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Arms for Africa?

By Arnold Rivkin
October 1959
Article Summary and Author Biography

ARNOLD RIVKIN, Director, African Economic and Political Development Project, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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THE lengthening procession of new African states making their debut on the world scene must soon confront American policy-makers with still another difficult problem--the question of whether to grant them military assistance. It is all but inevitable that these countries will insist on exercising the fundamental right and responsibility of sovereign nations to raise and maintain military forces for self-defense. It is equally certain that the creation of national military establishments will impose burdens which their underdeveloped economies and unstable political structures are ill-prepared to sustain. It is also certain that the emergent states will seek to share these burdens and will look in many directions for military assistance--to the former metropoles, to the United States, to the Communist bloc.

If these premises are correct, what are the principal considerations which must be accommodated in the formulation of U.S. policy with regard to military assistance programs in Africa?

The relationships between Western European powers and their African colonies are being drastically transformed as a result of the political revolution sweeping the African continent. The conflict which this has engendered has presented the United States with one of its most serious foreign policy dilemmas; and the horns are likely to be sharpened as the former colonies turn to the United States for military assistance...

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Essay, Oct 1965
Lost Goals in Africa
Arnold Rivkin

United STATES policy in Africa has lost much of its credibility for a large part of the African continent. We have held out hope for more than we have, in the event, been able or willing to deliver. Often the promise of brave words was extravagant and unwise; but what is noticed is that it has not been matched by congruent acts. We have seemed to say one thing and do another. For example, to most of Africa the unqualified and warmly welcomed pronouncement of the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs- "The United States stands for self-determination in Africa"-appears to have been disregarded, even repudiated, in practice, with respect to what in African eyes is the acid test of our bona fides, the "white redoubts" in southern Africa. Again, in promising major and growing American aid for a "decade of development" we declared it to be "a primary necessity, opportunity and responsibility of the United States" to help make "a historic demonstration that economic growth and political democracy can go hand in hand" in building "free, stable, and self-reliant countries." This hope has now been substantially dissipated by the evolution of the U.S. aid syndrome in Africa-initial good intentions, objective standards, policies of rewarding merit, yielding to the pressures of the moment, the putting out of fires, the special concern for "bad boys," "problem children" and the crisis-prone, the needs of "containment," the special interest of allies, the U.S. dollar drain, etc.

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