ABSTRACT
On 3-4 of October 1993, 18 US soldiers were killed in an abortive raid in south Mogadishu, Somalia. Never before had one single instance, in which fatalities were sustained, had such an exaggeratedly negative impact on the politics of US foreign policy. The imbroglio that followed saw Congress call for immediate withdrawal from the country, and from UN peacekeeping and multilateralism more generally. The Clinton Administration fell into rapid retreat from its earlier more ambitious humanitarian, multilateral agenda.
