Britain Opposed U.N peace keeping mission in Somalia(Wikileaks)

One of the last U.N. resolutions put forward by George W. Bush's administration was an ambitious plan to get blue-helmeted peacekeepers in Somalia. The bid came in January 2009, just when Ethiopian troops were withdrawing from the country, having invaded two years earlier with U.S. support. African Union (AU) peacekeepers were already working to prop up Somalia's transitional government, but the Bush administration wanted to go further, first boosting support for the AU and then sending in the U.N. forces as backup.
But the United States met opposition to the measure from an unlikely foe: Britain. In a cable written just a month earlier, U.S. diplomats in London summarized Her Majesty's Government's opposition to the peacekeeping mission: 

"senior British government officials assess that "there is not enough peace to keep in Somalia" and that "there is a greater than 50 percent chance that the Djibouti process [which installed the transitional Somali government] will fail."… HMG is not convinced by arguments that a potential security vacuum following a possible Ethiopian and AMISOM withdrawal would necessarily allow al-Shabaab to take control of southern Somalia, as there are many actors who will be competing for primacy in various areas, in the British view. A more likely outcome, HMG assesses, is a situation similar to medieval Italy, where different actors control and secure small pockets around the country. Read More