Somalia syndrome

English

Noun

the Somalia syndrome (uncountable)

  1. (politics, historical) A feeling of reluctance among Western nations (particularly the United States) to intervene militarily in African conflicts and humanitarian crises following the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which was regarded in the US as a disaster.
    • 1995 June 4, William Finnegan, “No Peace to Keep”, in The New Yorker‎[1], New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 January 2025:
      How much longer can this perverse, unspoken U.N. assignment last? Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the U.N. Secretary-General, has taken to warning against what he calls the Somalia syndrome, by which he means discouragement among the governments contributing to the mission and a consequent humiliating U.N. departure.

See also

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.