BLACK HAWK DOWN: A STORY OF MODERN WARFARE

Abstract

Robert D. Kaplan in his illuminating article "The Coming Anarchy", published in the Atlantic Monthly of February 1994, emphasises the fact that "Africa may be marginal in terms of conventional late-twentieth-century conceptions of strategy, but in an age of cultural and racial clash, when national defense is increasingly local, Africa's distress will exert a destabilizing influence on the United States ". This point was clearly illustrated during 1993 in a battle between American Colin Gray; Modern Strategy; a logical pathway of strategic theory, its history and the future; The Strategist's Toolkit forces and Somali militias in Mogadishu. Bowden's book focuses on this military action on 3 October 1993, when a US task force consisting of US Rangers and Delta force operators embarked on a mission to capture two high-ranking deputies of the militia leader Mohammed Farrah Aideed. Instead of a quick success, a so-called surgical operation, the American forces found themselves surrounded and pinned down in a hostile African city. The result was a drawn-out battle in which the fierce resistance of the Somali militia and civilians and the downing of two helicopters unhinged the American forces