The Green And The Black: Qadhafi's Policies In Africa
In reading this volume what is striking is how many of his foreign policy options Qaddafi seems to have used up-to no avail. His North African unions having both ended in divorce and his military and diplomatic forays south of the Sahara having resulted in his resounding rejection as leader of the OAU, the energies of the Libyan juggernaut within its own continent have been severely circumscribed. Thus the global arena may have to be the main future field of operations for this jaunty adventurer.
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For much of Africa this year, immediate threats to survival dominated national agendas. In the extreme north and south, Libya and South Africa attacked the territory of weaker neighbors. Less noticed but far more widely devastating, a harsh drought destroyed crops across the continent, confronting more than 20 million people with the prospect of starvation. Declining rates of per capita food production over the last decade, coupled with escalating debt and falling returns on exports, left many African states at the margins of existence--at least according to Western calculations. And at year's end, a military coup abruptly ended four years of American-style democratic government in Africa's largest nation, Nigeria, renewing fears about political upheaval throughout the continent.

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