Is a War on Terror possible? Lessons from the long war against piracy

The developed world of the twenty-first century would like to put terrorism behind it. But is it possible to suppress a form of aggression that has been common for centuries? Perhaps. From earliest times to 1790 piracy was a constant and intense scourge, but by 1850 it was a minor sideshow, and so it remains. Why did the anti-piracy efforts of four centuries prior to 1790 fail, and why did the Long War of six decades against piracy then succeed? Does it yield lessons for the struggle to come, and should those lessons cause us to act differently than the developed world has recently? Almost certainly.