Sail forth, privateers! Sharpen your cutlasses and load guns with grapeshot!

Well, not exactly. Utah Sen. Mike Lee recently kicked off a conversation about the return of letters of marque and reprisal as a means of striking out against rogue states and non-state bad actors.   

In an era of asymmetric warfare, a new breed of US privateers could allow America to fight its enemies where they lurk.

In old-fashioned naval warfare, a government letter of marque allowed a privately funded and operated warship to set sail and seize enemy ships, typically in international waters. 

Once vanquished, an enemy ship and its cargo would be taken to a friendly port and adjudicated as legitimate (or not) by a prize court. Legitimate prizes could be sold, and the privateer got to keep the money.

Those bearing a letter of marque couldn’t be considered a pirate, but treated as a prisoner of war.

(Letters of reprisal were similar but more limited, meant for those who had been wronged by a foreign government but couldn’t get satisfaction.) 

Lee proposed bringing back letters of marque in a thread on X last month, suggesting them as a tool for going after Mexican drug cartels.

His posts sparked a flood of skull-and-crossbones memes and “avast, me hearties” responses — and serious ones, too.

Erik Prince, for one, founder of the Blackwater private security company (it’s rude to call them “mercenaries”), weighed in to approve of Lee’s approach: “Only a private organization is going to be able to move that decisively with the flexibility required,” Prince told Breitbart News.

On Feb. 13, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) introduced legislation allowing the president to issue letters of marque and reprisal against cartels, which Trump’s State Department has since designated as foreign terror groups.

The US Constitution itself authorizes Congress to approve the issuance of letters of marque. After 9/11, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) proposed them as a means of going after terrorists, and more recently, some analysts have proposed “Cyber Letters of Marque and Reprisal” to pursue hackers.

But how would they work?

In Lee’s vision, Congress would designate trained civilians or established security firms to disrupt targeted supply lines and seize valuable assets without burdening taxpayers or risking US military personnel.

Mexican drug cartels are his first suggested target. They have some boats and even ships hauling drugs into the United States, and sea-based operations could intercept them, just like the privateers of old.

But most of the talk concerns raiding the cartels on land to seize their vehicles, gold, equipment and enormous hoards of cash. (Selling seized drugs would kind of defeat the purpose, but the US government could buy the drugs at a fair price and destroy them.)

I’m not sure whether Mexico would respect a land-based letter of marque allowing US citizens to raid cartels in its territory. But then, the Mexican government has lost control of much of the territory where cartels operate, so maybe that question is academic. 

If Erik Prince thinks it’s doable, well, that’s probably a better-informed opinion on the subject than mine.

But of course some of America’s enemies have ships that keep on operating in the face of US sanctions. 

Iran is illegally shipping its oil around the world, flagrantly violating international sanctions, for example. 

A fat supertanker full of crude oil would be worth about $150 million for the cargo alone at today’s valuation, and perhaps $100 million for the ship itself. Smaller tankers would be worth less, but still a lot.

At these prices, I can imagine private companies getting interested in becoming America’s sanctions-enforcement arm, especially as Iran doesn’t have a very formidable oceangoing navy.

Ships full of Russian crude are violating sanctions, too, and these days Russia doesn’t have much more of a navy than Iran. If ever we needed to turn the screws on Vladimir Putin, letters of marque could play a role.  

We might even take a leaf from the privateers’ books and take a piratical approach in our courtrooms.  

A statute called the False Claims Act allows “qui tam” lawsuits against individuals or institutions who make false statements in order to get government funds or contracts — with the reward being part of the contracts’ proceeds. 

As universities do their best to thwart Trump’s rules ending DEI programs, they may open themselves to qui tam suits by swearing they have eliminated DEI when they haven’t.

That would unleash a power greater than all of Blackbeard’s pirates: America’s plaintiff’s lawyers. Universities have deep, deep pockets.

Sadly, we’ll see no signal flags, cutting-out actions, or booming 18-pounders if Lee’s brainstorm takes hold. 

But in these belt-tightening times, a self-financing tool of either war or policy enforcement looks pretty appealing. Arr, mateys!

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.