Engaging Africa: Washington and the Fall of Portugal's Colonial Empire. Witney W. Schneidman.University Press of America.
For those who have seen firsthand the ravages of war in Lusophone Africa, particularly in Angola, reading Witney W. Schneidman's new study of American policy toward Portugal and its African colonies in 1961-75 is both fascinating and troubling.
Schneidman, who served in the Clinton Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, has stripped away the "diplomatic cover" from this sad epoch in his recently-published Engaging Africa: Washington and the Fall of Portugal's Colonial Empire. Relying largely on declassified State Department records, official archives in Portugal (including those of the secret police, PIDE) and interviews with many of the key actors, Schneidman exposes the often cynical and manipulative manner in which U. S. governments from John F. Kennedy's through Gerald Ford's treated Africa.
Throughout this period, Africa was a distraction to American presidents and policy-makers. Kennedy was preoccupied with the Cold War and, belying his posthumous popularity in Africa, was not visibly animated by the continent. Lyndon Johnson understood the need to include Africa as part of his civil rights strategy, but he too was distracted by Vietnam and domestic political imperatives.
Perversely, it was Richard Nixon and his foreign affairs maestro, Henry Kissinger, who endowed Africa policy with a clear purpose. The result, alas, was the infamous National Security Study Memorandum 39, which essentially endorsed white minority rule in Southern Africa as an unavoidable-perhaps even a necessary-evil.
Kissinger's intellectual arrogance is evident in his failure to question NSSM 39's de facto conclusion that the United States had neither critical interests nor the capacity to influence events in Africa. Kissinger knew little of Africa and was indifferent to learning much about it.
Schneidman offers this revealing anecdote. In May 1975, when the direction of history in Angola was still an open question, Kissinger had an opportunity to meet in Bonn, West Germany, with the Portuguese foreign minister, Melo Antunes. Kissinger regarded the left-leaning Portuguese government as a potential chink in NATO's anti-communist armor and was dismissive of working with it. European diplomats arranged the Kissinger-Antunes meeting in hope of easing tensions between the Portuguese and American governments. The meeting had no such effect. What is more telling, however, is Antunes's recollection of the meeting when Schneidman interviewed him in 1983. Schneidman writes:
"The Portuguese foreign minister told the secretary of state that it was essential for the United States to help Angola become an independent and nonaligned nation. To accomplish this, Antunes said that Washington should help the MPLA gain control over the country. This would neutralize the influence of the Soviet Union and reduce the need for the MPLA to rely on external assistance, such as from Cuba. . . . (Antunes) found Kissinger to be 'cold,' 'unbelieving' and fatalistic in his conviction that Angola was already lost."
Here is one of those "what-might-have-beens" which make the study of history occasionally so tantalizing, yet so frustrating. We can only imagine the bloodshed saved, the treasure not wasted, if Kissinger had seriously explored the option suggested by Antunes. Had the United States backed MPLA sovereignty in Angola, would Cuba have sent troops and South Africa invaded? Would UNITA have survived as long as it did?
We know, all too sadly, what actually happened. We know that more than a million Angolans, by many estimates, died as a result of the 27-year conflict which followed. We know that billions of dollars were spent fighting the war and billions more keeping the survivors alive. But do we know that this had to be? Read Engaging Africa and judge for yourself.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Although Schneidman focuses narrowly on U. S.-Portuguese relations and their African ramifications, his book begs broader questions about American policy in Africa since decolonization. What ideologies, interests and constituencies have driven our African policy? What level of intelligence and understanding have we sought and applied? Schneidman documents a pattern of Africa's marginalization in American foreign policy from the Kennedy years to the mid-1970s. It is a pattern which remains to be broken.
Kevin Lowther is Regional Director for Southern Africa at Africare, a Washington-based NGO.
