Sources of Humanitarian Intervention: Beliefs, Information, and Advocacy in the U.S. Decisions on Somalia and Bosnia

Abstract

Why did President George H.W. Bush decide to intervene militarily in Somalia but not in Bosnia in 1992, when both areas were being torn apart by ethnic strife? Jon Western of Mount Holyoke College contends that the conventional wisdom does not stand up to scrutiny. Western argues that it was neither the so-called CNN effect nor moral outrage that pushed the administration to action. Instead, increasing concern that the success of presidential candidate Bill Clinton and his liberal humanitarian advisers in portraying the Bush administration as uncaring and the assessment that Somalia would be a less difficult operation than Bosnia drove U.S. decisionmaking.