Kissinger, Angola and US-African Foreign Policy

Kissinger, Angola and US-African Foreign Policy
Author: Steven O'Sullivan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351022776

Analysing US foreign policy towards Angola during the Ford administration, this book provides an intriguing insight into one of the most avoidable and unfortunate episodes in Cold War history and explores the impact on Henry Kissinger’s much vaunted reputation for being guided by realist principles. Kissinger has dominated political discourse and scholarship on US foreign policy since the 1970s, but although his legacy continues to generate controversy, little attention has been paid to the influence of Vietnam’s collapse on the US decision to covertly intervene in the Angolan civil war. This book argues that Kissinger’s concern for personal reputation and US credibility following the collapse of Vietnam led to a harmful and unrealistic policy toward Angola. Exposure of US covert intervention exacerbated domestic and international political tensions and the subsequent showdown between the excutive and legislative branches ironically resulted in Kissinger proclaiming a new departure in US–African relations. Thus, it is argued that Kissinger was an ‘unintentional realist’ rather than an intellectual proponent of realpolitik. Enhancing our understanding of Kissinger, his relationship with his subordinates and with Congress, and his approach to foreign policy, this book will be of interest to scholars of Cold War history, US foreign policy and all those fascinated by the personality of Henry Kissinger.

Back Channel to Cuba

Back Channel to Cuba
Author: William M. LeoGrande
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2015-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469626616

History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now in paperback and updated to tell the real story behind the stunning December 17, 2014, announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts toward normalization in a new era of engagement. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

Conflicting Missions

Conflicting Missions
Author: Piero Gleijeses
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 573
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807861626

This is a compelling and dramatic account of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. policy toward the continent. Piero Gleijeses's fast-paced narrative takes the reader from Cuba's first steps to assist Algerian rebels fighting France in 1961, to the secret war between Havana and Washington in Zaire in 1964-65--where 100 Cubans led by Che Guevara clashed with 1,000 mercenaries controlled by the CIA--and, finally, to the dramatic dispatch of 30,000 Cubans to Angola in 1975-76, which stopped the South African advance on Luanda and doomed Henry Kissinger's major covert operation there. Based on unprecedented archival research and firsthand interviews in virtually all of the countries involved--Gleijeses was even able to gain extensive access to closed Cuban archives--this comprehensive and balanced work sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations. It revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, challenges conventional U.S. beliefs about the influence of the Soviet Union in directing Cuba's actions in Africa, and provides, for the first time ever, a look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War. "Fascinating . . . and often downright entertaining. . . . Gleijeses recounts the Cuban story with considerable flair, taking good advantage of rich material.--Washington Post Book World "Gleijeses's research . . . bluntly contradicts the Congressional testimony of the era and the memoirs of Henry A. Kissinger. . . . After reviewing Dr. Gleijeses's work, several former senior United States diplomats who were involved in making policy toward Angola broadly endorsed its conclusions.--New York Times "With the publication of Conflicting Missions, Piero Gleijeses establishes his reputation as the most impressive historian of the Cold War in the Third World. Drawing on previously unavailable Cuban and African as well as American sources, he tells a story that's full of fresh and surprising information. And best of all, he does this with a remarkable sensitivity to the perspectives of the protagonists. This book will become an instant classic.--John Lewis Gaddis, author of We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History Based on unprecedented research in Cuban, American, and European archives, this is the compelling story of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. policy toward the continent. Piero Gleijeses sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations, revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, and provides the first look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War. -->

The African Foreign Policy of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

The African Foreign Policy of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
Author: Hanes Walton
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2007-02-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0739151746

The African Foreign Policy of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger outlines in clear, comprehensive terms the details of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's foreign policy toward Africa and how that policy related to other aspects of his global viewpoint. For the first time, editors Hanes Walton, Jr., Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Bernard Rosser bring together a diverse collection of public documents, speeches, and congressional presentations for critical analysis and in-depth discussion. This book presents an intellectual evaluation of governmental sources to determine the kinds of foreign policy proposals and programs that Kissinger developed for the various crises and problems which were under way in Africa. The essays demonstrate how Kissinger used his brand of shuttle diplomacy to set up delicate negotiations to ease the new international tensions and the power-rivalry. The African Foreign Policy of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger offers important insight that will stimulate debate and be a lively read for those interested in international politics and political science.

Kissinger, Angola and US-African Foreign Policy

Kissinger, Angola and US-African Foreign Policy
Author: Steven O'Sullivan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351022776

Analysing US foreign policy towards Angola during the Ford administration, this book provides an intriguing insight into one of the most avoidable and unfortunate episodes in Cold War history and explores the impact on Henry Kissinger’s much vaunted reputation for being guided by realist principles. Kissinger has dominated political discourse and scholarship on US foreign policy since the 1970s, but although his legacy continues to generate controversy, little attention has been paid to the influence of Vietnam’s collapse on the US decision to covertly intervene in the Angolan civil war. This book argues that Kissinger’s concern for personal reputation and US credibility following the collapse of Vietnam led to a harmful and unrealistic policy toward Angola. Exposure of US covert intervention exacerbated domestic and international political tensions and the subsequent showdown between the excutive and legislative branches ironically resulted in Kissinger proclaiming a new departure in US–African relations. Thus, it is argued that Kissinger was an ‘unintentional realist’ rather than an intellectual proponent of realpolitik. Enhancing our understanding of Kissinger, his relationship with his subordinates and with Congress, and his approach to foreign policy, this book will be of interest to scholars of Cold War history, US foreign policy and all those fascinated by the personality of Henry Kissinger.

Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s

Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s
Author: Michael Franczak
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2022-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501763938

In Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s, Michael Franczak demonstrates how Third World solidarity around the New International Economic Order (NIEO) forced US presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to consolidate American hegemony over an international economic order under attack abroad and lacking support at home. The goal of the nations that supported NIEO was to negotiate a redistribution of money and power from the global North to the global South. Their weapon was control over the major commodities—in particular oil—that undergirded the prosperity of the United States and Europe after World War II. Using newly available archival sources, as well as interviews with key administration officials, Franczak reveals how the NIEO and "North-South dialogue" negotiations brought global inequality to the forefront of US national security. The challenges posed by NIEO became an inflection point for some of the greatest economic, political, and moral crises of 1970s America, including the end of golden age liberalism and the return of the market, the splintering of the Democratic Party and the building of the Reagan coalition, and the rise of human rights in US foreign policy in the wake of the Vietnam War. The policy debates and decisions toward the NIEO were pivotal moments in the histories of three ideological trends—neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and human rights—that formed the core of America's post–Cold War foreign policy.

The Policy of the Ford Administration Toward Cuba

The Policy of the Ford Administration Toward Cuba
Author: Håkan Karlsson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2022-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000546608

This book presents new aspects of the U.S. Cuba policy during Gerald R. Ford’s presidency (August 9, 1974‒January 20, 1977). Based in governmental and other sources from the U.S. and Cuba, the book examines how the Ford administration broke with Nixon’s hostile policy when the diplomatic and economic isolation of Cuba was ended in the OAS, even when the U.S. economic blockade prevailed. In line with the detente policy towards the USSR, the Ford administration strived to normalize the relations with Cuba through secret discussions. However, the Cuban involvement in the Angolan civil war ended this process of normalization, and the U.S. returned to a confrontational policy. Within this framework, counterrevolutionary groups in the U.S. could act, more or less with impunity, towards Cuba, but also against Cuban and third-country targets both within and outside the U.S. The book describes the oscillating Cuba policy that was the hallmark of the Ford administration. The Cuban perspective adopted will complement and enrich the knowledge of the U.S. policy toward Cuba during Gerald Ford’s presidency. It is of relevance to everyone interested in the issue and especially for students and researchers within the disciplines of History and Political Science.

U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Apartheid South Africa, 1948–1994

U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Apartheid South Africa, 1948–1994
Author: A. Thomson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2008-12-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 023061728X

This book charts the evolution of US foreign policy towards South Africa, beginning in 1948 when the architects of apartheid, the Nationalist Party, came to power. Thomson highlights three sets of conflicting Western interests: strategic, economic and human rights.

U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa

U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa
Author: Richard John Mahlum
Publisher:
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1980
Genre: Africa, Southern
ISBN:

This thesis is designed to demonstrate analytically three propositions: First, that the U.S. has maintained a foreign policy toward southern Africa which has been unevenly implemented and even neglected by various administrations, due to perceptual differences about Africa and due to other manifest priorities on the agenda of U.S. foreign policy concerns. Second, that a major determinant of U.S. policy in southern Africa has been the concern over potential superpower rivalry and intervention in the region as a dangerous and unwarranted element in the U.S.-Soviet competitive relationship. Third, that an overreaction in the U.S. to the perceived Soviet threat and a dramatic reinstitution of the East-West perspective in U.S. foreign policy priorities could lead the U.S. to set aside the regional approach toward southern Africa that has marked the Carter Administration's African policy since 1977. This development may create a situation of incipient crisis for future U.S. relations in the region. (Author).