Given long-term fears regarding ongoing militant and terrorist group activity in Somalia, it is tempting to jump to conclusions about the implications of the Westgate mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya. Al-Shabaab, the group that claimed responsibility for the attack, has been watched with great apprehension for years by the United States. Its willingness to harbor foreign fighters and terrorists, as well as its merger with al-Qaeda in 2012, has placed it among a select group of extremely violent non-state actors. Certainly with the attack in Kenya, al-Shabaab has seemingly changed its strategy, broadened its definition of enemy and target, and expanded its aims beyond Somalia’s borders. Such a conclusion, however, would be at a minimum premature and at a maximum entirely incorrect. Such a conclusion would ignore the pattern of interaction between Somalia and Kenya over the last decade and lose sight of al-Shabaab’s ultimate and declared goals. Without such an understanding of al-Shabaab and its motivations, any policy response will likely fail.