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Volume XVI (2005)
Book Review:
Engaging Africa:Washington and the Fall of Portugal’s Colonial Empire
David T. Jervis
Department of Political Science, Rockford College, Rockford, IL 61108
Witney W. Schneidman. Engaging Africa: Washington
and the Fall of Portugal’s Colonial Empire. New York: University Press of America, 2004. 312
pp. $33.00 (paper).
Decolonization in Africa was a difficult issue for the
United States, creating, as a Department of State study once
noted, an “embarrassing choice between security requirements
and basic political principle” (quoted at p. 5). On the
one hand, there was America’s own anti-colonial tradition
and belief in self-determination. On the other hand, there
was its alliance with and deference to leading European colonial
powers, plus the need for their cooperation in the Cold
War. Further complicating these issues was the American
fear that “premature independence” for African colonies, to
use a phrase popular in the Eisenhower administration,
would result in weak and unstable regimes susceptible to
communist manipulation, but that failure to work toward
independence also created opportunities for radicals.
This book illustrates these dilemmas by examining
America’s relations with Portugal and its colonies in Angola,
Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau in the 1960s and 1970s.
Primary attention is devoted to the first two of those colonies;
Guinea-Bissau is probably mentioned only because a
prominent Portuguese general there, Antonio de Spinola,
played an important role in the 1974 events that were to
lead to Portugal finally granting independence. No mention
is made of Portugal’s other colonial holdings in Africa, Cape
Verde and Sao Tome and Principe. American policy toward
Portugal and its African colonies has not received a lot of
attention, despite the fact that this case constitutes not only“one of the most important episodes in Africa’s
decolonization experience,” but also, from the perspective
of American foreign policy, one of the “ most tragic” (pp.
xv, 225). One likely reason for the oversight is diminished
Portuguese influence in Europe and Africa by the 1960s.
Moreover, when world attention began to focus on whiteruled
territories in southern Africa, most was directed at
South Africa rather than the Portuguese colonies there. This
book corrects that oversight, providing an interesting and
thorough account of American policy toward a changing
reality in both Portugal and its African colonies during the
Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon years The author served as a
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa in the Clinton
administration and has also worked in and on Africa for the
World Bank and several consulting firms.
Schneidman begins his study in 1960 with the arrival
at the United Nations of fifteen new African states and arrival
in the White House of John F. Kennedy soon after. At
the outset of his term, Kennedy modified traditional American
attitudes of deference to European colonial powers and
skepticism about African liberation movements in favor of
ones aimed at promoting colonial self-determination. Specifically
with respect to Portugal’s colonies, the U.S. began
to apply more pressure on Portugal and more support for
those contesting its rule. It supported several Security Council
resolutions in the Spring of 1961 that called upon Portugal
to move toward self-determination. At the same time,
the United States supported dissident Portuguese military
officers plotting a coup in 1961 against the dictatorship of
Antonio Oliveira Salazar. Assistance was also extended to
the liberation movements in Portugal’s colonies, with Holden
Roberto in Angola and Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique
receiving covert aid. In sum, the United States had begun to
resolve the “embarrassing choice” identified previously
largely in favor of political principle.
The change did not last. By 1963 American policy had
begun to revert to the traditional approach, e.g., it no longer
supported UN resolutions calling for self-determination and
had distanced itself from Roberto and Mondlane. While
Schneidman provides a chronological narrative, his book is
also valuable for depicting reasons why the United States
often failed to act in support of the principle of self-determination.
Most important were security considerations, i.e.,
the other side of that “embarrassing choice.” Over time, the
Kennedy (and, later, Johnson and Nixon administrations)“concluded that the price of inducing Lisbon to grant selfdetermination
in Africa was not worth the costs of a breakdown
in the bilateral relationship” (p. 74). The most obvious
security issue in this case was Portugal’s control of the
Azores Islands, and its agreement to allow the United States
access to an air base there, a base once described by Dean
Acheson as “perhaps the single most important...we have
anywhere” (quoted at p. 5). The scheduled expiration of that
lease on 31 December 1962 required that the Kennedy administration
become less assertive about Portugal’s African
colonies. When the Portuguese refused to renew the agreement,
instead allowing it to continue on a “day-to-day” basis
(for the next nine years), their leverage was heightened.
At other times, the U.S. had to worry that Portugal might
withdraw from NATO as France’s Charles de Gaulle had.
More broadly, Johnson became preoccupied with Vietnam
and Nixon with superpower relations.
Compared to these issues, Africa and Portugal’s colonial
territories there were usually deemed as relatively unimportant.
Dean Rusk, Kennedy’s Secretary of State, noted
in his memoirs that “Africa was not high on my list of priorities”
(quoted at p. 57). Tapley Bennet, American ambassador
to Portugal in the mid-1960s, met regularly with
Johnson while on home leave but never remembered any
discussion of the situation in Portugal’s colonies. Nixon’s
administration concentrated on superpower detente to such
an extent that the “problems of Portugal and Portuguese
Africa attracted virtually no attention” (p. 107). Bureaucratic
factors reflected these priorities and also strengthened them.
Africanists within the Kennedy administration gradually lost
their influence to the Pentagon and Europeanists in the State
Department as American policy shifted between 1961–63.
Most had left government by 1967. Over time, according to
one State Department Africa expert, “individuals possessing
Africa expertise...had less influence than those interested
in selling planes, buying chrome or in renewing contracts”
(quoted at p. 118). Kissinger was famous for his disdain
of the Africa Bureau, regarding it as one of the “backwaters”
of the policy process, where officials “tended to
promulgate a rather inflexible version of Wilsonianism”
rather than viewing issues through his realist lense (p. 193).
Yet another factor was that the Portuguese were stubborn,
difficult to deal with, and actively resisted American
initiatives. Salazar was so stubborn that one American observer
argued he would not accept a reform program for the
colonies “without the benefit of a frontal lobotomy” (quoted
at p. 47). Even after the renewal of the base agreement in
1971, to cite another example, Portugal proved difficult, hesitating
to allow the U.S. to use it to resupply Israel during
1973 Arab-Israeli war. American officials did not know how
to overcome such intransigence. Kennedy had first tried to
exert pressure but later eased off. Both the Johnson and
Nixon administrations relied more on carrots than sticks,
Nixon going so far as to tell the Portuguese foreign minister
that “I’ll never do to you what Kennedy did” (quoted at p.
112).
Furthering undermining any impulse to assume a more
active role was the widespread American belief that the
political and military situation in Portugal’s colonies was at
a stalemate, meaning that any American involvement would
not alter the situation there while also angering the Portuguese.
Such thinking was reflected most clearly in the conclusions
of a 1969 National Security document that the“Whites are here to stay and the only way that constructive
change can come is through them. There is no hope for the
blacks to gain the political rights they seek through violence…”
(quoted at p. 118).
But the whites were not to stay, in Angola, Mozambique,
Rhodesia, or, ultimately, South Africa. Portugal’s 1974“revolution of red carnations” brought to power a government
committed to dismantling its colonial empire. The
United States remained largely indifferent to this process at
the outset, even as the Angolan parties negotiated and then
quickly violated an accord aimed at establishing independence.
It manifested more concern with the political
maneuverings in Lisbon and the prospect that the Portuguese
Communist Party might come to power. Only the
March 1975 Soviet decision to provide military assistance
to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
(MPLA) and the insertion of superpower politics into southern
Africa prompted a more active American policy. Thus,
its “one-time” payment of $300,000 to Roberto’s Front for
the National Liberation of Angola (FNLA) in early 1975
was followed by two payments, of $8 million and $6 million,
in July and another $10 million was agreed to in August.
Also in August, funds were provided to Jonas Savimbi’s
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
(UNITA) for the first time. By then, many outsiders were
jumping into Angola, including South Africa and, most importantly,
Cuba. The dispatch of Cuban combat troops and
nearly $500 million in Soviet military assistance enabled
the MPLA to gain control of Luanda, the Angolan capital
and to be the government nominally in power at the time of
Angola’s independence in November 1975. The American
decision to provide covert funds to several Angolan parties
was a comprehensive failure: it had not dissuaded the Soviets
from providing even greater assistance to their Angolan
client, it had not prevented the MPLA from winning sufficient
power to gain recognition from many African states
after November 1975, and it had further encouraged the
Congress to cut back on executive power. Schneidman argues,
as did many at the time, that a better approach would
have been to avoid becoming involved in Angola, because
of congressional hostility, Roberto’s weaknesses, and the
absence of any other allies in Angola.
Schneidman relates these details well and his book adds
to our understanding of American policy toward European
colonial powers and their colonies as well as the dilemma
between political principle and American security interests.
His chapters on American policy toward Portuguese Africa
are informative. Less relevant is the extensive discussion of
the Portuguese revolution. While clearly important for Portugal
and Portuguese Africa, politics in Lisbon are given
too much attention. All major actors there were committed
to granting independence, they disagreed only about the timing,
so there is little need to detail the complicated political
changes going on in the Portuguese capital. The author might
also have devoted more time to defending his decision to
focus on Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. The
selection of the first two is obvious, as these were the two
largest and most important of Portugal’s African colonies.
But why Guinea-Bissau? If Guinea-Bissau is included in
the analysis, why not Cape Verde? One final criticism should
be directed at the editor. There are several spelling errors,
e.g., the Angolan capital is spelled “Launda” on page 50,
and the table of contents listing for chapter three includes
an “endnotes” section, even though three chapters remain
in the text and the endnotes only appear at the end.
Volume XVI |
