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  • Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War by Nancy Mitchell
  • Andy DeRoche
Nancy Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. 883 pp. $45.00.

Nancy Mitchell's Jimmy Carter in Africa makes so many important contributions to the field of U.S. foreign relations history that it is impossible to discuss them all in a single review. Based on mind-boggling research and written in prose equal to a first-rate novel, history books of this quality and significance appear only once every five years or so. Among the major topics addressed in new and revealing ways are the African diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, the relation between the 1976 presidential election and international affairs, the role of Andrew Young in the Carter administration, U.S. policy toward Rhodesia, U.S. policy toward the Horn of Africa, and the presidency of Jimmy Carter overall. Given the focus of the audience reading this journal, I will highlight just a few of the most important Cold War aspects of Mitchell's book.

Probably the greatest strength of this tome is the use of good old-fashioned comparative analysis, in particular Mitchell's comparison of the approaches taken to [End Page 258] southern Africa by Henry Kissinger on one hand and the Carter administration on the other. Her thorough discussion of the Ford administration's African adventures in 1975–1976 underscores that Kissinger was motivated by Cold War concerns in his diplomatic interventions regarding first Angola and then Rhodesia. Kissinger wanted to deny the Soviet Union any gains on the global chessboard, even if the Soviet-backed intervention in Angola was actually a Cuban response to a South African invasion.

Mitchell also persuasively argues that Jimmy Carter paid considerable attention to southern Africa at least partly out of concerns over Soviet designs on that valuable region. The real brilliance of her analysis, however, lies in her emphasis on what made Carter's approach so different from Kissinger's. Whereas Kissinger had handled U.S. diplomacy almost entirely single-handedly and had kept his cards close to his chest (to the extent that he deceived key African allies such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia), Carter's approach embraced collaboration, cooperation, and transparency. For Carter and his team (and it really was a team effort), southern Africa deserved attention not only as a Cold War arena, but also because of the significance of the global struggle for racial equality and for the importance of southern Africa for its own sake and on its own terms. Mitchell wisely emphasizes the stark difference between Nigeria refusing Kissinger landing rights several times in 1976 and then welcoming Carter's United Nations ambassador Andrew Young in 1977 and Carter himself in 1978. According to Mitchell, the Carter administration was able to facilitate the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe because Carter's team listened to British diplomats as well as a wide range of African officials, from Kaunda in Zambia and Nyerere in Tanzania to the more radical Samora Machel in Mozambique and even the Zimbabwean guerrilla leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. The administration's approach was truly radical, and thus successful.

Of the two major case studies explored in Jimmy Carter in Africa, Rhodesia and the Horn of Africa, the latter has often been seen by scholars as a Cold War parable. Mitchell presents groundbreaking insights and analysis on the Horn drama, which featured an attack against Ethiopia by Somalia in 1977–1978 and an abrupt switch of Soviet and U.S. allies. Ethiopia had long been a close ally of Washington, but after the military officer Mengistu Haile Mariam brutally seized power in early 1977, Carter withdrew U.S. support from Addis Ababa and offered it to Somalia instead.

Mitchell's investigation of how the Carter administration attempted to deal with the crisis in the Horn of Africa is fascinating. She documents the key roles played by countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia (a particularly important contribution), as well as the somewhat unsavory influences of allies such as West Germany and France. These aspects make it a story truly...

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