Learning From Somalia: The Lessons Of Armed Humanitarian Intervention [Paperback]

Walter S Clarke (Author), Jeffrey Herbst (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0813327946 | ISBN-13: 978-0813327945

The U.S.-led intervention in Somalia that began in December 1992 is the most significant instance to date of “peacemaking” by the international community. The heady promise of Operation Restore Hope and the subsequent disappointments have had a resounding impact on the policies of Western governments and the UN as they have tried to cope with humanitarian emergencies in Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere. However, it is questionable how correct the lessons so quickly derived from the Somalia experience actually were. At the same time, many important organizational and operational innovations during the Somalia exercise have not received sufficient attention. Learning from Somalia is therefore critical if the international community is to respond better to tragedies that threaten millions of human lives.Contributors to this book, many of whom are policymakers who were either in Mogadishu or Washington during the relief missions, examine the intervention in Somalia and draw lessons for future peacekeeping operations. They analyze many aspects of peacemaking that are not well understood, including efforts to rebuild the police force, the dynamics of the economy, the relationship between the military and nongovernmental organizations, and the performance of European armies. The book also discusses international politics surrounding the crisis, especially the relationship between the United States and the UN and the legal justifications for intervention. The concluding chapters discuss the prospects for intervention efforts in light of the Somalia experience.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Walter Clarke is adjunct professor of peace operations at the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping Institute. A retired senior foreign service officer with extensive experience in diplomatic, military, and academic circles, he was deputy chief of missions at the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu in 1993. Jeffrey Herbst is associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. Walter Clarke is adjunct professor of peace operations at the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping Institute. A retired senior foreign service officer with extensive experience in diplomatic, military, and academic circles, he was deputy chief of missions at the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu in 1993. Jeffrey Herbst is associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (March 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813327946
• ISBN-13: 978-0813327945
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #901,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > History > Africa > Somalia

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Many views of the Somalia debacle, March 21, 2006

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Learning From Somalia: The Lessons Of Armed Humanitarian Intervention (Paperback)

This is a collection of essays by a group of academics, politicians, diplomats, and soldiers, which attempts to deal with the intervention in Somalia in the early 90s, and bring some perspective to what happened there. Although the book is valuable, at times the dry writing and repetitive nature of the individual essays detracts from the overall affect, which is generally quite positive.

Somalia was more than just the Black Hawk Down episode. There were other military actions (notably when 24 Pakistani peacekeepers were killed a while before the Black Hawk Down episode). The humanitarian intervention, which was the whole rationale for the operation in the first place, turns out to have largely been a success (an estimated 100,000 people were saved from starvation) marred only by the precipitous extraction by the U.S. and U.N. forces once the various warlords made it clear that they didn't want to cooperate with outside forces.

The essays here cover various aspects of the intervention, from the attempts to reconstruct the police forces and the courts, to the liaison between the various NGOs in the country on the one hand and the (largely U.S.) military on the other. There are chapters on the political dimensions of the intervention, including one discussing the role of the U.S. Congress, and a set of political chapters at the end that discuss fault-finding and credit-giving, one article having a liberal bias, the other conservative. While two of the articles were written by military people (one a retired Admiral who was the U.N. point man in the region, the other a U.S.M.C. Lt. Col. who handled coordination between the American military and the NGOs in Mogadishu) there's not much about the actual military confrontation in Somalia. Apparently, if anyone in the military learned anything of use tactically, no one told the authors about it.

The prose here is pretty professorial, and so you'll have to slog along to get through the book. Also, each of the essayists feels the need to recount the same basic set of facts, and of course after a while this gets a bit wearing. These points aside, this is a valuable book on a subject that hasn't received enough study.