Channels, Fall 2016

Channels • 2016 • Volume 1 • Number 1 Page 1 The Successes and Failures of the Battle of Mogadishu and Its Effects on U.S. Foreign Policy Philip Dotson History and Government — Cedarville University Introduction n the early 1990s, the United States dealt with an international incident that altered its foreign policy for the next two decades. The political disaster in 1993 Somalia so drastically affected the United States government that American involvement in future crises such as Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur was all but nonexistent. Not only did Operation Restore Hope (the United States’ code name for the peacekeeping project in Somalia) directly impact the response to these three disasters, but these events impacted each other as well. This shift in policy was in stark contrast to the previous half-century worth of American peacekeepers and military personnel’s involvement abroad. In the fifty years previous to Somalia, the United States involved itself in numerous East Asian countries to combat communism. It unwaveringly entered locations such as Lebanon, Grenada, and the Persian Gulf in the form of humanitarian relief and anti-government forces. However, after the Somali incident, the world watched the United States government avoid involvement in nearly every international incident that arose, including the United Nations (UN) classified genocide in Rwanda in early 1994. The only exception to this was the drastically different War on Terror, which the United States entered in late 2001 as the result of an attack on American soil, not an initial effort of military or humanitarian assistance. Many scholars have argued that the war was an anomaly on both the national and international policy stages due to the shift from solely humanitarian and peacekeeping intervention to military action. 1 Excluding the War on Terror, this trend of non- intervention still controls U.S. foreign policy in the present day, made clearly evident by the 1 Mary Kaldor, “10 Years After September 11,” Social Science Research Council, September 11, 2011, accessed March 23, 2016, http://essays.ssrc.org/10yearsafter911/a-decade-of-the-%E2%80%9Cwar-on- terror%E2%80%9D-and-the-%E2%80%9Cresponsibility-to-protect%E2%80%9D-the-global-debate-about- military-intervention-2/ . I