African Marxist Regimes and U.S. Policy: Ideology and Interest

AFRICAN MARXIST REGIMES AND U.S. POLICY: IDEOLOGY AND INTEREST Marina Ottaway R»ADICAL STATES IN AFRICA have always posed a special challenge for the United States. Socialist and anti-Western in their rhetoric (but tied economically to the West through the former colonial powers), looking toward Moscow for aid (but usually not receiving it on a massive scale), these regimes are a matter for U.S. concern. Yet for the most part they have not been given sustained attention. In general, Africa has not appeared vital enough to either the United States or the Soviet Union. In the last ten years, anxiety about the radical African states has heightened considerably with the rise of a number of regimes calling themselves Marxist-Leninist and apparently determined to organize economy and society by the tenets of that ideology. Even more worrisome to the United States have been the close relations that the most important of these countries — Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique — have established with the Soviet Union. They have signed treaties of friendship and cooperation, received Soviet military and economic aid, and welcomed Cuban and Soviet civilian and military advisers. Ethiopia and Angola, furthermore, have relied on Cuban troops to bolster their regimes against internal opposition and external enemies. An additional worry for the U.S. government is the strategic importance of the areas in which the three countries are located. Despite the disquiet in Washington over the adoption of MarxismLeninism and Soviet involvement in Africa, the U.S. response to these countries has for the most part been slow in coming, cautious, and, in the final analysis, inconsistent. Ethiopia has received much verbal criticism, Marina Ottaway is a professorial lecturer at SAIS and at George Mason University . She has published many studies of African radical regimes, including Afrocommunism, coauthored with David Ottaway. 137 138 SAIS REVIEW but also much humanitarian aid, and no effort has been made to destabilize its government. Mozambique has been hailed at times as a prodigal son almost ready to return to the fold, but at the same time the United States has closed its eyes to the policy of destabilization pursued by the government of South Africa there. The Angolan government has been refused diplomatic recognition, but the country— an oil producer— has received substantial American investments and loans. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration recently gave Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the major opposition movement National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a hero's welcome in Washington and was preparing to provide him with some $15 million in covert aid. Not only do U.S. policies toward the three countries differ, but so does the perception of the character of the three regimes, despite their common claim to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and their common orientation toward the Soviet Union. Mozambique tends to be regarded as a "pragmatic" Marxist country, more nationalist than socialist, and thus amenable to compromise. Ethiopia is regarded as dogmatic and subservient to the Soviet Union, ready to sacrifice the interests of its people to some abstract principle imposed from the outside. The perception of Angola, finally, has fluctuated a great deal. Corporations doing business in the country have argued that the government is flexible and businesslike. The Reagan administration has been able to maintain a dialogue with the Angolan regime for several years, but it has now apparently concluded that the Soviet-supported Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) is a threat to the security of the area and to U.S. interests. These perceptions are only partially accurate. While the three countries are not identical, the similarities in their policies are striking—more so, probably, than their differences. Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique certainly do not embody sharply different varieties of socialism. But even if the dominant perception of the three regimes were correct, it would not explain present U.S. policies. A closer examination of the political situation in each of the countries will demonstrate that the policies pursued by the Reagan administration toward the Afrocommunist regimes are based neither on its perception of their nature nor on the real differences among them. Rather, they are explained by the fact that the United States does not...