Despite rolling waters, shooting three agitated pirates in the head as they held an American merchant ship captain hostage was the easy part. Now that the world knows that a young American president with roots in Africa will use deadly force on Africans despite his undeserved reputation as an "appeaser," the element of surprise is gone.

A bloody sequel is inevitable. With the memory of their colleagues' brain matter splattered over an ink-dark sea, it won't be as easy lulling pirates into a false sense of security next time. Forget about using negotiation as a stalling tactic. It won't work after last weekend's successful rescue.

For the estimated 230 foreigners still being held by pirates until their governments or employers pay millions in ransom for their safe return, the situation is far worse than it was before the weekend rescues. The pirates were already embarrassed by French commandos who killed two of their number on Friday in a daring rescue operation that, unfortunately, resulted in the death of one of the hostages.

The successful rescue of Captain Richard Phillips ups the ante for both the pirates and the West. Very few governments are going to let the Americans and the French hog all the maritime glory that comes with killing meddlesome pirates.

Expect the Chinese, the Indians and even the Saudis to respond to maritime threats similarly in the future. When it comes to pirates, the genie of state violence is out of the bottle. The nonviolent kabuki dances that characterized the pirate kidnapping in the recent past are over.

The next standoff between the mightiest naval power on the planet and outlaw denizens of the most failed of failed African states won't have the same movie-of-the-week ending as the Phillips rescue.

"U.S. forces have become our No. 1 enemy," a 30-year-old pirate told The Associated Press. "Every country will be treated the way it treats us. In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying."

The pirates -- or perhaps one of the country's warring factions -- tried to put a down payment on the promise to avenge the Somali deaths by firing mortars at U.S. Rep. Donald Payne's plane as it took off from Mogadishu yesterday. The New Jersey Democrat's plane made it out of Somali airspace safely, but it was an ominous sign of how lawless most of the country remains despite the presence of a functioning central government.

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that the American military is considering attacks on pirate bases throughout Somalia along with an effort to rebuild institutions in the country. This is a remarkable development given how gun-shy our country became after our last disastrous adventure in Somalia -- the so-called "Black Hawk Down" debacle of 1993.

At that time, 18 Americans died trying to capture top lieutenants of Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. More than 40 Americans lost their lives by the time President Bill Clinton pulled Americans out of that lawless country two years later. Somalia had been mostly ungovernable even before our soldiers arrived. It hasn't gotten any better in the interim.

Like most Americans, I'm not shedding any tears for the pirates the U.S. killed over the weekend. I don't have any romantic notions about anarchic nation states or the young men who exploit chaos for personal gain.

My concern is that more than a decade of international complacence about the failure of Somalia as a viable state has made the current situation inevitable. Nature abhors a vacuum, so it isn't surprising that young men with no other prospects except whatever criminal enterprise brings them the quickest short-term gain occupy the center of the country's economic life.

My fear is that now that we've dramatically expressed our determination never to be pushed around by pirates again, we still haven't figured out how to prevent this from happening tomorrow and every day after that. There are an awful lot of pirates out there and only a relatively few American ships protecting our interests in the region. We can't be everywhere. So are we willing to get serious about rebuilding Somalian society?

Until we do, the cry for vengeance will echo down the African coast like low rolling thunder. The next set of pirates reckless enough to board an American ship will have blood in their eyes. Like their predecessors, they'll eventually be cornered and crushed by overwhelming force. The only question is how many civilians they're willing to take with them.