Regional Conflict And U.S. Policy: Angola And Mozambique
This stout and well-buttressed regionalist argument went to press before the outlines of the current Namibia settlement process had become clear; thus its authors are in some instances baying after a vanished quarry. Nonetheless, they do a good collective job of illuminating what has become a southern Africa backwater. Particularly good are Carlos Gaspar's essay on Portugal's policies toward its former colonies since their independence and Gerald Bender's essay on Washington's search for enemies in Angola.
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In civil war, hatreds are more intimate than in international conflict. The enemy is less awesome; he is killed with more conviction that he deserves it. Invariably-inevitably-the death tolls are higher. The American Civil War set records for its day. Despite the limited weaponry and skill, the Biafran war has taken the lives of an estimated two million people, mostly starved children. And now a war that is already engaging about 26,000 black guerrillas and approximately a quarter-million white or white-officered troops in Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia, South Africa and Namibia (the United Nations' new name for South West Africa) offers such a prospect of escalation that it can hardly help but be bigger, in cemetery terms, than Viet Nam. In this corner of the globe, whose fair hills make a savage contrast with the ugliness wrought by man, the restless spirit of Nazism, with its accent on genetic myth and legal caste, will perhaps be put to rest in a swamp of blood.
Conflict between the administration and Congress exemplifies the disarray of US policy towards Southern Africa. Reviews the background to the passage of the Anti-Apartheid Act, the goals of which, however, are not achievable in terms of practical politics. The Reagan administration has concentrated on white opinion, when a strategy of "black empowerment", defined as dialogue with the black leadership, would be more fruitful. Notes the relationship between regional re-stabilization and the use (or threat) of sanctions. For the remainder of 1988 the administration should concentrate on Namibia and Angola.
Charts the development of US foreign policy efforts under Reagan in (1) the Angolan conflict (2) South Africa. Since 1981, the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester A Crocker, has pursued two main objectives in Africa (1) the reduction of Soviet/Cuban influence and cross-border conflict (2) the introduction of more liberal policies in South Africa.
