Pirates of the Caribbean has been a hit Hollywood franchise and one of the most popular rides at Disney World. Improbably, it is also returning as a revenue model for the world’s superpower.
Beginning in October, the Pentagon, under the revived Trump administration, began conducting strikes on drug-running vessels operating out of Venezuela. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and President Trump were each afforded ample opportunity for punchy one-liners, and in ordinary times, escalation likely would have ended there. Posturing.
But 2026 is not ordinary. It is blockbuster.
On Dec. 10, The Skipper, a Guyana-flagged oil tanker linked to Venezuela, was seized in the Caribbean. At that moment, history began to move from poetry into rhyme.
Pro-corporate colonialism is not new. It is among the oldest political tactics on record. During conflicts such as the Seven Years’ War, privateering functioned as both a military instrument and a profit engine of empire.
Fought between Britain and France wherever their empires collided, the Seven Years’ War was the first conflict waged at a truly global scale.
Both empires faced the same constraint: Tax revenue was finite. No state, however ambitious, could afford to station taxpayer-funded naval forces along every mile of ocean, waiting to take a cannonball for king and country.
They arrived, independently, at the same solution. Outsource violence. Private corporations were empowered to recruit men willing to risk their lives not for patriotism, but for profit.
History has been kind to some of these men. Sir Francis Drake is remembered as a knight, his piracy laundered into legend, his legacy repackaged for modern entertainment — his treasure-hunting descendants now rendered playable by video game studios.
One wonders whether four centuries from now developers will build a blockbuster around the descendants of Erik Prince, hunting for treasure with nothing but a family name and a battered Breitling Emergency as their final clue.
America in 2026 faces a familiar predicament: soaring national debt, a growing elderly population and an insatiable military-industrial complex. The menu is short, and every option is a Faustian bargain.
Washington appears to have chosen a devil it knows.
Maritime madness. A thirst for treasure. The only difference is that the gold is liquid now.
Washington watchers like to joke that pizza deliveries near the Pentagon can predict the outbreak of war. This journalist suggests adding logged hours of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag in the Washington area to the pundit class’s expanding arsenal of crystal balls.
President Trump has floated a $1.5 trillion military budget. He has also declared that America will exercise indefinite control over Venezuelan oil.
Rather than running up an even higher tab on the national credit card, the administration appears to be reaching for an older solution to finite tax dollars, domestic strain, and economic stagnation: sail the seas for gold.
Privateers, after all, are remembered kindly in hindsight. Their violence is softened. Their crimes are edited. The blood in the water is quietly erased.
That leaves Americans with a choice. Decide how to feel about this now or let history decide for them.
Sinking drug boats with aerial strikes and seizing oil tankers is, unquestionably, a terrible thing. But history reminds us, however, that sinking the Spanish Armada so thoroughly that legends persist in Ireland of survivors reshaping the population along the southern coast may have been worse.
The difference between atrocity and adventure has always been paperwork — and time.
