Disengagement from Southwest Africa

Prospects for Peace in Angola and Namibia

Owen Kahn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780887383618
• eBook ISBN: 9781000675467
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Gorbachev's new thinking on superpower relations assumes that struggle between two opposing world systems no longer characterizes the present era. This second volume in the East-South Relations series explores the implications of Gorbachev's new thinking for regional conflicts. Because these conflicts jeopardize tranquil relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, they are perceived as contrary to the new spirit of global cooperation. This volume suggests that the accords on Southwest Africa may illustrate how the superpowers will resolve conflict, and shows how smaller powers may now have new roles cast for them by the superpowers.
In 1975, Soviet-Cuban assistance to the Leninist-oriented Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was the first extensive Soviet-allied military intervention in the Third World. While the Soviet-backed Cubans propped up the MPLA, the South Africans intervened, on a smaller scale, in support of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) under Jonas Savimbi. After 1985 UNITA began receiving United States support, and a military stalemate ensued. The contributors to this volume analyse how the Soviet Union and the United States used this stalemate to move the MPLA, Cuba and South Africa to settle not only their differences, but also the vexing question of the Independence of Namibia.
Central issues explored are how and why South Africa and Cuba got into the Angolan arena, why they stayed so long, and why they saw fit to get out. While the authors differ on the forces at work, their debate is itself enlightening, and offers valuable insights into the policy options of regional powers. The contributors also review further steps, beyond military disengagement, needed to finally resolve the Angolan civil war, and ensure regional stability. They assess the potential for breakdown of the accords, and the likely consequences should this occur.
Disengagement from Southwest Africa will interest policymakers and researchers concerned with developments in southern Africa and Cuba, and with relations between the superpowers.

I
THE USSR AND THE CONFLICT IN ANGOLA AND NAMIBIA

1
Gorbachev’s New Political Thinking and the Angolan Conflict

Vernon V. Aspaturian

Introduction

To understand changing Soviet perceptions of, and policies toward the regional conflict in southern Africa, they must be placed, not only within an appropriate time frame, but also within the context of changing Soviet perceptions of the Third World in general, and of Africa in particular. There is little question but that a sea-change has been taking place in Soviet perceptions and policies under Gorbachev—a multifaceted change-process which has yet to achieve equilibrium. These changes are of signal importance for southern Africa.

Even under Brezhnev, Africa south of the Sahara was viewed as the “soft underbelly of imperialism:” the most vulnerable of the three Third World continents, and the easiest to penetrate, with the lowest risks of confrontation, and the smallest economic burdens. To be sure, the foreign policy yield was not expected to be high or decisive. But the continent offered many minor opportunities which could be exploited to add to the vitality of the Soviet system and its credentials as a global power. Africa was fertile ground for the sowing of ideological seeds that could germinate into socialist-oriented countries linked to the Soviet Union. Under Brezhnev, these became a surrogate for investing resources and effort in development at home and consolidation abroad, which the Brezhnev leadership may have realistically calculated was not a process which could yield quick, dramatic, and visible results—unlike the acquisition of what Soviet critics are now frankly calling an imperial-like “geostrategic sphere of influence.”

American interest in Africa was marginal, with the exception of an erratic involvement in the internal affairs and character of South Africa—more a reflection of the imperatives of the American domestic social scene, and the pressures of internal politics, than of foreign policy. American policy in Africa south of the Sahara first focused on mobilizing pressure on South Africa and then, under the Reagan administration, moved to a more attenuated but still hostile policy of “constructive engagement”—aiming to alter the domestic status quo in South Africa and impel its evacuation of Namibia and releasing it to independence. The essential difference in the United States approach under the Carter and Reagan administrations was that under the former, the pressure on South Africa was an isolated policy, unrelated and unlinked to Soviet/Cuban activity in southern Africa, whereas under Reagan, the intensity and nature of pressure upon South Africa for internal change and withdrawal from Namibia was clearly placed within the wider southern African context. It was irrevocably linked to Soviet/Cuban withdrawal from Angola and to a tacit promise not to convert Mozambique, a socialist-oriented country with still tenuous links to Moscow, into a Soviet client. Under the Reagan administration, pressure was to be applied to both South Africa and the Soviet/Cubans simultaneously and in measured, deliberate cadences: South Africa’s presence in Namibia, and its potential threat to Angola, would be employed as a lever to gain agreement for a Soviet/Cuban withdrawal from Angola, in return for South African withdrawal from Namibia. To increase pressure on the Soviet/Cuban side, the Reagan administration later escalated its involvement in the conflict by openly supplying the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) forces of Jonas Savimbi with modern military equipment, and calling for an Angolan coalition regime to be made up of the current ruling group, the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and UNITA.

There is little question that the escalation of United States involvement, not only in Angola, but also in Afghanistan, powerfully contributed to a Soviet reassessment of its perceptions, policies, and behavior in southern Africa and the Third World generally. Indeed, Soviet writers freely concede that the costs and burdens of existing policies were becoming unacceptable, as the danger of continued escalation, confrontation and possible conflict with the United States increased. All this worked against Gorbachev’s ambitious program to reform and revitalize the Soviet system. It was clear to the new Soviet leader that, even if he so desired, Soviet capabilities were insufficient to support both development at home and expansion abroad. Brezhnev had opted for the latter, whereas Gorbachev has chosen the former as the main thrust of Soviet effort for the coming decade.

Whether this shift from expansion to development reflects merely a strategic decision or a fundamental restructuring of Soviet ideology, perceptions, and assessment of self-interest will remain a subject of lively controversy. At this point, Gorbachev’s agenda is only partly inscribed, and his leadership represents, at best, an administration superimposed upon a system. It is still too early to be confident that the Gorbachev administration is in full command and will eventually domesticate the system, or whether the system will resist and drive him from office, or force and alteration of his policies. In any event, one must continue to distinguish between the Gorbachev administration and the Soviet system. At this time each still operates on separate but parallel rails, and the ultimate consequence may be a meshing of the two, a collision, or a compromise in which Gorbachev remains in the driver’s seat, but the locomotive of the system moves in accordance with its own momentum.

The “New Political Thinking” and Soviet Foreign Policy in the Third World: To Expand or Not to Expand

The foundation of Gorbachev’s “new political thinking” is the priority of domestic interests over external interests, and the renunciation (or indefinite postponement) of ideological expansion in favor of internal development. This is precisely the reverse of the Brezhnev era’s ordering of priorities. Indeed, Gorbachev’s “new political thinking” represents a wholesale repudiation of the Brezhnev foreign policy, with the exception of seeking to preserve and enhance the Soviet Union’s status as a global power—perhaps the most impressive and solid accomplishment of the Brezhnev period.¹ But Gorbachev acknowledges that Brezhnev’s strategy of achieving global power status and recognition, while successful, was also enormously costly, risky, and temporary—since it was based almost entirely on Soviet military capability, and not upon a solid socio-economic foundation. Brezhnev’s achievement came at the expense of economic deterioration at home, inattention to serious social problems, and reliance almost entirely on ideological expansion in the Third World to demonstrate the vitality and legitimacy of the Soviet system.

Gorbachev aims to retain and strengthen the Soviet Union as a global power, but to transform it from a unidimensional military global power into a multidimensional global power, in which military force will play an ancillary rather than central role. Whether Gorbachev’s vision is realistic remains controversial, both inside and outside the Soviet Union. It may turn out that only through the Brezhnev strategy could the Soviet Union achieve global power status. Brezhnev may have realistically calculated that the Soviet Union could not match the United States, to say nothing of the entire capitalist world, in internal development, and concluded that given existing international conditions, the Soviet Union could successfully compete only in the realms of military development and foreign policy. Brezhnev’s strategy was a reformulation and repackaging of the Leninist-Stalinist “dual strategy,” and the Khrushchevite formula for “peaceful coexistence,” whereby the world would be divided into two realms: the realm of “detente” and “peaceful coexistence” in the West, and the realm of “class conflict,” Soviet expansion, and risk of confrontation in the Third World. Détente with the West would diminish the risk of nuclear war by reducing the perceived threat of Soviet expansion in Europe. But given the United States reluctance to engage in conflict in the Third World after the Vietnam experience, Brezhnev correctly calculated that the Soviet Union could move more vigorously there—demonstrating its vitality through the support of “national liberation” movements, and the installation of “socialist-oriented” regimes.

Soviet writers in the era of glasnost candidly discuss and evaluate the options confronting the Gorbachev leadership—in straightforward language, relatively free of the ideological stereotypes, cliches, and jargonistic “formulations” of Marxism-Leninism. They openly express in realistic terms the comparative costs and risks of pursuing alternative courses of action. Thus, two important Soviet analysts, Alexei Izumov and Andrei Kortunov, of the Institute of the USA and Canada—the latter, head of the Institute’s section on International Security Studies—have framed Gorbachev’s choices as poised between two principal alternatives: (1) continuing the Brezhnev course of compensating for economic stagnation at home with foreign policy “successes” abroad, and accepting the increased costs and risks imposed by Washington; or (2) cutting Soviet foreign policy and military losses abroad, retrenching in the Third World, and shifting more resources to restructuring the Soviet economy and revitalizing Soviet society. Izumov and Kortunov are clear that the second option assumed greater attractiveness as the United States continued to raise the risks and costs of Soviet expansionism in the Third World. They assess the merits of these options in dealing with what they characterize as the search for “new ways of repulsing the global imperialist offensive:”

It seems that there are two alternatives for meeting this challenge. The first implies a compensation for a relative weakening of the Soviet economy by increasing the share of allocations channelled to foreign and military policies. The second option boils down to the following: while preserving or reducing foreign policy expenditures, it is necessary to bridge the gap between our economy and foreign policy, thereby mitigating the burden of the first and buttressing the economic foundations of the second. Speaking in military terms, the first alternative means “to hold positions at any cost until the expected reinforcements arrive,” while the second alternative provides for “a retreat to the earlier prepared positions with the aim of cutting down losses and gathering forces.”²

And in an unusually candid observation for Soviet writers, the authors explicitly state that Brezhnev’s strategy was designed to compensate for intractable economic and social problems at home, with the achievement of quick, visible results abroad:

It seems that until the replacement of the leadership of the country in 1985 the first alternative of reaction was prevalent in Soviet foreign policy. The latter often looked like an attempt to switch over from pressing internal problems to showy international activities and compensate the intenal stagnation with a vigorous foreign policy. These attempts could produce only a transient effect; stagnation in the Soviet economy and socio-political life inevitably affected Soviet foreign policy and the U.S.S.R.’s international standing.³

Observing, with approval, that “at present, with the elaboration of the concept of new thinking,’ the second, more realistic alternative is coming to the fore,” the two authors also warn that the Gorbachev course is by no means a settled choice of the leadership, and that the debate concerning the two options is still open.⁴

The first alternative, the authors say, can promise Moscow “at best only temporary successes in its international policy,” and “since all non-economic means of strengthening our foreign policy have now been practically exhausted, their reinvigoration, if not backed by the economic might, will be most likely counterproductive:”

In particular, more active military factors may lead to more acute international tensions, while an activation of ideological factors may discredit our ideology. … A heavier burden of expenditures on foreign policy and defense involved in the first option will, undoubtedly damage the civilian economy and jeopardize the programme of its modernization, thereby depriving us of the hope for an “expeditious reinforcement.” Besides, it may lower living standards, and the reserves of patience in this field are not inexhaustible.⁵

Stressing that Soviet economic capabilities are no match for those of the United States and its allies, and that in contrast with the United States, Moscow “cannot count on any tangible assistance from its allies,” the outlook for selecting the first option would be the following:

The depletion of the economy by the mounting burden of military-political expenditures will increasingly affect the military-technical component of our power as such, particularly if the arms race spills into outer space. … Thus, in the foreseeable future the first option will most probably lead to an exacerbation of the existing negative trends. In that case we may face a vicious circle when attempts to strengthen our foreign policy at the expense of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables and Maps
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• ANGOLA—A BRIEF PROFILE
• MAPS
• I. THE USSR AND THE CONFLICT IN ANGOLA AND NAMIBIA
• II. CUBA AND THE CONFLICT IN ANGOLA AND NAMIBIA
• III. SOUTH AFRICA AND THE CONFLICT IN ANGOLA AND NAMIBIA
• IV. ANGOLA AND NAMIBIA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
• V. CONCLUSION
• Appendix A: UNLIKELY DIALOGUE: SOVIET AND UNITA VIEWS ON THE CONFLICT
• Appendix B: AGREEMENTS FOR PEACE IN SOUTHWESTERN AFRICA
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX