"From January 1991 through March 1995, the United States conducted numerous incursions into Somalia, undertaking a variety of missions and objectives. All of the actions had humanitarian elements, yet the operations that made up this mosaic of American involvement ranged from benign to aggressive, from purely humanitarian to clearly combative. Somalia . . . From the Sea is an account that attempts to explain and analyze these actions and place them within the overarching strategic and operational concepts developing in the first years following the end of the Cold War."--Introduction