The successful rescue of a cargo ship captain held by Somali pirates on Sunday has also saved Barack Obama from a foreign policy problem he neither needed nor wanted:
* The Obama administration was careful not to give the crisis too much prominence while delicate negotiations were under way to secure the captain’s release. Until the very end Obama himself made no comment to try to play down the standoff in the face of other foreign policy challenges from North Korea to Iran to Afghanistan and beyond.
* Obama escaped the political embarrassment that President Bill Clinton suffered in 1993 when 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in Somalia trying to track down warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed in a disastrous battle that led to the book and movie “Blackhawk Down.”
* Had the standoff turned out otherwise it might have dented Obama’s national security credentials and given critics, especially opposition Republicans, ammunition to portray him as weak on security and tackling terrorism. The outcome allows him to project himself as tough on security.
* It was not immediately clear how involved Obama was in the rescue operation but his statement afterward suggested he believed Washington must play a more robust role in dealing with pirates.
* Given that the present strategy of flooding the area with warships has enjoyed only limited success, it remains to be seen what Obama plans to do.
* Ground operations against pirates’ hideouts remain a possibility, although that could put at risk the 270 hostages from around the world being held by pirates preying on the busy sea-lanes of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
* A more activist policy also has risks, possibly sucking the United States back into Somalia, which Foreign Policy magazine has called “The Most Dangerous Place in the World.”
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...