Pass the SPF 50 and the AR-15! Senator Mike Lee has introduced a piece of legislation, the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization Act, in an effort to revive the “ancient practice,” outlined in our Constitution, of licensing private citizens to confront foreign malefactors on the open seas, and to take prizes as they may. In particular, he is aiming at drug cartels.

Over at Responsible Statecraft, Michael Vlahos considers the history and practical effect of lawfully endorsing a kind of lawlessness. The rest of the world has tried and failed to extinguish the privateer and paid proxy form of warfare. We have notably absented ourselves from these efforts, going back to the 1856 Paris Declaration.

So why go to the trouble of reviving a troublesome and long-buried marque of state piracy from bygone days? Perhaps administration boosters want to widen the scope and means of U.S. seapower in decline. Perhaps they want to “spread the wealth” when it comes to making war, so that it is not so pointedly a government-only enterprise. Maybe some believe they can clothe a dirty war in flamboyant raiment, by invoking the romance of another age.

I think the answer is simpler and is found toward the top of Vlahos’s article. Congress wants some kind of war against the Venezuelan regime, or at least the pressure of war. But they don’t want the responsibility of committing, in public, our armed forces to another uncertain mission. So instead, they invite a coalition of the willing public to raise hell in our name. I’m not sure I would bid just anyone with a boat and some ammunition to make themselves known to cartels and threaten to take their loot.