US Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War in Africa

A Bridge between Global Conflict and the New World Order, 1988-1994

Flavia Gasbarri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000071580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book investigates the end of the Cold War in Africa and its impact on post-Cold War US foreign policy in the continent.

The fall of the Berlin Wall is widely considered the end of the Cold War; however, it documents just one of the many "ends", since the Cold War was a global conflict. This book looks at one of the most neglected extra-European battlegrounds, the African continent, and explores how American foreign policy developed in this region between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Drawing on a wide range of recently disclosed documents, the book shows that the Cold War in Africa ended in 1988, preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall. It also reveals how, since then, some of the most controversial and inconsistent episodes of post-Cold War US foreign policy in Africa have been deeply rooted in the unique process whereby American rivalry with the USSR found its end in the continent. The book challenges the traditional narrative by presenting an original perspective on the study of the end of the Cold War and provides new insights into the shaping of US foreign policy during the so-called 'unipolar moment'.

This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War history, US foreign policy, African politics and international relations.

1
The United States and the Cold War in Africa

Among the Third World regions, Africa became a US Cold War concern comparatively late. After World War II, despite signs of imminent decolonisation, the continent was still considered under the responsibility of the Western colonial empires, and its affiliation to the Western sphere of influence was not really questioned. Furthermore, the American priority of reconstructing its European allies after the devastation of the war led Washington to focus on the “European side”¹ of African affairs, namely maintaining access to Africa’s raw materials for reconstruction. At the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the first wave of decolonisation and the independence of the first African countries started to draw US attention to the continent, as the establishment of the Bureau for African Affairs within the US Department of States in 1958 clearly testifies.² The major involvements of the United States in Africa took place in conjunction with the turbulent process of dismantling the weaker European colonial empires, namely Belgium and Portugal. The end of Belgian control over Congo in 1960 opened the doors to the first African crisis with an East–West connotation. Congo attracted American attention for its strategic position in Central Africa and for its wealth of natural resources, in particular the uranium deposits that, during World War II, were used for the Manhattan Project and the building of the atomic bomb. The turmoil that accompanied the end of Belgian domination in Congo in 1960 thus marked the first US involvement in Africa, in order to avoid that these important resources should fall under the control of the Eastern Bloc. Indeed, the United States feared a vacuum of power in Central Africa that could be exploited by the USSR, which, after the death of Joseph Stalin, had taken a more active interest in the Third World.³ During the five years of crisis and civil war that affected Congo, Washington, through the massive involvement of the CIA, backed General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko) who eventually emerged as the undisputed ruler of Congo in 1965.⁴ Once in power, Mobutu renamed the country “Republic of Zaire” and established a one-party authoritarian regime. Notwithstanding the flagrant violation of democracy and human rights perpetrated by Mobutu, Zaire became one of the most important Western allies in Africa during the Cold War. The widespread “Mobutu or chaos” argument summarises the rationale of US–Zairian ties well: in order to safeguard American interests in the area, Zaire needed a strongman, and Washington saw no alternative to Mobutu. His regime was considered the only way to maintain stability in the country, to counter rebellions and secessionist pushes and to keep communist influence out of Central Africa.

However, despite the significance of the Congo crisis, as well as of the American involvement, the 1960s did not see the beginning of a systematic American Cold War strategy in Africa. Already by the end of the 1960s – when the wave of decolonisation was losing its early momentum – the general impression in Washington was that the Soviet threat in Africa had been exaggerated.⁵ The global scenario, in fact, kept the superpowers’ attention focused on some more sensitive issues, such as the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam and the nuclear arms race, so that Africa still ranked low in Washington’s priorities.⁶ The real turning point came in the mid-1970s, when the last remnant of colonialism in the continent, the Portuguese empire, rapidly broke up after the Lisbon Carnation Revolution of 1974. The withdrawal of the Portuguese and the violent civil wars that erupted after the independence of Angola and Mozambique dramatically affected the equilibrium in many areas of the continent. The concomitant disorder that was happening in the Horn of Africa – with the beginning of the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977 – also contributed to further exacerbate the situation. Compared with the previous decade, this new turmoil in Africa took place within a quite different international scenario. The consequences of the American debacle in Vietnam and the complex dynamics of the new phase of détente in the superpower relations – in particular with regard to the status quo in Europe and to arms control – made the opportunities for Soviet expansionism in Africa appear much more threatening to Washington. Indeed, the African scenario turned out to be one of those peripheral battlefields which contributed to the collapse of détente at the end of the 1970s and to a resumption of the bipolar confrontation of the early 1980s. The USSR’s increasing willingness to intervene and, no less important, similar tendencies on the part of Cuba with respect to the Angolan Civil War and the Ogaden War were seen by the Americans as unacceptable Soviet attempts to exploit détente – or to apply a “selective détente”⁷ – in order to expand communist influence. As stated by Christopher Clapham, the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s was the only period when it appeared not only that the Cold War might become critically important to Africa, but even that Africa might affect the Cold War.⁸ Therefore, from the mid-1970s Africa became a fully integral part of the American containment strategy for almost a decade, until the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and the beginning of Soviet disengagement from the Third World,⁹ which opened a new phase of cooperation in superpower relations.

In order to grasp the significance of the change brought about by the subsequent end of the Cold War, it is therefore important, first of all, to outline in detail the development of US foreign policy towards Africa during that decade (from the second half of the 1970s to the late 1980s) and to stress the influence bipolar competition had in forging that policy. In this regard, the analysis will be focused on those areas of the continent that were most affected by bipolar tension: Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. From the mid-1970s these regions were in fact the theatre for a series of conflicts: the Angolan Civil War (1975), the two Shaba crises (1977–78), and the Ogaden War (1978), all of which, for the reasons previously outlined, came to assume the features of proxy wars between the two superpowers, and the region became a “hot” battlefield of the Cold War.

Southern Africa

After the end of World War II, all Washington’s main interests in the Southern Africa region basically lay in its relationship with the Union of South Africa (which became the Republic of South Africa in 1961). The economic and strategic relevance of this country, as well as its minerals and its government’s strong anti-communism, all made South Africa an important ally for the Western Bloc during the first post-war decade. On the other hand, the growing racial discrimination of the apartheid system and Pretoria’s intransigence over the colonial issue in South West Africa (later Namibia)¹⁰ created embarrassment in Washington. Through different policies, with various degrees of commitment and a mixture of outcomes, all US administrations from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan tried to balance the dilemma between two opposing needs: encouraging the government of Pretoria to move away from the apartheid system, and protecting American interests in the area.¹¹

In this regard, the turning point represented by the Portuguese withdrawal from Angola and Mozambique in 1974 was particularly crucial for the equilibrium in this dilemma. The turmoil that ensued with the collapse of the Portuguese empire led, directly and indirectly, to the white minority-dominated countries on or near the South African borders (Angola, Mozambique and, later, Zimbabwe), moving towards black majority rule. These new governments were very hostile to the racist policy of Pretoria and provided wide support to the South African anti-apartheid groups and movements, especially the African National Congress (ANC). Angola also backed the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), in the struggle for independence from South Africa. Therefore, from the mid-1970s the political developments in the region broke the so-called cordon sanitaire around South Africa, which remained the only white-dominated country in the region. From 1975 South Africa’s neighbouring states (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) created a loose coalition called the Frontline States, committed to end apartheid and white minority rule in the region. Furthermore, Pretoria also had to face a new wave of domestic violence that involved, in particular, workers, students and young people. In June 1976, the protest culminated in a broad uprising in the township of Soweto (near Johannesburg) that was brutally repressed by the government, causing hundreds of civilian casualties and the strong condemnation of the United Nations.¹² In order to contrast this “total onslaught” to its security, Pretoria reacted with a “total strategy”, namely a broad policy of destabilisation of the region both through military interventions in the Frontline States and economic measures.¹³ This policy also included the development of a nuclear arsenal which would lead South Africa to develop six atomic bombs by the end of the 1980s, after a top-secret 15-year program.¹⁴

In this context, what was particularly relevant for the United States, led by the Ford Administration (1974–1977), was the political orientation of the parties that took power in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe after the end of white domination. These parties – the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), the Frente de Libertaçao de Moçambique (FRELIMO) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) – were all Marxist-inspired and received wide support from the Eastern Bloc and China,¹⁵ especially during their struggle for independence against Portugal. The USSR also backed the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which led domestic opposition to the apartheid system.¹⁶ Furthermore, the civil war between the three principal Angolan liberation movements – the MPLA, the Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA) and the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) – that went with the independence of the country rapidly assumed the features of a proxy war, with the two blocs helping opposing parts of the war. From the mid-1970s, therefore, the disintegration of the cordon sanitaire made Southern Africa the theatre of a complex convergence between a dramatic exacerbation of the “old” racial issue and the development of the “new” Cold War paradigm.¹⁷ Pretoria also emphasised this overlap by portraying the “total onslaught” as an international conspiracy orchestrated by Moscow, and itself as the only remaining bastion against the spread of communism in the area. This led to a convergence of interests and actions between South Africa and the United States. When the Angolan Civil War started in 1975, Washington supported the FNLA and UNITA against the MPLA’s armed forces (Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola – FAPLA) with a covert CIA operation,¹⁸ while in October of that year the South African Defence Force (SADF) began a military invasion of Angola.¹⁹ The beginning of the Angolan Civil War also contributed to strengthen the American alliance with Zaire. Indeed, Mobutu was very hostile to the MPLA since it opened up Angolan territory to the bases of the Front de Libération Nationale Congolais (FLNC) – a separatist movement that had its roots in the rich, southern Zairian province of Katanga. The FLNC formed one of the main opposition movements to Mobutu, and from 1974–75 its militia was trained, along with MPLA troops, by the Cubans.²⁰ In order to meet this threat to the Zairian southern border, Mobutu thus joined the coalition of states that supported the FNLA and UNITA in the Angolan Civil War.

The South African military invasion of Angola in 1975, however, led to an increase in Soviet military aid and, above all, favoured a massive deployment of Cuban troops to Angola to support the MPLA’s military efforts against its enemies.²¹ These developments complicated Washington’s relations with South Africa, in particular with regard to the attempt to reconcile the need to keep Pretoria in the Western Bloc with the problematic and controversial racial issue. The collusion between the United States and the apartheid government, in fact, dampened relations with other African countries²² and started to give rise to public opposition – both domestically and internationally – especially after Pretoria’s brutal repression of the Soweto protest in 1976. In this climate, and when, at the end of 1975, the White House publicly acknowledged the American covert intervention...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The United States and the Cold War in Africa
• 2 1988: the rupture of the Cold War paradigm in Africa
• 3 The United States in Southern Africa, 1988–1994
• 4 The United States in the Horn of Africa, 1988–1994
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index