Mission Creep A Case Study In U S Involvement In Somalia

This monograph explores the problem of mission creep. The trend toward ethnic and regional unrest has characterized the world security environment since the breakup of the former Soviet Union. The U.S. has struggled to find its place in the new world order. As a result US military forces have increasingly found themselves involved in various operations other than traditional warfare. Often the political aims of these operations are difficult to identify and translate into military operational objectives and end states. Worse yet, the political aims themselves are prone to rapidly shift and evolve from those originally intended, leaving the military commander the difficult task of catching up with policy or even guessing at the political objectives. This uncertain environment sets the conditions for the delinkage between the political goal and military operations which may result in disaster. The monograph examines US operations in Somalia to provide the data for the analysis in order to determine the factors which contribute to mission creep. Examining US-Somalia policy from 1992 (Operation Restore Hope) to Oct. 1993 (United Nations Operations in Somalia II) this monograph analyses the evolution of national policy objectives and the military and political operations undertaken to achieve those objectives. An analysis of operational and tactical objectives and end states as well as military methods determines the factors which contributed to the failed US involvement in UNOSOM II. In addition, the monograph identifies the Somali geo-political, historical, cultural, and economic factors which influenced US operations. This monograph concludes that contradictory and uncoordinated national strategy and political policy resulted in poor operational planning and execution. There were also significant factors at the operational level which contributed to the failed US intervention.

Includes 12 maps and 8 tables “My Clan Against the World”: US and Coalition Operations in Somalia, 1992-94 represents another in a series of military case studies published by the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The impetus for this project came from the commanding general, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Virginia, who directed CSI to examine the American military’s experience with urban operations in Somalia, particularly in the capital city of Mogadishu...This case study also cautions against the misuse and overuse of “lessons” learned from any given military undertaking. As with the lessons of Vietnam, one of which dictated that conventional units should not engage in unconventional warfare, the US experience in Somalia left many military analysts and policymakers convinced that the U.S. should eschew any undertaking that smacked of nation building. Yet, as this book is published, just ten years after the US exit from Somalia, American forces are engaged in several locations against an unconventional foe and are involved in nation building in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps the first lesson to be learned about extracting lessons is, in the words of a once-popular motion picture, “Never Say Never Again.” Another principal aim of the authors was to provide an analytical narrative of each phase of the US military involvement in Somalia. For many Americans, the mention of that African country conjures up one memory, that of the fierce firefight between US troops and Somali militia on 3-4 Oct. 1993. As this overview seeks to remind the reader, the U.S. had a military presence in Somalia from Dec. 1992 to the end of March 1994. During that period, much was accomplished of a positive nature. Starving and mistreated Somalis were provided food and a modicum of security, while some progress was made toward peace in the country.

"Somalia" has become a symbol for the unacceptable costs of humanitarian intervention, for the type of foreign involvement that should be avoided. But the authors of this timely book, themselves key participants in the U.S.-led operation there, argue that substantial good was done--the tide of famine was stayed, hundreds of thousands of lives saved, and steps toward political reconciliation begun. Despite the recent renewal of political violence, the humanitarian situation remains stable. In launching Operation Restore Hope, the multinational coalition faced a complex, tense, and rapidly unfolding situation. The authors detail how the carefully limited mission achieved its goals, including mutual understanding with the Somalis, by combining political, military, and humanitarian actions. But the authors also describe how different U.S. and UN concepts of the mission and subsequent changes in the mission's scope led almost inevitably to confrontation. Hirsch and Oakley raise fundamental questions about how to conduct such operations, and in particular about the limitations of peacekeepers in nation building. Drawing lessons from Vietnam and Lebanon as well as more recent operations, the authors provide an analysis that will help policymakers and scholars as they debate the future of peacekeeping.

Mission Failure argues that, in the past 25 years, the U.S. military has turned to missions that are largely humanitarian and socio-political - and that this ideologically-driven foreign policy generally leads to failure.

Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.

The American mission in Somalia presented the U.S. forces with a variety of difficult operational challenges as they tried to bring peace to a country ravaged by natural and man-made disasters. The author has taken the essential first step by identifying and articulating the hard lessons of Somalia with candor and objectivity.