Channels, Fall 2016

Page 2 Dotson • The Successes and Failures of the Battle of Mogadishu lack of adequate military support in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2012. The world suffered unimaginable losses through the events in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. These events were much more catastrophic than the multitude of engagements the United States had interfered in throughout the previous forty years, all of which were under the guise of global peacekeeping. The world quickly questioned why the United States shifted from constant intervention in small conflicts to all but ignoring blatant genocide. When the conflict in Rwanda occurred in 1994, scholars began searching for the causation between the events of Somalia and American non-intervention. Publications such as the Foreign Policy Journal and Foreign Affairs almost immediately linked the two together, and since then, numerous articles and works have been written on the subject. 2 The most notable work written on the battle (after the battle’s declassification in the late 1990s) was Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer . The historical community generally agrees that the incident in Somalia drastically impacted the Clinton administration to adjust its foreign policy. Their opinion only differs on the degree to which it was impacted. Regardless of the stance authors take, however, almost every scholarly work on the subject tends to address Presidential Decision Directive 25, which President Bill Clinton issued in 1994. Following the Battle of Mogadishu, the mission in Somalia’s turning point, the Clinton administration initiated the plan for a six-month withdrawal of all troops. It also published a presidential directive dictating the immediate change in foreign policy doctrine in March of 1994, one month prior to the genocide in Rwanda. This directive has been the foundation for United States foreign policy in the past twenty years, and the two presidents that have served since then have yet to change this foundation. Somalia In order to paint an adequate picture as to why this shift in policy occurred, researchers must first examine Somalia and the events that transpired there. Following the death in 1991 of General Siad Barre, the warlord who united and controlled most of Somalia for nearly twenty-two years, the remaining warlords began a contest for power. This contest terrorized Somalia until 1993, when one leader began to rise over the rest. This leader was General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who had been starving the populous. According to an article in Air Power History , “an estimated 300,000 Somalis died from starvation.” 3 Aidid’s 2 Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst, “Somalia and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 1996), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/somalia/1996-03-01/somalia-and-future- humanitarian-intervention. 3 F Marion, 'Heroic things': Air Force Special Tactics Personnel at Mogadishu October 3-4, 1993 (September 2013),