John Kent

United States reactions to empire, colonialism, and cold war in Black Africa, 1949–57

United States interest in and involvement with Black Africa under colonial rule began in the immediate years following the Second World War when Africa was seen primarily as an adjunct to European recovery with economic requirements predominating. When the continent assumed political importance for American Cold War policy, Washington began to grapple with the dilemma of winning African support and preserving the alliance with European colonial powers. The African dimension was seen as having future significance in the Cold War while the Atlantic alliance served present Cold and hot war planning needs. After a brief attempt to portray colonialism in a positive Cold War light and develop a more independent policy, Washington reverted to working with the colonial powers towards implementing the common goals of self-government. It was defined in the latter part of the first Eisenhower administration as providing the best political compromise in the Cold War while offering the prospect of mutually profitable relations with dependent African countries.

The Neo-colonialism of Decolonisation: Katangan Secession and the Bringing of the Cold War to the Congo

ABSTRACT The link between the Cold War and decolonisation is tackled by using the uniqueness of the complex Congo crisis and its neo-colonial elements, with a focus on agents and specific policies rather than theories and general themes. The ‘real’ Cold War is essentially defined as that followed by Kennedy, with its priority in the early 1960s, among the Cold War’s many different constituent elements, taken to be the winning of newly independent African nations to the socio-economic values and hoped-for developmental benefits of Western capitalism. The importance of using soft power to defeat the ideology of communism, as opposed to containing the allegedly expansionist Soviet aims in Africa, is highlighted. Clear distinctions are made between the Kennedy administration and those of Eisenhower and Johnson. Interpretations of decolonisation using the Congo’s particular neo-colonial circumstances have been rare, and interpretations of decolonisation in the Congo also require some qualification. In particular the role of the colonial state and its ‘partnership’ with private European enterprises, established under King Leopold, had economic consequences for the Belgian decolonisation process. The importance of the role of financial capital, as opposed to business interests simply represented through trade and industry, is emphasised. The role of the UN and its secretary general is also highlighted but not by using inaccurate perceptions of Hammarskjöld’s neutral Cold War stance. The different positions taken by the Belgians, the British and the Americans, embodying conflict and cooperation in different forms, are analysed at different times with the important consequences of the Belgian refusal to comply with UN Security Council Resolutions highlighted. The need to limit the damage from that and from the neo-colonialism of secession is analysed. Exaggerating the causal consequences of Soviet actions and accusing Lumumba, despite evidence to the contrary, of being a communist or vehicle for Soviet influence was what brought the Cold War to the Congo. The British refusal to do more than decline to support openly the neo-colonialism in Katanga, particularly by supporting action likely to end secession, threatened to damage relations with the US. Such action, which could have led to more military action, would have contributed to the success of US policy in the ‘real’ Cold War but at the expense of those British investors who were the main financial backers of the Conservative party.

Rakove, R. B. (2013). Kennedy, Johnson and the Nonaligned World

This is an excellent and welcome book featuring detailed archival work on U.S. policy towards key non-aligned states in Asia and Africa and the crises that beset them under Kennedy and Johnson. By focusing on the nonaligned world using British and European archives as well as using research in a comprehensive array of U.S. sources, a comprehensive picture of the differing degrees of importance the Kennedy and Johnson administrations attached to the less developed world is analysed. Equally importantly, light is shed on the broader background of the Cold War-decolonisation relationship in a particularly significant era for the shifting nature of the global Cold War in the early and late 1960s. By highlighting the role of the less developed world and its temporary importance for U.S. approaches to non-alignment and decolonisation, some important conclusions can be drawn about these very significant cold war areas in the 1960s. Initially their brief importance for the U.S., the precise significance of Kennedy’s ardent anti-communism and how he situated non-alignment in the fundamental struggle against communism are revealed. Professor Rakove defines the Kennedy administration’s approach to the emerging Afro–Asian movements of non-alignment, when many African states had just emerged from French colonialism and were about to do so in British Africa, as “engagement.” Advocates of engagement are divided into two groups—the pragmatic represented by Komer and McGeorge Bundy and the liberals represented by Bowles and Stevenson. Liberals were preoccupied by New Deal values that would enable capitalist economies to bring benefits to most inhabitants of the less developed world. Such factors were crucial to perceptions of what success in the Cold War would depend on: not the development of military power but the winning of hearts and minds in the emerging nations. As such Kennedy was far more accepting of the cold war value of the non-aligned leaders rejecting communism than Eisenhower, Johnson or Nixon. Those presidents preferred to attract and reward those allies who could be brought into line behind the United States and refrain from publically criticising its policies. A third group, referred to by Professor Rakove as sceptics in the Kennedy administration, did not fully agree with