Tessa Grasel

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Hicks, Barbara

Keywords

Unilateral, Multilateral, Intervention, Somalia, African Union, Security, Terrorism

Area of Concentration

International and Area Studies

Abstract

Working within a regional framework, this thesis examines the decision of a country to respond to a salient threat through unilateral or multilateral intervention. The study takes the Greater Horn region of Africa as its case by looking at the operations of Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia in Somalia within the last seven years. The variables considered in each case of intervention—national military expenditures, the number of terrorist attacks in the country, and national representation on the African Union Peace and Security Council—are meant to proxy for the level of national securitization, manifest external threat to national security, and political influence on the multilateral intervention respectively. The case studies show that representation within the AU Peace and Security Council did not correlate with less unilateral intervention. Nor do national military expenditures offer any viable conclusions about intentionality and intervention since all the cases received foreign remunerative assistance for intervening in Somalia. The high amount of foreign aid to the countries staffing AMISOM did provide incentives for participation in multilateral operations. Finally, the number of Somali terrorist attacks claimed by Somali elements in each country was small relative to the number of incidents overall, suggesting that the interventions were motivated by anticipated rather than actualized threat. Each country experienced at least one high-profile attack by such elements after the Somali government collapsed in 1991, but it should be noted that both Uganda and Ethiopia experienced attacks known to be the work of al Shabaab after intervening into the country.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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