First of all that is an excellent post. I don’t like the word fair, as fair does not exist in Eve, what I am talking about is balance, and what you have detailed as in the difference between PIRAT and the people they attack, it is unfair, however CCP needs to be focussed on hisec balance and so should anyone looking at this issue.
This is why I would suggest that CCP could have different structures that control the war dec for different types of war targets in hisec.
What you want to do is put back the control of their Eve game play to end the war for the defender so for a small hisec corp a rush attack on the structure controlling their war dec should be possible. So it is not so much a skill balance but an opportunity balance.
The problem is that this needs to scale with the larger entities most notably the top tier nullsec alliances. I think this is very doable.