The game's afoot!

Catherine and I have officially started in on the theory section of our research, which means we'll be spending less time blogging about pirate news stories like Kenya's agreement to help arrest pirates, how the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater will not be fighting pirates, and the capture of 17 suspected pirates by US and South Korean warships.

We've checked out, requested through Interlibrary Loan, and downloaded a small canon of constructivist IR literature and are currently buried in Charles Tilly's Stories, Identities, and Political Change (Catherine) and Jutte Weldes' Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis (me). (I'll probably post a full reading list later.)

At this point, we're mainly interested in how other international relations scholars make rigorous use of explanatory discourse analysis and constructivist theory in their work, but I've also run across some potentially relevant pirate allusions. Weldes begins her book by presenting three narratives of what the US calls the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was particularly interested to note the deployment of the term "pirate" against the United States by both the Soviets and the Cubans. From the Soviet narrative we have: "More important, the United States launched a belligerent and illegal show of military strength through its naval blockade, an act of war and tantamount to piracy on the high seas" (31) . And from the Cuban narrative: "The United States pursued its hostile policies toward Cuba with a succession of 'insolent diplomatic notes' as well as 'piratical flights' over Cuban territory" (32). Indeed, Castro specifically called for the cessation of "pirate attacks carried out from bases in the United States and Puerto Rico" (36).

Cuba obviously has historical experience with pirates to draw upon, but the reference to piracy as the ultimate act of illegal aggression by the Soviets demonstrates just how illegitimate piracy is understood to be by state actors.