The 1993 Somalia intervention served geostrategy despite humanitarian framing

Evidence

The first “humanitarian” mission of the 1990s was Clinton’s continuation of George H.W. Bush’s Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993. UN troops, under the leadership of the United States, were sent to address the food crisis and feed the hungry—yet the troops arrived months after those most threatened by hunger had already died of starvation. While the United States and United Nations justified the invasion on humanitarian grounds, US interests in Somalia’s geostrategic location and oil resources played a more significant role in the Americans’ decision to intervene. When eighteen US soldiers were killed in the now-famous Black Hawk Down incident, US troops departed and left the East African nation worse off than when they arrived. This intervention prefigured what was to come. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 409 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1999, Secretary-General Kofi Annan identified a shift in the concept of sovereignty from the national to the individual. As Sungur Sarvan points out, it followed that “where a state violates human rights, the ‘international community’ has the ‘right to intervene,’ militarily if need be, in the internal affairs of that state.” This definition inaugurated the notion of “cross-border rights,” those rights that can be “defended” by an outside force. It was a short step from this notion to the policy of “regime change” pursued by the Bush administration in the first years of the twenty-first century. This sea change in foreign relations was cemented in 2005 by the United Nations’ adoption of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, which boldly declares that “sovereignty no longer exclusively protects States from foreign interference” and that states may be seen to forfeit their sovereignty if they fail adequately to protect their populations from human rights violations. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 338 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: US humanitarian justifications masked strategic interests in the Somalia intervention — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 464; US humanitarian intervention in Somalia served geostrategic and oil interests, not rescue — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 409; Somalia’s humanitarian mission served strategic interests and worsened outcomes (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• US humanitarian intervention in Somalia served geostrategic and oil interests, not rescue #corroborates (0.97) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 409
• Somalia’s humanitarian mission served strategic interests and worsened outcomes #corroborates (0.92)
• Humanitarian intervention doctrine evolved into a pretext for regime change #expands (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 338