of ships, and the private sector could provide them. The ocean is large, and there are thousands of ports to hide in or dash between. While the Navy could not afford to have a multibillion-dollar destroyer sitting outside Rio de Janeiro for weeks waiting for Chinese vessels to leave, a privateer could patiently wait nearby as U.S. diplomats put pressure on (presumably neutral) Brazil.
Neither recruiting crews nor the need to arm ships would constitute a major obstacle. Privateers do not need to be heavily armed, because they would be taking on lightly (or un-) armed merchant vessels, choosing vulnerable targets, or acting cooperatively with other privateers. Since the goal is to capture the hulls and cargo, privateers do not want to sink the vessel, just convince the crew to surrender. How many merchant crews would be inclined to fight rather than surrender and spend the war in comfortable internment?12
The existing private military industry would doubtless jump at the chance to privateer. Dozens of companies currently provide security services, from the equivalent of mall guards to armed antipiracy contingents on ships. A large pool of potential recruits has shown willingness to work for private contractors. At the height of the Iraq War, for example, the United States employed 20,000 armed contractors in security jobs.
In fact, private security vessels already have been created, demonstrating the concept’s viability. The private security firm Blackwater outfitted an armed patrol craft to defend commercial shipping from Somali pirates.13 At the height of Somali piracy, there were some 2,700 armed contractors on ships and 40 private armed patrol boats operating in the Indian Ocean region.14
Just as the prospect of prize money induced thousands of seamen to sign on with privateers during the Revolution and the War of 1812, similar inducements—such as the prospect of earning millions of dollars from a single capture—would attract the needed personnel in a future conflict.
New Approaches Required
The notion of privateering makes naval strategists uncomfortable because it is an approach to war that does not conform to the way the U.S. Navy has fought since 1815. There is no modern experience of their use, and there are legitimate concerns about legal foundations and international opinion. But strategists cannot argue for out-of-the-box thinking to face the rising challenge of China and then revert to conventional solutions because out-of-the-box thinking makes them uncomfortable.
As the strategic situation is new, so must our thinking be new. In wartime, privateers could swarm the oceans and destroy the maritime industry on which China’s economy—and the stability of its regime—depend. The mere threat of such a campaign might strengthen deterrence and thereby prevent a war from happening at all. In strategy, as elsewhere, everything old shall be new again.
1. Department of Defense (DoD), Law of War Manual (2016), § 13.5.2; Louise Doswald-Beck, ed., San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea (International Institute of Humanitarian Law, 1995), Rules 13(i), 40–41, 59–60, 135, 138–39.
2. 10 USC § 8852. For prize law, see 10 USC §§ 8851–81, and 10 USC § 7668 (allowing courts to only pay net proceeds into the Treasury).
3. U.S. Congress, An Act Concerning Letters of Marque, and Prizes, chapter 102, 26 June 1812.
4. Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 96
5. Edgar Stanton Maclay, A History of American Privateers (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, and Co., 1900), 506; George F. Emmons, The Navy of the United States: from the Commencement, 1775, to 1853 (Washington, DC: 1853), 170–203.
6. World Bank Trade Database, data.worldbank.org.
7. “Merchant Marine” in CIA Factbook 2018 (Washington, DC: 2018).
8. Gary Doyle, “Chinese Trawlers Travel Farthest and Fish the Most: Study,” Reuters, 22 February 2018.
9. Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2019 Shipbuilding Plan (19 October 2018).
10. Naval History and Heritage Command, “U.S. Ship Force Levels 1886–Present,” www.history.navy.mil.
11. MAJ Nicholas R. Nappi, USMC, “But Will They Fight China?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 144, no. 5 (May 2018).
12. DoD, Law of War Manual, note 1 at §13.5.3.
13. Kim Sangupta, “Blackwater Gunboats Will Protect Ships,” The Independent, 19 November 2008.
14. Sean McFate, The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 142.
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