The Angolan War

A Study In Soviet Policy In The Third World

Arthur J Klinghoffer

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000314632
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politique et relations internationales
• Categoría: Politique

The Angolan War of 1975-1976 focused international attention on an area -long relegated to the sidelines of world diplomacy and accented the historical momentum toward black control of southern African states. This book is the first to examine why a localized conflict in a remote area was the object of such extensive global concern. Dr. Klinghoffer discusses both the Soviet and the Cuban roles in Angola and evaluates the decisive change in Soviet foreign policy that, subsequently, caused the United States to question the very nature of Soviet-American detente. He answers the key question of whether the Soviet Union followed an overall plan for Angola or developed its policy over time, in reaction to the behavior of the United States, China, South Africa, Zaire, Portugal, and other political actors.

1
The Tempestuous Teapot

The Angolan war of 1975-76 focused international attention on an area long relegated to the sidelines of world diplomacy and accentuated the historic momentum toward black control of southern African states. Angola's rise from the torpidity of Portugal's African empire and the involvement of external powers in its affairs have led to extensive and embittered controversy over regional political trends. Furthermore, the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) victory in Angola has served to broaden the scope of contention by giving added impetus to black nationalist movements in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, Namibia, and South Africa. Angola must surely be analyzed within its own historical and cultural context but it has also become something much larger, an international symbol which has transcended its intrinsic importance, and its elevation to this plane of symbolism must be explained as well. Why was a localized conflict in a remote area the object of such extensive global concern and why did the Soviet role in Angola have such an impact on the course of Soviet foreign policy, and on the Soviet-American detente relationship as well? Angola has clearly influenced contemporary attitudes toward international relations as it has already joined Yalta and Vietnam as pulsating schizoid facets of the Western political psyche.

Prior to the Portuguese revolution of April 1974, Angola was not viewed as strategically essential by either the United States or the Soviet Union. However, the revolution introduced the crucial element of surprise and its unsettling effect on Angolan affairs sent each state scurrying for an effective policy to counter the perceived threat from the other. Diplomatic somnambulism gave way to frenetic political activity and largely extraneous concerns were superimposed over those which were indigenously Angolan. As an editorial in the Nigerian journal West Africa indicated shortly after Angola became independent on November 11, 1975: "Angola is now a battleground for principles and policies largely irrelevant to her own desperate needs."¹

Angola was illustrative of the death throes of colonialism, but its symbolic importance was even greater as Angola was the keystone of Portugal's antediluvian African empire, the last major bastion of colonialism remaining on the continent. It was also indicative of the growing struggle for black control of southern African states and constituted the first decisive battle to determine the course of the region's political evolution. To South Africa, Angola represented the first step in a communist drive to dominate southern Africa and, to the Organization of African Unity, it was a tragic symbol of African ineffectiveness in either preventing the conflict or reconciling the warring parties. Africa's lack of unity was also displayed, as was its subordination to the interventionist designs of outside powers.

On the world scene, Angola became an arena for determining the flexibility of the parameters in the Soviet-American detente relationship and the contest of wills that evolved was accompanied by polemics reminiscent of the hyperideological heyday of the Cold War. Angola became the ante in the superpower sweepstakes and its status helps confirm political scientist James Rosenau's observation that major powers "test each other's strength and contest each other's influence through involvement in the internal wars of small neutral nations" because advanced weapons technology has minimized the probability of total war.²

Angola was an important symbol to concerned Americans but its significance was the subject of controversy. Liberals believed that covert operations in Angola could lead to another Vietnam-style imbroglio so they extended Congressional control over executive actions in Angola by cutting off all funds supplied for undercover activities. They were attuned to the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate public mentality which called for executive accountability and Angola was seen as the last hurrah for the impetuous CIA clandestine services. Conservatives believed that the United States was under-reacting in Angola as the Soviets and Cubans were displaying their strength; they objected to a post-Vietnam neo-isolationist attitude which had sapped the United States of its will to stand up to the Soviet Union and they condemned the supposed detente relationship which could still produce such a major Soviet military action far removed from its own borders. To the conservatives, Angola symbolized the withdrawal of the U.S. from a position of world responsibility and the tacit acceptance of Soviet expansionist designs. One other noteworthy aspect to consider is that the Angolan war brought about the first consequential coincidence of military interest between the United States and China in opposition to the actions of the Soviet Union.

Critics of the Soviet Union saw its Angolan policies as symbolic of a new aggressiveness and as a portent of a Soviet-Cuban drive to socialize Africa. To the Soviet media, Angola was symbolic of both Soviet support for national liberation movements and the inexorable revolutionary flow of events in southern Africa. It exemplified Soviet willingness to assist African states in combatting neocolonialist, South African and mercenary forces. As of 1975-76, the Soviet Union's military operation in Angola was the largest it ever conducted in black Africa and the first to make extensive use of Cuban combatants. After the war, the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with Angola, the initial friendship treaty with a sub-Saharan African state. The Soviet leadership also realized the geographical and psychological prominence of a victory in Angola in terms of furthering the cause of black majority rule in southern Africa, as it attempted to reverse a string of international failures in Egypt, Chile and Portugal and to undercut its own internal critics who viewed the policy of detente as too inhibiting and restrictive. Soviet and Cuban success in Angola led to deeper involvement in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, brought about a major shift in American policy toward southern Africa, and created a serious obstacle to detente. The international consequences and ramifications of Soviet policy toward Angola in 1975-76 are still evolving.

The Foreign Policy Framework

This study of Soviet involvement in Angola will emphasize causality rather than morality or legality and the application of foreign policy rather than its formulation. Data on Soviet bureaucratic behavior and the policy-making process during the Angolan war is not sufficient to document a scholarly analysis. Furthermore, the main theme of this work is the interaction of Soviet foreign policy with various levels of the Angolan conflict, so models concentrating on a state's strategic objectives are more pertinent than those stressing the bureaucratic process and specific personalities.³

Graham Allison, a Harvard professor specializing in the formulation of a state's external conduct, persuasively argues that the term "policy" assumes rational deliberation and the arrival at "decisions" whereas the actual international behavior of a state may be determined by an accomodation of different interest groups and individuals rather than by a coordinated process of "policy" formulation based on shared objectives. He therefore prefers to discuss "outputs" rather than "policy."⁴ Allison is undoubtedly accurate in terms of logic and precision but the substitution of the term "outputs" for "policy" can lead to some curious semantic contortions (Soviet "outputs" toward Angola?) so the term "policy" will be used with the proviso that it implies neither rationality nor monolithic bureaucratic agreement.

Foreign policy may be analyzed in terms of objectives, strategy and tactics, and Morton Halperin's delineation of Soviet and American objectives in local wars is instructive in regard to the Angolan case. Halperin, a political scientist and former official in the Nixon administration, maintains that avoiding an attack on one's own state is naturally a basic objective and he also cites foreign policy objectives, political-effects objectives, and battlefield objectives. He indicates that political effects are often more important than "battlefield success" because the territory involved in local conflicts is usually not considered strategic by either the Soviet Union or United States.⁵

Soviet policy toward Angola was based on a consideration of objectives and tactics for facilitating them, but the existence of a specific strategy is somewhat ambiguous. Time constraints and deadlines may have lead to an incremental, ad hoc and rather pragmatic approach emphasizing immediate tactical advantages rather than long-range, strategic ones and past Soviet experience with the ephemerality of African political alignments may also have downgraded the significance of strategy. On the tactical plane, foreign policy options must certainly be taken into account as the costs, risks, benefits and probabilities of success are weighed. .

When analyzing the Soviet role in Angola, one must be careful to draw distinctions between the projection of Soviet power into Angola and the extension of Soviet influence over the MPLA. the former would include military base and overflight rights or the positioning of troops and weapons and need not be directly related to the degree of influence exercised over the MPLA leadership. In fact, the projection of Soviet power could lead to a logistic dependency relationship which provides the MPLA with added political leverage over the U.S.S.R.

This study is based on the proposition that Soviet objectives, strategies and tactics during the Angolan war, as well as the possible salience of ideological and geopolitical factors, cannot adequately be examined in toto. They must be approached inductively by combining distinct levels of Soviet foreign policy interaction with other states. Objectives, strategies and tactics vary with each level of interaction and ideological and geopolitical factors are relevant at some levels but irrelevant at others.

Soviet foreign policy behavior may be evaluated in terms of its interaction with six basic levels of the Angolan conflict:

1. Factional divisions within the MPLA.

2. The rivalry between three competitive Angolan nationalist movements

3. The Lusitanian community, characterized by revolutionary changes in Portugal and a sudden process of African decolonization

4. Regional interstate politics in southern and central Africa

5. Continental African politics, especially the diplomatic activities of the Organization of African Unity, and

6. The global strategic balance of forces, particularly the allied role of Cuba and the contesting roles of external powers such as the United States and China.

At each level of interaction, Soviet policy may be analyzed in regard to primary and reactive behavior. The Soviet Union's actions in Angola were partially defined by external factors, such as the role the MPLA wanted it to play, so it would be misleading to focus purely on these actions as primary, as that would imply a subordinate status for non-Soviet actors. Reciprocal interaction must be the keynote. The Soviet Union cannot arm the MPLA unless the MPLA desires Soviet arms. As indicated by British journalist Colin Legum, African states are not "passive victims" but in fact often seek the extracontinental states as allies to help resolve their own disputes.⁶ In a similar vein, Leonid Brezhnev asserted that Third World states are not "passive objects of history" locked into a worldwide rivalry between communist-ruled and capitalist states. He typified them as active and vigorous.⁷ Additional caveats to consider when assessing Soviet policy are that actions must be interpreted as either irregular or part of a continuum and that incrementalism must be distinguished from any preconceived master plan.

The Context of War

The struggle in Angola may be viewed as incorporating aspects of national liberation as well as civil and external war. Three major nationalist movements sought to remove the Portuguese colonial presence but they were unable to unify their forces nor achieve much success against the Portuguese army.⁸ The turning point came in April 1974 when the Portuguese government was overthrown and replaced by a military council amenable to the decolonization of Angola. The process of Portuguese withdrawal led to the Alvor agreement of January 1975, in which a Transitional Government of all three nationalist movements was to prepare Angola for independence on November 11, 1975. Attempted reconciliation of the movements deteriorated into civil war and external involvement. Troops from Zaire, South Africa and Cuba entered the fray, as did white mercenaries from several states. The Soviet Union, China and the United States provided arms and funds. Portugal withdrew its troops and granted independence to Angola, although it did not recognize any of the three movements as a legitimate government. The tide of battle swung in favor of the MPLA and the assistance of at least 17,000 Cuban troops was instrumental. The withdrawal of South African troops in March 1976 ended what is generally known as "the Angolan war" but Cuban troops remained, civil war persisted, South African troops reentered on several occasions, and events in Angola became linked with conflicts over Shaba province in Zaire. The war is theoretically over but the battle for Angola continues.

The national liberation aspect of the conflict was made somewhat obsolete by the Portuguese revolution as the Portuguese government came to favor decolonization and arranged cease-fires with the three movements. The actual "war" in Angola began with the breakdown of the Alvor agreement and the initiation of major clashes between nationalist movements in March 1975. It terminated with the South African withdrawal in March 1976, and was basically an example of civil strife which became externalized due to the introduction of foreign troops, arms, advisers and funds. It could therefore be viewed as a "revolutionary civil war." According to political scientist David Wilkinson, "Revolutionary civil war is characteristically a parenthesis within a Revolution: an episode marked by wide and intense violence in the form of organized and polarized two-sided struggle ended by a victory and an autocratic rule."⁹ It was more three-sided in Angola but the war can certainly be considered an interregnum in the lengthy process of revolutionary change engendered by national liberation forces.

Labeling the Angolan war as solely "civil" or "external" is an exercise in futility as it obviously incorporated ingredients of both. As George Modelski, an expert on theoretical approaches to the study of war, correctly points out, the semantics of labeling are based on the expediency, rather than objectivity, of political perception and he avers: "As a general rule, those who wish to bring about the internationalization of a violent conflict find it desirable to call it an external war; their opponents, on the other hand, may wish to isolate the conflict and for that reason may prefer to describe it as internal war."¹⁰ His observation is pertinent to the Soviet use of semantics during the Angolan war as it was described as "civil" up to the time of large-scale Cuban involvement and the MPLA's declaration of a government and was then verbally transformed into an "external" war. Soviet arms and Cuban troops were deemed necessary to defend a legitimate MPLA-governed state against aggression from South Africa, Zaire, the United States, and other powers. Most national liberation or civil wars have some external linkages so differing concepts of war are often fused rather than compartmentalized. Too often, the external aspects are overemphasized as the war is perceived primarily in a global context but one must be wary of obfuscating the "indigenous roots" of conflicts which have become externalized.¹¹

James Rosenau maintains that as internal war proceeds, "capabilities tend to change in the direction of greater balance and goals in the direction of greater incompatibility." This remark is applicable to the Angolan situation as the FNLA had a military advantage at the time of the Alvor agreement but the MPLA achieved parity by June or July. Goals were seen as potentially reconcilable in January at the time of Alvor but clearly were discordant by March or April. Also relevant to Angola is Rosenau's view that external involvement is usually an effort to break a military stalemate and he additionally claims that "foreign instigated internal wars" lead to more rapid external involvement than domestically generated wars.¹² The Soviet Union, Cuba and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) had extensive ties to the MPLA for many years but the Angolan war had its own internal momentum and should not be classified as "foreign instigated."

Many political scientists and historians use the term "intervention" rather broadly, signifying any external role in the affairs of a state during wartime, but this study will attempt to be somewhat more restrictive. In a narrower sense, "intervention" means that a state "encroaches upon the sovereign prerogatives of another state" and does so without the consent of the second party.¹³ Military or other assistance rendered in response to a request cannot be deemed indicative of "intervention." If one believes that the MPLA government after November 11, 1975 held the legitimate reins of state power, then the Soviet Union and Cuba were not subsequently interventionists but an illegitimate perspective on the PRA (People's Republic of Angola) proclaimed by the MPLA could lead to the opposite conclusion. The MPLA portrayed Soviet and Cuban assistance as "fraternal" but UNITA and the FNLA viewed the involvement of these two states as "intervention." In a similar manner, the...