Is This Any Way to Treat an Incoming Administration? : Somalia: Humanitarian need should not be the driving reason for deploying U.S. forces. The sooner the U.N. takes over, the better.

Normally, one would not expect an enterprise with such potentially long-term consequences as the dispatch of U.S. combat forces to Somalia to be launched in the last five weeks of a presidency. Bill Clinton does not yet have a national-security team to help him make assessments. His entourage has been careful to note that though he is “supportive,” he did not participate in the decision. Clinton will thus inherit commitments he has had no part in shaping--not the ideal circumstance for a sustained effort should anything go wrong.

It is unlikely the humanitarian mission assigned to the force can be accomplished as quickly, or as smoothly, as Administration briefings foresee. Creating a secure environment in Somalia for a multinational U.N. force to protect could be a prolonged undertaking. Hopefully, the the “bandits” described in the media do not keep abreast of U.S. public discussion. For they may decide to lie low, hide their weapons or take sanctuary in Ethiopia, confronting us with the dilemma of withdrawing prematurely or continuing what may become an open-ended commitment.

To escape this dilemma, U.S. soldiers will almost certainly try to disarm the various armed groups. This could turn into a messy affair with significant casualties, especially on the Somali side. When blood has been shed, support for the action may evaporate, especially in Africa. Former colonies have developed an allergy to anything that smacks of the “civilizing role” European empires claimed for themselves on African soil.

Making the distinction between humanitarian efforts and the civil conflict over who controls Somalia will also be difficult. Civil wars are about the distribution of power, physical and political. As political legitimacy disintegrates, the physical distribution of power grows more decisive. Disarmament will, by definition, affect the relative positions of key competitors for political power. Should it go as planned, some sort of governing structure possessing preponderant power must be left in place. This obliges the United States to understand Somali conditions well enough to achieve an international, especially African, consensus.

Intervention in the civil conflict seems inherent in the U.S. role. Food will have to be distributed, involving some Somali officials. They will automatically receive an edge in establishing political domination afterward. Once media and other observers descend, they are certain to find conditions deeply offensive to the Western sensibility. They will urge a variety of ambitious initiatives. None can be accomplished without greater intervention, drawing the United States deeper into Somalia’s politics. Sooner or later, such conduct will begin to grate on African sentiments.

The United States should not play a solitary role with respect either to security or to reform. If the Somali bandits are so poorly armed, why was U.S. technological and military superiority so crucial? The United States may be the only country with sufficient modern equipment for rapid intervention, but this, involving mostly transport, could have been put at the disposal of other countries. Since reform depends on moral issues of universal validity, why were no other countries involved in the first and most complicated phase, in particular the Organization of African Unity? The Administration would have been far better off to gear the intervention from the beginning to what is now conceived as the second-stage multinational force.

Two factors inhibited the Administration from sacrificing some military efficiency to wider political backing: the new Pentagon approach that U.S. military power must never be vitiated by political restraint, and a new philosophy that differentiates between humanitarian and strategic intervention.

The lessons of Vietnam or Korea cannot be literally transposed to humanitarian intervention. In a war against a strategic enemy, rapid victory is of the essence. In a war for humanitarian purposes, the political context must be paramount. It would be ironic if the United States should have overextended itself in the ‘60s and ‘70s by failing to assess military realities only to frustrate itself in the ‘90s by worshiping the cult of supposed military realities.

The new doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” is based on the proposition that, with the Cold War concluded, traditional military operations become much less important. Excessive concern with security, goes the argument, led to strategic overextension and an illusion of U.S. omnipotence. In the post-Cold War world, therefore, the United States would be well-advised to fight primarily for humanitarian and moral values.

We must not pretend the United States fights where it has no strategic interests. Whenever American lives are at stake, so is a conception of vital interests. The world of the ‘90s demands of the United States a new definition of vital interest, strategic as well as moral. Although there is no longer a danger of an immediate, almost measurable, peril, there remains the historic danger of a gradual transformation of the security framework through a cumulative series of steps, none of which will appear individually as overwhelming as the threats of the Cold War had been. If the United States wants to avoid the extremes of overextension or abdication, it must develop criteria separating challenges affecting U.S. well-being and security from those that, however unpalatable, cannot have that impact.

“Humanitarian intervention” asserts that moral and humane concerns are so much a part of American life that not only treasure but lives must be risked to vindicate them. No other nation has ever put forward such a proposition. The more abstract nature of humanitarian intervention thus involves an even greater danger of assuming the role of world policeman. For if it is appropriate to use U.S. forces for humanitarian purposes in Somalia, why not elsewhere?

There is no other society in which the concept of humanitarian intervention could find such resonance. Moral claims, however, can be asserted as a national prerogative only at the cost of long-term domestic and international support. Given their values, the American people will always expend more treasure to ease the starvation in Somalia than others. It will be difficult to persuade them indefinitely that they have a greater responsibility to risk lives on behalf of Somalia than the European nations and those of Africa itself. U.S. unilateral intervention should occur only when all alternatives for international action have been exhausted, and if the cause permits no other remedy. Still, U.S. military actions can’t be successful if divorced from political realities.

With respect to Somalia, this leads to three conclusions:

--Unilateral U.S. security operations should be terminated rapidly;

--The first- and second-stage military contingents in Somalia should be merged from the beginning, with the American component reduced to reasonable proportions within a short, fixed time frame;

--The political aspect--anything bearing on civil administration--should be internationalized immediately and fortified with a significant African component.

More than two decades ago, while I was discussing extrication from Vietnam with an acquaintance, he told me the story of a Russian peasant who came running into his village to get help for a man stuck up to his ankles in mud. When told that this did not sound too serious, he replied: “But he dived in head first.”

We must make sure that the same story cannot be repeated in our time.