Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy’s Courting of African Nationalist Leaders by Philip E. Muehlenbeck (review)

Betting on the Africans is a well-researched examination of U.S. diplomacy toward Africa during John F. Kennedy’s administration. Philip Muehlenbeck’s work offers a compelling challenge to the conventional wisdom of continuity in U.S. Cold War foreign policy toward Africa. The book’s meticulous analysis of the courtship of African leaders by President Kennedy provides valuable insights into personal diplomacy and U.S.-African relations during one of the more volatile periods of the Cold War. Although Muehlenbeck makes a persuasive case regarding the significance of Kennedy’s leadership, the argument has its limitations.

Muehlenbeck sets out to explore Kennedy’s use of personal diplomacy with African nationalist leaders. The book offers detailed accounts of Kennedy’s correspondence and face-to-face meetings with various African leaders, from Julius Nyerere and Gamal Abdel Nasser to Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Ben Bella. Kennedy’s most public and “overt” courting of African leaders was directed at moderate-left African nationalists rather than their more conservative peers. Kennedy did not avoid statesmen such as Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Cote d’Ivoire and William Tubman of Liberia; but he placed greater emphasis on getting to know and seeking to influence the rising generation of elites who had captured the imagination of much of Africa and the world. The book also chronicles the effort Kennedy put into establishing a diplomatic team for Africa, consisting of people who shared his perspectives and sympathies, who could credibly communicate with African governments, and who would provide some counterbalance to the Europe-centered approach of much of the foreign policy bureaucracy.

This volume is reminiscent of the best of traditional, “great man” histories and, in this regard, presents much of note. The top-down, multiarchival research base provides a detailed portrait of the administration’s interactions with African dignitaries. Aside from Kennedy himself, people such as Mennen “Soapy” Williams, Barbara Ward, and Chester Bowles feature prominently. The tensions between Africanists and Europeanists in the State Department, as well as the tensions between Kennedy and French leader Charles De Gaulle, crystallize on the page in Muehlenbeck’s skillful hands. The book also offers both sides of interesting correspondence between Kennedy and various leaders. Muehlenbeck moves a seemingly peripheral issue—the Cold War battle for dominance of African civil aviation—toward center stage, adding to the holistic nature of this well-written text. Yet, the volume’s reach exceeds its grasp.

Muehlenbeck’s starting point is a comparison between Kennedy and his predecessor in the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clearly, Kennedy spent a great deal more energy on African diplomacy than Eisenhower did, and the book’s withering assessment of Eisenhower’s policy toward Africa is warranted. However, the book is much less persuasive in other crucial areas. For instance, the author’s assertion that Kennedy’s commitment to African decolonization placed the Cold War in the background does not withstand scrutiny. Muehlenbeck’s documentation indicates that the exigency of the Cold War is largely what drove Kennedy to establish personal contact with nascent African leaders—it was part of an effort to win the Cold War. Although Kennedy’s tolerance for pan-Africanism and neutralism may have been greater than Eisenhower’s, Kennedy was not interested in giving the Africans a completely free hand to dictate the breadth of their self-determination. Indeed, when it came to making a choice between African independence and Cold War/White nationalist needs, Kennedy sided against the Africans.

Muehlenbeck also asserts that Kennedy was an avid supporter of the civil-rights movement, adding to his allure with African leaders. Unfortunately, this argument is fallacious. Kennedy was in fact supremely cautious on domestic human rights issues. His efforts to derail the 1963 March on Washington find no mention in this volume. John Lewis, at the time a leading civil-rights activist and...