4.4 Ethical analysis of US motivations in launching of UNITAF
4.4.2 Unethical and non-altruistic influence of the US military establishment
The UN/US Somalia military intervention mission was portrayed to the entire world as a credible and genuine humanitarian undertaking in which the US was alleged to have had no geo-strategic or economic interests in that country. To reinforce the official US narrative of not having vital self-serving interests in Somalia, a military investigation commissioned to study US involvement in Somalia highlighted that ―the US involvement in Somalia was as a result of being the sole remaining world power and the leader of the new world order hence it was duty bound to respond to the humanitarian crisis for humanitarian purposes (Stewart 2003).
The conclusion drawn by the investigating team implied that US new found status as the sole super power significantly influenced its decision to intervene in Somalia for the sake of demonstrating its benevolence as the sole superpower. UNITAF was perceived by many political and military leaders as a way to pioneering and championing a new kind of American
“intervention policy,” based on “humanitarian” justifications (Al Qaq 2009). There were indeed more non-humanitarian motives that influenced the intervention.
Lowther (2007) identified four factors that initially militated against US deployment of ground troops in Somalia. First, was the nature of Somali guerrilla warfare type conflict “fuelled by age-old inter-clan rivalry” which did not suit the large scale open warfare the American troops were primarily trained to fight. Second the heavily armed militias whose survival was based on blending with the population making it difficult to distinguish the militias from the general population. This factor made it difficult to guarantee target identification and safeguarding American force protection despite their being heavily armed with the latest sophisticated weapon systems. Third, Somalia’s geographical terrain presented tactical and logistical challenges for American troops. Fourth, US military commanders were arguing that the US had no vital national interests at stake in Somalia to justify a massive military deployment hence there was no valid reason to risk American lives now that the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Soviet backed regime in Ethiopia was crumbling (Lowther 2007:107). These limitations were eventually overcome by stronger non-humanitarian motivating factors that the chapter now turns to examine.
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One of the major motivating factors for US military deployment in Somalia was the immediate availability of a large number of American troops in the Gulf region that could have influenced the US decision to offer troops to the UN for the “humanitarian intervention.” Hoar (1993:56) observed that at the time of the US troop offer to the UN, the US military had just completed
“a large scale training exercise simulating famine intervention in north-east Africa” a scenario that perfectly suited the Somalia crisis situation. The assumption that the US military leadership took advantage of the prevailing crisis in Somalia to put into practice what they had simulated and rehearsed during the famine relief field exercise sounds logical and plausible. It is difficult to imagine that the US training exercise in the Gulf region did not specifically have Somalia in mind at the time of planning the exercise considering that the situation in that country suited perfectly well the scenario painted in the simulated famine field exercise. Moreover the build- up to the US offer of troops for intervention was characterized by the Pentagon drafting UNSC mandates that would eventually suit US troop deployments in Somalia hence the
“humanitarian” military intervention was not simply an urgent response to the humanitarian crisis in that war stricken and famine ravaged country but a deliberate decision arrived at after a thorough cost-benefit analysis by the US military authorities.
Different scenarios and options were presented to President Bush for consideration regarding the US response to the situation in Somalia. Surprisingly, the best response option selected by the presidential advisers “was not just a US-led, UN-approved military intervention but rather a military intervention that was twice as large as the largest option on the table,” a scenario that was labelled as not just “the sledgehammer option” but “a doubling in size for the sledgehammer option” (Menkhaus and Ortmayer 1995:7). Doubling the size of force that military planners had determined as adequate at a time when the US was in arrears with her UN peacekeeping contributions suggests that there were other ulterior motives beyond humanitarian justification for US involvement in Somalia. Such massive deployments in any country were bound to impact negatively on the sovereignty of the host state and its population and Somalia was no exception. Moreover all the military intervention options that were being considered did not have Somalia’s population consent as the intended and ultimate beneficiaries of the massive military intervention. To make matters worse, the massive military intervention options that were being considered were indeed against the informed advice from Ambassador Sahnoun, the Special Representative in Somalia who had been making steady but slow progress in trying to get a buy-in from all the warlords and militia groups about finding a common ground to a political solution to the political and humanitarian crisis. It is critically
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important for this study to keep in mind the fact that at the time of the US military intervention in Somalia, the real threat of famine had significantly subsided. Hansch (1994:32) observed that the famine threat had significantly diminished to the extent that the majority of non- governmental organizations operating in Somalia vehemently opposed massive military deployments as they feared that their security and impartiality would be compromised by the massive military presence in their theatre of humanitarian operations. These observations serve to dispel or challenge the purely “humanitarian” justification for US military intervention in Somalia. It is equally important to keep in mind the fact that US military employment is strictly governed by the realist school of thought where US troops are deployed in situations that enhance the protection or advancement of US self-interests and not for altruistic reasons.
According to Wheeler and Roberts (2012:181), only the geographically and economically naive observers and analysts could believe the official and popular narrative that the US did not have strategic military and economic interests in Somalia that ultimately influenced its offer of military participation in Somalia. Wheeler and Roberts quote a 19th Century philosopher Mihael Bukhanin who remarked on the realistic and materialistic imperatives of the religious wars in Europe when he stated that: "No one at all interested in the study of history could have failed to see that there was always some great material interest at the bottom of the most abstract, the most sublime and idealistic, theological and religious struggles" (Ibid.). The argument being advanced by Wheeler and Roberts (2012) is that Somalia’s geo-strategic location, despite its relative diminished importance following the end of the Cold War, was still vital to US regional strategic interests.14 Specifically US presence in Somalia would allow rapid deployment of troops to critical areas of more significant national geo-strategic interests to the remaining superpower such as the oil rich Middle East as well as safeguarding the vital sea lanes through the Strait of Eden (Ibid.). Based on these observations and arguments, it is evident that there were indeed military strategic factors that influenced President Bush’s decision to offer US troops to deploy in Somalia in violation of that country’s national sovereignty under the false pretext of “humanitarian Intervention” to save starving Somalis.
The military intervention mission was designed to implement a regime change agenda crafted at the Pentagon through dislodging the status quo in Somalia of fragmented militia ethnic
14 In an interview on 12 March 2015 with a retired General who served in Somalia, he cited the fact that the only US military base on the African continent is in Djibouti following the refusal by the AU to grant the US Africa Command (Africom) a permanent military base in Africa. The significance of this base is strategic for it covers the vital and strategic sea route via the Gulf of Eden as well as operations in Somalia and Yemen.
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groups and replacing them by an imposed puppet regime answerable to the dictates and wishes of the US and its allies.