Foreign Policy Blogs

Meddling in Mogadishu

This World Politics Review piece is less an article and more of an indictment of American policy toward Somalia, which most recently featured the mind-bogglingly bad decision to sell 40 tons of arms to a government that might not sustain itself long enough to jimmy open the boxes.  Of course the article is long on diagnosis and short on solutions, but it is hard to deny the basic argument that US policy in Somalia has amounted to “Eighteen years of meddling.”

 

Author

Derek Catsam

Derek Catsam is a Professor of history and Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He is also Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University. Derek writes about race and politics in the United States and Africa, sports, and terrorism. He is currently working on books on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s and on the 1981 South African Springbok rugby team's tour to the US. He is the author of three books, dozens of scholarly articles and reviews, and has published widely on current affairs in African, American, and European publications. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa. He writes about politics, sports, travel, pop culture, and just about anything else that comes to mind.

Areas of Focus:
Africa; Zimbabwe; South Africa; Apartheid

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