Exploring the dynamics and limitations of reciprocity in Liberia-US relations, the book offers a perspective on security and economic assistance as instruments of foreign policy.

It examines policy formulation and implementation, and the tactics and consequences of the relationship as both countries pursued their national interests. At once a diplomatic history and case study of African foreign policy and presidential leadership, the work illustrates how development and security assistance were used by the US as antidotes against communism in the Cold War and how Liberia, in spite of the asymmetrical relationship, was able occasionally to benefit from the arrangement.

D. Elwood Dunn is the Alfred Walter Negley Professor of Political Science at Sewanee, The University of the South.