The Start of Nation-Building

Want to blame Clinton? Go ahead. Heck, Bush II campaigned on it in 2000. Truth is, of course, that US nation-building follies started in Somalia, with a mission ordered by Bush I.

In the waning days of his presidency, with very little planning or even forethought, George H.W. Bush sent 28,000 U.S. troops to support a humanitarian mission in a hapless country of no strategic significance to the United States. That noble endeavor ended, of course, with the fiasco known as Black Hawk Down. Somalia was scarcely history's first failed state, but it was the first one whose failure U.S. policy sought consciously to address. Today, three U.S. administrations, two U.N. secretaries-general, and 18 years later, Somalia has a raging Islamist insurgency, a government that controls a few city blocks, and African Union peacekeepers with no peace to keep. And once again this year, Somalia stands atop the Foreign Policy/Fund for Peace Failed States Index -- a testament to the persistence of state pathology and the weakness of the powers the world community can bring to bear.

Go read the full article at Foreign Policy, it's a very good one.

By: Brant