The Roman empire fell, and the dark ages descended on Europe for one main reason. Rome no longer had the ability or the will to defend the roads from brigands. This meant that goods, people and ideas could no longer travel from place to place and civilization collapsed and became a collection of isolated city states with no potential for meaningful growth or new ideas.
This is why it is so critical for the U.S.A. to hold global hegemony over the seas, to ensure the safe passage of goods from nation to nation and hence growth and continued spread of civilization, as we see in South Korea and elsewhere.
Sadly, the US seems to have lost any meaningful perspective on history of the facts that lead to the genuine cessation of suffering of human kind, and truly rational systems of distribution of wealth. Ironically however, the Russians do seem to understand how critical it is, that the oceans are safe from brigands.
Yes they know how to deal with pirates and Vlad Putin knows how to be a bloody hypocrite and criticize Israel:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/gaza_blockade
Only if the so-called leaders or other nations had any spine or balls the ‘Pirate’ problem would vanish. Who would these brigands complain to? They don’t even have a government. OH! but wait, some commie ACLU or crybaby liberal groups will trip over each other to help these criminals.