New World Disorder: Black Hawk Down and the Eclipse of U.S. Military Humanitarianism in Africa

Abstract: This article argues that Ridley Scott's film Black Hawk Down (2001) may be seen with the benefit of historical hindsight as a portrait of the fear of imperial overreach and failure as written through the psyche of elite U.S. soldiers. In Black Hawk Down, Mogadishu and its denizens are made to stand in for the worst fears of the American military and the civilian policy-making establishment: the city, and, by extension, urban Africa, is represented as a feral zone in which the U.S. military's unmatched firepower and technology are overwhelmed in densely populated slums. The Mog, as the film's Special Forces troops call the city, is a ramshackle megacity whose residents are armed to the teeth with the military detritus of the Cold War. Mogadishu thus embodies the new Heart of Darkness, a stateless urban world of vicious Hobbesian war of all against all. This view of Africa as the vanguard of anarchy is shared by a significant segment of the elite in the global North, who see the criminalization of the state in Africa as a direct threat to U.S. interests. If, as these analysts hold, it is from such feral zones that future threats to American society are likely to originate, then potent new weapons systems must be developed to deal with this racialized new world disorder. This article unpacks the ahistorical character of such self-serving representations of urban Africa, underlining the extent to which policies pursued during the Cold War and neoliberal era by powers such as the U.S. have helped to create the conditions that Black Hawk Down represents in such spectacular excess. Resume: Cet essai soutient que le film de Ridley Scott Black Hawk Down (2001) peut etre considere, grâce a un recul historique a propos, comme un portrait de la crainte de l'ambition et de la defaite imperiale percue au travers de la psychologie de l'elite militaire americaine. Dans le film Black Hawk Down, Mogadishu et ses habitants sont destines a incarner les pires craintes de l'armee americaine et de l'establishment politique civil. Par extension, l'Afrique urbaine est representee comme une zone sauvage dans laquelle la puissance militaire et technologique a priori inegalee des americains est submergee dans les bidonvilles surpeuples. Dans le film, la ville ou le "Mog" comme l'appellent les troupes des forces speciales, est une mega cite delabree dont les residents sont armes jusqu'aux dents avec les detritus militaires de la Guerre Froide. Mogadishu incarne ainsi le nouveau "Coeur des Tenebres," un monde urbain apatride en guerre a la Thomas Hobbes, de "tous contre tous." Cette perception de l'Afrique comme avant-garde anarchique est partagee par une partie importante de l'elite des pays du Nord, qui considerent la criminalisation de l'etat en Afrique comme une menace directe contre les interets americains. Si, comme l'indiquent ces analystes, les futures menaces contre la societe americaine sont censees provenir de ces zones sauvages, alors de nouveaux systemes d'armement doivent etre concus pour faire face au desordre racialise de ce nouveau monde. Cet essai devoile le detail des aspects non historiques de ces representations partiales de l'Afrique urbaine, soulignant de quelle maniere les mesures prises pendant la Guerre Froide et la periode neoliberale par une puissance telle que les Etats Unis ont participe a creer les conditions representees avec un exces si spectaculaire dans le film Black Hawk Down. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a special screening of the soon-to-be-released film Black Hawk Down was held for a group of military and civilian leaders that included prominent neoconservative hawks such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, and the Iran/Contra perpetrator Oliver North. Ridley Scott, the movie's director, informed his eminent authence that he had made the film to clear up the idea that the military had "messed up in Somalia" (Burlas 2002). …