"All domination
involves invasion-at times physical and overt, at times camouflaged, with
the invader assuming the role of a helping friend."
-Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
An early opening was presented to the international community to create tactics and policies that would best speak to the political challenges of multilateral reaction to the collapse of the Somali state. As occurred in this crisis, state collapse takes place once authority, legitimate power and political order fail and a society is left behind that is unable to recover and fill the void (Lyons and Samatar 67). In Somalia, anarchy, factional fighting and looting ran rampant, and massive violations of human rights were among the most troubling indications of the breakdown of political order. The intrinsic nature of challenges like Somalia is essentially political and can thus only be dealt with by a comprehensive strategy that seeks to facilitate reconciliation and reconstitute institutions of legitimate political authority (Lyons and Samatar 55).U.S forces patrolling Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
Unarguably, this is a highly daunting and complex task. However, the further into lawlessness and disorder a state tumbles, the more difficult this undertaking becomes. If an international organization took hold of the nation of Somalia when Barre fled, the potential for stability would have clearly risen. Opportunities abounded for this to happen. The 1988 bombing of Hargeysa, the riots and massacres in Mogadishu in 1989, and the creation of the Manifesto Group in 1990 warned of impending state collapse (Samatar 87). Once Siad Barre left Mogadishu and no single coalition or movement was able to make an uncontested claim to national power, "the international community disengaged from the political questions and concentrated on humanitarian activities" (Teson 12).
Is military force an appropriate policy instrument for humanitarian crises? If so, how can force be used in a way that avoids disasters? Any policy of humanitarian intervention designed by the international community must be based upon sound, realistic strategic planning. The first and probably the most basic dilemma facing humanitarian military intervention is that it appears to violate the fundamental Westphalian principle of national sovereignty. If the United States abandons its own security interests as the standard by which to decide whether to use military force, there is virtually no limit to the possible arenas in which American lives maybe sacrificed (Teson 66).
Aggressive interventionists regard the Somali mission as the prototype for U.S. policy in the post-Cold War world (Teson 51). But how does one justify intervention in Somalia but not a few hundred miles away in Sudan, where a seemingly endless civil war has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians? Or in Rwanda? Eight days after the final American troops pulled out of Somalia, the killing, the genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda began, ignited by Hutu leaders. It was an organized slaughter of men, women, children, and babies. There was a U.N. military force in Rwanda, but no Americans were in it. Its mission was to monitor an uneasy peace, not to stop the killing. And yet the United Nations had been told what was coming, had been warned three months earlier by the U.N. commander in Rwanda, a Canadian General, who urged the U.N. to take action before the killing started. The following is an excerpt taken from a book written by Peter Gourevitch, an expert on the Rwandan crisis:
“General Dellaire sent a fax to the U.N. headquarters, the peacekeeping headquarters, which was then run by Kofi Annan who is now secretary general,” said Gourevitch. “It was addressed to Annan and it said, ‘Listen, I have got this informant who is very highly placed and he is telling me that he is training men to kill Tutsis, he is registering every Tutsi in the greater Kigali, he is catching weapons, weapons are being acquired,’ and the famous parts of this fax are, ‘He says he believes it is for their extermination.’ That is the word he used, the extermination of Tutsis” (Gourevitch, 248).
But at the U.N. headquarters in New York in the peacekeeping office then headed by Annan, there was no appetite to take action to prevent the approaching human disaster. There was one early intervention in Rwanda, though. European troops flew in to evacuate their citizens, as well as 255 American civilians in Rwanda (Gourevitch 235). Africa is not the only area of political turmoil and massive suffering. Bloody wars persist in Afghanistan, East Timor, the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Turkey, and former Yugoslavia. Yet not all of them can be fixed by outside intervention. Solutions to many of them are beyond the capabilities of either the United Nations or the United States. One must ask whether supporters of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention advocate U.S.-led interventions in those tragic conflicts as well.
Should the United States intervene in a human crisis and put American lives
at risk only when it involves the security of the United States itself?
In the Gulf War, for example, were American forces more interested in liberating
Kuwait from Saddam Hussein or liberating oil? In Bosnia and also in Kosovo,
it was difficult to distinguish between the humanitarian act and the political
need to defend NATO's authority in Europe. Intervening in such conflicts
will mean great dangers and bring great costs, possibly for an indefinite
period of time and for benefits, which are not always so clear. Whether
the U.S. continues to go it alone with its own forces or support the U.N.
will depend in large part on which path its citizens decide to follow.