At the end of the decades-long Cold War, the United Stated displayed its military capability in a positive manner by responding to a severe humanitarian crisis in Somalia. The goal of providing assistance amid starvation and a chaos appealed to the better natures of the American people and their leaders. Highly influenced by media coverage of starvation and privation, most American happily embraced a series of operations conducted by their government to alleviate the suffering that appeared pervasive through that African nation. Regrettably, the best of intentions could not prevent a continuing drift toward disorder, and the American relief effort devolved into conflict and bloodshed. Although the operations were not entirely without success, the violence and casualties incurred during these actions left a bitter impression that influenced American foreign policy and military thinking for some time thereafter. In "Somalia ... From the Sea," Professor Gary J. Ohls has written an account of those experiences and their subsequent impact on the policies of the United States. Despite the fact that American incursions into Somalia entailed the joint effort of all U.S. services, naval expeditionary forces provided the preponderance of force during much of the involvement. Professor Ohls illustrates this while analyzing the operational and strategic aspects of these events. This is an account of the Somali military relief effort and its impact on the policies of the United States. Although American intervention in Somalia entailed joint effort by all U.S. services, naval expeditionary forces provided the preponderance of force. Three aspects of this study make it unique among the literature about the Somalia experience. First is the effort to address all the military actions of the period-from EASTERN EXIT through UNITED SHIELD. Many accounts have covered one or several aspects, but no major study has addressed the entire series or attempted to describe and analyze their interrelated nature. A second unique element is its inclusion of the U.S. Navy's contribution to America's Somalia involvement. The naval contribution has generally been left out of accounts. The third unique aspect of this study is its intention to connect the Somalia interventions and the operational and strategic concepts of the time. This element of the subject is fascinating, since the two activities, operations and concept development, occurred simultaneously and interactively. Through this analysis we not only understand the activity of the early 1990s but gain a broad insight as to how concepts are influenced by action.

American Amphibious Warfare: The Roots of Tradition to 1865 will fill the gap in the historiography of naval and military warfare. As the title implies, this book describes and analyzes early landing operations (from the Revolution through the Civil War) of American history, showing how they contributed to its rich amphibious tradition. No such study currently exists. This study does not attempt to describe every amphibious operation in early America, but focuses on seven major battles or campaigns providing a strong appreciation for the roots of American amphibious traditions. It will address in abbreviated form other amphibious operations and various land and naval battles as necessary to place these major actions in proper historical context. It is important to remember that amphibious operations include both offensive and defensive actions; and both when viewed from the water's edge can be instructive. Of the seven major amphibious campaigns examined in this book, five are offensive and two are defensive from the American perspective. (The New York and Baltimore campaigns are defensive and the Yorktown, Derna (Tripoli), California, Veracruz, and Fort Fisher are offensive.) For many Americans, the concept of amphibious warfare derives from the World War II model where landing forces assaulted foreign shores against determined resistance. These actions resulted in very high casualties, yet proved uniformly success for American operations. The circumstances of geography coupled with the weapons and equipment available at that time dictated this type of warfare. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no such equipment or weapons existed for assaulting defended beaches. Commanders attempted to land their forces in areas where the resistance would be light or nonexistent. The initiative and maneuverability inherent in naval forces permitted the establishment of combat power ashore before having to engage the enemy. The naval echelon could deliver forces to the point of attack faster that the land-based defenders could react. The focus of this book is to analyze and explain how amphibious traditions began in this earlier era and, in the epilogue, show how they compare and contrast with modern amphibious forces, particularly the modern U.S. Marine Corps. One of the interesting conclusions it that weapons and equipment (modern amphibious ships, landing craft air cushioned, VSTOL fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, and theV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft), coupled with new doctrine (operational maneuver from the sea, ship to shore maneuver) actually allow modern forces to return to the amphibious tactics and operations of the earlier period. Is short, the U.S. Marine corps of the twenty-first century is a true inheritor of these Roots of Tradition established in early America.