Escalation in Somalia is A Foreign Policy Failure in Progress: New at Reason

While the Trump administration has very visibly made and modified plans to reduce U.S. military intervention in Syria and Afghanistan, it has quietly escalated the fight in Somalia against terrorist group al-Shabab. U.S. airstrikes in the North African nation are on the rise, and that higher pace of bombardment has contributed to increased civilian displacement and all the turmoil that comes with it.

But al-Shabab is hardly a significant threat to U.S. security. Its aims are provincial, and its numbers are few. This redoubled commitment to endless war should be immediately reversed. U.S. military intervention in Somalia is exacerbating political instability without contributing to the security of the American or Somali people.

This is a foreign policy failure in progress. If the last two decades of missteps in the Middle East and North Africa have demonstrated anything, it is that secretive wars of choice are prone to mission creep and rife with unintended consequences. Rather than expand, U.S. military intervention in Somalia should be shut down before it spirals into another needless generational conflict, writes Bonnie Kristian in her latest at Reason.

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