A Busy Day At The State Department

Secretary Clinton had a busy day today:

12:30 p.m. Bilateral and Working Lunch with His Excellency Javier Solana, Secretary

General of the Council of the European Union and High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

2:00 p.m. Bilateral with Her Excellency Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis, Prime Minister of the Republic of Haiti.

(OPEN PRESS / JOINT PRESS AVAILABILITY IN TREATY ROOM FOLLOWING BILATERAL AT APPROXIMATELY 2:30 P.M.)

2:45 p.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Mariano Fernandez Amunategui, Minister of Foreign Relations of the Republic of Chile.

In addition, Secretary Clinton announced an anti-piracy initiative today:

From CNN:

Noting that the pirates have been buying more sophisticated vessels with the ransom money they have been collecting, Clinton said it could be possible to stop boat-building companies from doing business with pirates.

“These pirates are criminals. They are armed gangs on the sea. And those plotting attacks must be stopped, and those who have carried them out must be brought to justice,” she told reporters after a meeting with Haitian Prime Minister Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis.

The United States also will work with shippers and insurers to strengthen their defenses against pirates and will and call for immediate meetings of an international counterpiracy task force to expand naval cooperation, Clinton said.

Although she did not suggest the use of military force, she mentioned “going after” pirate land bases in Somalia, which is authorized in a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last December.

While I absolutely agree that something must be done about the pirate hijackings, I think the US has a tendency to over-simplify the issue in an effort to not appear weak. The fact of the matter is, Somalia is the most dangerous place on earth, it has growing numbers of terror groups associated with Al Queda and there is literally nothing to prevent young Somalian teens from being lured into this criminal enterprise given that Somalia is a war-torn, poverty-stricken nightmare of a country.

I have to say that I am pretty shocked that Clinton even suggested “going after” pirate land bases in Somalia”, because any type of land-based military action against Somalia could cause a far more serious and violent back-lash against US interests in the region- we all remember ‘black hawk down’, the tragic incident where the US learned how difficult it was/is to engage in a military offensive in war-ravaged, urban Somalia (Mogadishu). Unless the international community deals with the underlying reasons for all of the above, any attempts to kick some pirate ass will only be a short-term solution that doesn’t address the real problems.

This article from Foreign Policy gives a good summary of why Somalia has become such a dangerous place.

On Thursday, Secretary Clinton will be heading to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. Background information on the Summit can be found here.