Southern Africa: Demise of the Centrist Consensus

SOUTHERN AFRICA:___ DEMISE OF THE CENTRIST CONSENSUS David F Gordon R, .EGIONAL CONFLICTS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA took on heightened importance in the United States early in 1986 as the administration and Congress moved to involve the United States more directly in the longsimmering Angolan civil war. The immediate object of Washington's attention wasJonas Savimbi and his guerrilla movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). As part of the Reagan Doctrine of support for anticommunist insurgencies in the Third World, the United States agreed to provide UNITA with military equipment for use in its conflict with the Soviet- and Cuban-backed Angolan government . For many in Washington, especially in the conservative political camp, Angola is now seen as a place where the United States should stand up to the Soviet Union, and Savimbi is seen as the means. The move to provide direct support for UNITA marks an important turning point for American policy in the region. Both Democrats and Republicans, for partisan reasons, have understated the degree to which granting U.S. support and assistance to UNITA marks a break from the approach followed by all administrations since 1976. Aid to UNITA was opposed by the vast majority of American experts on southern Africa, and conservatives in the Congress are correct in their fear that State Department officials responsible for Africa are less than enthusiastic about the policy shift. Aid to UNITA is the most dramatic expression of the breakdown of the "centrist consensus" that has dominated southern Africa Professor David F. Gordon teaches international relations at Michigan State University. He is also on the staff of the Center for Research on Economic Development at the University of Michigan. His book Decolonization and the State in Kenya was recently published by Westview Press. 117 118 SAIS REVIEW policy for the past decade under both Democratic and Republican administrations. 1 American policy in southern Africa has oscillated between periods of basic consensus and periods of sharp dissension. Before 1974 there was basic consensus on the peripheral nature of southern Africa to overall U.S. policy, which led to a very limited involvement in the region by administrations from both parties. The dramatic events of the mid-1970s — the Portuguese coup, the Angolan civil war, the first major Soviet initiatives in the region—demanded a new American policy. Sharp conflict ensued over what that response should be, culminating in Congressional action forbidding the Ford administration from remaining militarily involved in the region. In the aftermath of the rise to power in Angola of the Sovietbacked Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) regime, a major rethinking occurred in Washington and a new consensus was forged, focusing on support for efforts at conflict resolution in the region. The current debate pits those who, despite the limited success of the conflict-resolution approach, wish to maintain this orientation, against those who would promote conflict exacerbation as a weapon for gaining American goals. Those who favor the latter approach generally see southern Africa as a focal point of the broader East-West conflict. While lively debate over national policy in southern Africa is healthy, the existence of dissension, in and of itself, is likely to be an obstacle in the path of effective American actions. Policymakers from all sides of the debate have stressed the need for a basic consensus if the United States is to play an effective role in that volatile region. Two challenges face American policy in southern Africa: first, to generate a domestic political consensus that melds the anticommunist goals of conservatives with liberals' support for decolonization and change; and second, to design policies that reflect both the global strategic concerns of the United States and yet remain attuned to the complex political realities of the region. In the mid-1970s failure to meet these challenges led to a major debacle for the United States. Critics of assistance for UNITA fear that, in the guise of anticommunist resolve, the United States is again flirting with disaster. With these observations in mind, let us examine the evolution of regional conflicts in southern Africa during the past decade and explore the role of the great powers...