When President Biden decided which “forever wars” to wind down in whole or part, the nebulous U.S. military intervention in Somalia did not make the list. On the contrary, the Biden administration in May made a little-noticed announcement that it would reverse former President Donald Trump’s late 2020 order to withdraw most U.S. troops from the African nation. The United States will have a “persistent presence” in Somalia, the Defense Department said, continuing an “advise-and-assist mission” for local forces fighting the insurgent group al-Shabab.
That announcement said American forces wouldn’t be “directly engaged in combat operations” in Somalia, but that’s a dubious claim, as news of a U.S. airstrike against al-Shabab this week demonstrated anew. The fact is the United States has, if not quite a war, certainly a longstanding and significant military presence in Somalia—one which was never explicitly authorized by Congress and which includes both aerial bombing and boots on the ground. What we don’t have is a strong reason to maintain this arrangement, to remain involved in Somalia’s internal strife and expose ourselves to the real (if low) risk of expanded war. Biden’s reversal of the Trump withdrawal from Somalia was a step in the wrong direction.