POLITICAL
AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE COLD WAR IN AFRICA
Legvold (1979) posit the United States and West Europe, together, feared at the possibility that Africa would take a contrary path, which, in their view, would represent what they viewed as “the deadly disease” of “Soviet expansionism”. Inevitably, the dominant Western capitalist powers would intervene decisively in Africa to realize their strategic objective to “keep Africa within their sphere of influence” and therefore, as much as possible, deny the Soviet Union any possibility to place Africa “within its own sphere of influence”.
With the end of the cold war in 1989/1990 the strategic importance which the Cold War gave to Africa has for the most part, declined .For a pessimistic observer, the great boom was over; but for optimists it was a mixed blessing for African political elites. Yet after being humiliated, exploited and pressed by European powers and turned into pawns, knights and rooks on a cold war chessboard by the superpowers, Africa faced a devastating new problem: indifference by the community of nations to the soul-searching, far- reaching, crude and complex problems to which the west was source (Adekey,2004). Was the first world going to abandon Africa to fend on her own?
Rouke (2006) maintain the consequences of World War II manifested in the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany and the attempted to spread Soviet philosophy of communism which spurred its rejection through a global containment as was elevated into a doctrine by President Truman. Consequently, communism collapsed worldwide. By the Cold War, the United States motivated and challenged the Soviet Union from World War II exhaustion to super-power status. In spite of the Soviet large armies, the 51 Soviet Union was spurred into the atomic bomb, nuclear technology and space achievement. Similarly, the United States policies and strategies against communism in China had much the same effect there. The Berlin Wall was demolished and the two German nations were unified.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for example, warned of the adverse "geopolitical momentum" now running against USA from Angola to former Zaire, an area that Zbigniew Brzezinski calls the "arc of instability" and others describe variously as the "crumbling triangle" or the "crescent of crisis." Kissinger paints a picture of looming tragedy if the United States didn't somehow reorient and destroy the then current pattern of events. Unless this country acts decisively to constrain Soviet expansionism and prove to the Soviet leaders "that a relaxation of tensions is not compatible with a systematic attempt to overturn the geopolitical equilibrium," Kissinger worries, then "sooner or later a showdown between the two blocks is likely to occur with tremendous dangers for everybody” (jane, 1992)
Nye (2003) argue because the United States did not cut short Soviet (and Cuban) intervention in Angola and has not yet shown the wit or the will to discourage the Soviet Union from exploiting trouble elsewhere, according to him, it has risked the confidence of friends and allies. Echoing him, the London Economist (1972) write that the Vietnamese war lose to nationalist and socialist Vietcong forces mesmerized American reluctance to counter "the Soviet-Cuban success in Angola . . . led to the Soviet-Cuban success in Ethiopian 'dergue' revolution since 1974…. Which affected the political complexion of the whole triangle?" Within the "triangle" extending from Kabul to Ankara to Addis Ababa, the Economist warns that "former neutrals" may become "pro-Russian" and "some of the former pro-westerners nervously neutral." The result, it maintains, would be an alteration in the global balance of power more important than any of the Soviet Union's recent gains in Africa and even more important than "the growing strength of the Soviet military establishment in Central Europe."
Nye (2003) contends even the term Third World is synonymous with the Cold War describing the economically less developed states of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. The nonalignment movement began in 1955 during the Cold War era among Asian and African countries in Bandung, Indonesia to devise a strategy to combat colonialism because they sought to avoid entrapment in the Cold War. They tried through the nonalignment to maximize their own interests while minimizing their costs. The strategy energized both the United States and Soviet Union to renew their efforts to woo the uncommitted neutrals to their own network of allies. The Movement as a strategy died with the Cold War as its foundation of moral neutrality was undermined by the collapse of USSR and the two superpowers embracing each other like the end of a football match. According to Don Oberdorfer (1991) the end of the East –West conflict set forth unfamiliar circumstances when he stated that “a clear and present danger to delineate the purpose of power, and the basic shift invalidated the framework for much of independent Africa since World War
In Africa local proxy civil wars were intensified by superpower rivalry, leaving millions dead. The developing countries in the late 1980s lost to the arms race in a single year the equivalent of 187 million human years of income (Sivard 1991). Some of the economic and social tensions that underpinned Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Zaire, Ethiopia, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Liberia (Nye, 2003). In areas where the two superpowers had been waging proxy wars, and subsidizing local conflicts, many conflicts either slowed down or ended with the Cold War; and the occurrence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, or refugee and displaced persons crises declined sharply.
Nye (2003) maintains in some countries the breakdown of state control was accompanied by state failure, as was the case in Liberia. Many Africans, especially those tired of military dictatorships and faltering economies, and politicians out of power and in exile, applauded these prescriptions to dictatorships. Nevertheless, they wisely or cynically refrain from defining the criteria for their own political culture. The result is that both the US and many African leaders are created the basis for "disemia". This is a condition among local power seekers who, to please hegemony, either disguised those aspects of social life that conflict within society hoping tutelage powers protection, or create systems out of touch with local realities, or simply manipulate local conditions to cling on power (Skinner, 2012).
In addition, African leaders were now willing to contribute troops to help bring about peace, as demonstrated in Somalia. The shift in OAU attitudes first became evident in 1990's, when West African states concluded that if they didn't do something about the strife in Liberia to insure the stability of their region, no one else would; a Nigerian-led peace force intervened (Nye, 2003). In the past, the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other African countries, enshrined in the charter of the Organization of African Unity, gave leaders cover for inaction even in the face of blatant human abuses by strongmen like Haile-Mariam of Etthiopia. "We allowed the violations of human rights," Mr. Salim said. "We allowed the dehumanization of our people and used the charter as a scapegoat (Oberderfor, 1992).
Three main military movements had been fighting for Angolan independence since the 1960s: The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was a Nationalist Marxist organization centered in the capital, Luanda, and led by Agostinho Neto and Jose Eduardo dos Santos; The Bakongo based National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), led by Holden Roberto, was based in the north of the country and had strong ties to the U.S. ally, Mobutu Sese Seko, in neighboring Zaire; The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), an offshoot of the FNLA, was led by Jonas Savimbi and supported by the country's largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu. Following the Portuguese coup, these three revolutionaries met with representatives of the new Portuguese Government in January 1975 and signed the Alvor Agreement that granted Angolan independence and provided for a three-way power sharing government. However, trust quickly broke down among the three groups, and the country degenerated into fragile civil war of each against all as each faction struggled for spoils of power (Nye, 2003).
Savimbi continued to wage 'war in the bush' against the Luanda regime until his demise in the jungle in 2002 saw his lieutenants accept ceasefire and transformed UNITA into a political party. Health conditions in the country are said to have deteriorated sharply as a result of the war despite the rich diamond deposit and oil reserve in the northern parts of the country. Indeed the blood diamonds were exploited by warlords and shared with quislings, retinues, buffoons, charlatans and all manner of hangers on and reaction in the west and Africa as black children and women bore the brunt of the war and hundreds of thousand butchered by the cold war proxy machine.
It is estimated that 25,000 Liberians - about 1 percent of the population - were killed. Between 1980 and 1990, Liberia enjoined other military regimes. Led by the Armed Forces of Liberia supported by the U.S. Peoples Redemption Council of Liberia" in its position statement in 1980 proclaimed to wipe out corruption in the civil service. Prior to the military intervention, the Tolbert administration was quietly but largely viewed as corrupt within the country. The military rulers under Sgt. Doe with the determination to move the country to a better society and to install social justice swung into action but appeared quite inept to do so and generally inefficient, nepotistic, narrow and arrogant. This military regime may have set the clock back on Liberia more than imagination can tolerate. In December of 1990, approximately 10 ten years after taking over power, the South Beach massacre was reiterated in a larger form and Doe himself was tortured and brutally butchered in the process by prince Johnson’s army (Nye, 2003).
Dark days descended on Liberia when Charles Taylor's rebel group and a run-away group led by Prince Johnson caught the world attention as each tried to slice off the nation of Liberia. Monrovia was then evacuated and thousands of people became refugees in neighboring countries. The Liberian history had undergone a radical transformation as war machines reigned supreme as pockets of rag tag militia emerged to fill the power vacuum created by the breakdown of civil order. The mere callousness of the groups involved in the struggle - the defunct Liberian army, and those of the rebel groups led by Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson respectively, remains to be a puzzle. But soon the transition government led by professor Amos c. sawyer assassinated by the very forces he was trying to fight. In fact, Liberia was turned into a warlord state with campaign slogans of Charles Taylor saying “i killed your pa, I killed your ma and if you don't vote for me I will kill you too”.
Yet in Mozambique The country is on the mend from a 16-year civil war and famine. One Marxist liberation movement supported by USSR was FRELIMO, which signed a peace agreement in 1974, leading to independence in 1975. The peace lasted just two years. Mozambique imposed sanctions on Rhodesia. Rhodesia responded by creating an anti-FRELIMO guerrilla force, RENAMO.
Ronald Reagan was elected US President in November 1980 on a vociferously anti-Communist and US-focused policy platform. He intensified the Cold War through proxy wars in Angola, Nicaragua and Mozambique, where the US backed and helped to create, openly or covertly, armed opposition forces. In particular, he saw white South Africa as a bastion against Communism in neighboring states. South Africa adopted a policy of economic and military destabilization of its neighboring countries, involving sanctions, direct attacks and support for proxy forces such as RENAMO, which was given training and shipped into Mozambique with extensive air and sea support. From a mid-1980s population of 13–15 million, one million people died (7 per cent of the population) and five million were displaced or made refugees in neighboring countries (one-third of the population). Damage was estimated at US$20 billion.[17] UNICEF estimated that Mozambique’s gross domestic product was only half of what it would have been without the war. The number of first level health posts had been increased from 326 at independence to 1195 in 1985, but 500 of these were closed or destroyed by RENAMO militias; 60 per cent of all primary schools were destroyed or closed; more than 3,000 rural shops were destroyed or closed, and most never reopened.
For the Horn of Africa, Somalia, The United States, which mounted an international military effort to insure relief deliveries, gradually withdrew most of its forces as the United Nations was reluctant of the operation. Disarmament efforts have met with mixed success and little has been done to rebuild a stable political order. This paved room for growth of warlord-ism in the horn of Africa. Siyyad barres regime was bad and had all the potentials of pushing society on the verge of disaster, but the magnitude of destruction could not possibly be envisaged. Consistent threats to state power which weakened the Mogadishu government were waged by clan warlords in a futile attempt to capture political power in a resource deficient state (Nye, 2003).
Zaire's autocratic President, Mobutu Sese Seko, rewarded handsomely by the United States as their caricature during the cold war for his staunch anti-communism, easily resisted pressure to democratize. His country, facing demagogue pressures and growing lawlessness by unpaid soldiers plunged into anarchy and state collapse in destructive civil wars. In a conflict for power in Democratic Republic of Congo, each side continued to harm the other without outright victory in1990-1997. Zaire Diplomats warned of economic and political collapse as President Mobutu Sese Seko vehemently reject Western demands that he share power with his Prime Minister, Etienne Tshisekedi, who is supposed to be steering the country to democracy. Soldiers loyal to Mr. Mobutu who went unpaid appear increasingly bent on lawlessness, chaos and anarchy with their world’s richest president at the time on the wheel (Nye, 2003).
Salim A. Salim, Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity, said during a speech in Washington, I am very happy the Cold War is over. That I am saying is that there is diminishing interest in the issues of real human concerns. Perhaps the most significant development is the willingness of Africans to admit their own past mistakes - to stop placing the blame for the continent's underdevelopment entirely on the West and the legacy of colonialism, and instead condemn gross abuses by incompetent or venal leaders (Nye, 2003). In the past, the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other of other African countries, enshrined in the charter of the OAU, gave the African community stooge for inaction even in the face of blatant abuses by rulers like Idi Amin of Uganda.
Economic impact of the cold war in Africa
Africa had to accept that the time for all special and favorable consideration by the former colonial and imperialist powers, resulting in her preferential treatment, had come to end, and therefore that all argument about any continuing impact of the legacy of imperialism and colonialism would be treated as self-serving argument to justify our own failures as Africans; and, accordingly, the West had no particular and special responsibility to assist Africa to address what the then OAU Secretary-General referred to as issues of real human concern. These comments would have been read by many decision-makers in what was by then the sole world super-power, the United States, making for what was called a unipolar, post-Cold War world order.
Jane (1992) made the assertions that: the end of the Cold War had left Africa adrift in terms of the global Geo-strategic agenda and considerations of the sole world super-power and presumably its Western allies liberated from the obligation to secure the allegiance of independent Africa in the context of its global anti-Soviet struggle, the US had found that Africa was otherwise not of any importance in terms of its global strategic interests; as a consequence of this, the international community would leave Africa to her fate, except in the context of its a humanitarian crises thus reducing it to subsisting in the global geopolitics as a recipient of charity; Africa understood this reality, and pleaded that this “indifference and neglect” meant that Africa, left, could not, on her own, attend to what were her most basic human challenges; for Africa to regain her place as a worthy international partner of the dominant world capitalist system.
Africa had to establish a track record as a continent of democracy and the related free capitalist market economies, consistent with the paradigm that has been prescribed by the so-called Washington consensus. Africa had the responsibility to solve, on her own, the problems she had inherited as a legacy of the policies generated during the Cold War; among others, in this context, she had the responsibility to pull herself by her bootstraps to make herself a relevant economic player in the context of the global economy (Gladys, 1997).
Meanwhile, the US State Department, focusing on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, cut 70 positions from its Bureau of African Affairs and closed down consulates or embassies in Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria and the Comoro Islands (Gladys, 1997). The U.S. Agency for International Development slashed staff and programs serving Africa, and only the 11th-hour intervention of the Congressional Black Caucus kept the House Foreign Affairs Committee from merging its Africa subcommittee with the panel handling Latin America. Though recent Administrations have spoken of the continent's importance, US Presidents rarely set foot in sub-Saharan Africa since Jimmy Carter in 1978.
Africa seemed to suffer from 'Diminishing Interest'. "I'm not nostalgic about the cold war," Salim A. Salim, Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity, said during a speech “...What I am saying is that there is diminishing interest in the issues of real human concern." The issues are manifold. Though aid has increased dramatically since the mid-1980's, African countries remain saddled with debt and there is virtually no new commercial lending. While direct private investment has tripled in Latin America and increased fivefold in East Asia since 1985, it has declined in Africa. And from the Horn of Africa to the bulge to central and southern Africa, poverty, wars, chaos and ethnic conflict seem all too much the order of the day (Nye, 2003).
But to view Africa as nothing but a bleak dark and backward continent is to miss the blossoms among the weeds. Gladys (1997) posits:
Under stings by the World Bank, 26 countries have restructured their economies and are expanding their trade. South Africa's moved toward multiracial democracy turned it from a pariah state into a democratic success example for the poly-ethnic nations of black Africa, and become a trading partner and source of capital for the rest of southern Africa. This was after realization that bad governance, bad politics and political corruption were crucial in accounting for contemporary under-development in Africa (Gladys, 1997).
Of course we can also cite other very negative developments which took place in Africa during the period of the Cold War. Where these developments must be attributed to administrations which the Soviet Union supported as progressive representatives of what was characterized as the non-capitalist path of development and what the U.S supported as a counter balance. For instance, Sekou Toure administration in Guinea Conakry and the Ethiopian 'dergue' led by Mengistu Haile-Mariam were described as revolutionary regimes attempting to discard antiquated traditional regime with a new social order. However, the balance of evidence makes the statement that much of the negative developments on African Continent during the period of the Cold War also derived from the determined efforts of the West to defeat what they saw and described as soviet expansionism. These are the countries which Renou (20060) said the African academy is reluctant or afraid boldly and accurately to characterize as imperialist and megalomaniac.
After spending what some African political scientists and historians might conclude is unjustified extended attention to the past of the Cold War years. However as much as, One would have preferred to overlook some of the all-too-obvious human errors and forge ahead, but it would be unfair to Africans not to raise questions about certain deliberate actions or policies of the past that continue to have grave consequences on the present. Indeed, it is not possible for us properly to understand our present reality without a proper assessment of what might seem, in terms of chronology, to be a dreaded past that we must discount. The hard truth is that absolutely each of our days is weighed down by the heavy burden of the past. It is certain that as we consider post-Cold War Africa, we will have to reflect on the continuing impulses which derive from the period of cold War Africa.
Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs Quarterly, Marguerite Michaels (1992), a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that the disintegration of the Soviet Union set America free to pursue its own interests in Africa - and it found that it did not have any. It is a harsh assessment. But with the end of the Cold War, Africa's strategic importance to the West has declined. With shrinking per capita income hampering the market for western imports, political instability and a poorly educated workforce made society to be in shambles making investment unattractive.
Among other things, the Cold War resulted in such negative developments is the political corruption of the African independence project through the establishment of the system of neo-colonialism and puppet strongman regimes, the overthrow of governments which resisted this, support for the white minority rule in south Africa and Zimbabwe, then seen as dependable anti-communist and anti-Soviet allies especially by the Reagan administration. Also the assassination of such leaders as Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara and Eduardo Mondlane, sponsorship of such instrumentalists as MPLA & UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique, support for predatory and client regimes such as those of Mobutu in the then Zaire, and of Houphouët Boigny in Cote D’ Ivoire, and even by extension such major catastrophes- the Rwanda genocide .
Kegley, C. and Wittkopf , E. (2001) World Politics: Trend and
Soon
after the World War II certain perverse developments swept through the world
politics from the east Europe to Africa:- the decline of colonialism and
emergence of new sovereign states; pressure of public opinions of Americans on
Vietnam; change in the personnel of international politics from professional
diplomats and military men to amateurs, professional revolutionaries,
businessmen; change in goals; technological development - atomic and nuclear
weapons; defenseless against the new weapons; military superiority;
multi-polarity and Bipolarity (Rouke, 2006). All of these factors in their
peculiar nature systematically and substantially changed the character of
international politics on the African continent.
Legvold (1979) posit the United States and West Europe, together, feared at the possibility that Africa would take a contrary path, which, in their view, would represent what they viewed as “the deadly disease” of “Soviet expansionism”. Inevitably, the dominant Western capitalist powers would intervene decisively in Africa to realize their strategic objective to “keep Africa within their sphere of influence” and therefore, as much as possible, deny the Soviet Union any possibility to place Africa “within its own sphere of influence”.
With the end of the cold war in 1989/1990 the strategic importance which the Cold War gave to Africa has for the most part, declined .For a pessimistic observer, the great boom was over; but for optimists it was a mixed blessing for African political elites. Yet after being humiliated, exploited and pressed by European powers and turned into pawns, knights and rooks on a cold war chessboard by the superpowers, Africa faced a devastating new problem: indifference by the community of nations to the soul-searching, far- reaching, crude and complex problems to which the west was source (Adekey,2004). Was the first world going to abandon Africa to fend on her own?
Body
Political impact of the cold war
Evidence of the world's
fatigue with the unremitting problems of Africa or its fumbling when it has
become engaged is both real and symbolic. The United Nations failed to disarm
both sides in the Angolan conflict due to the politics of the cold war
(skinner, 1972). The 2 superpowers- USA &USSR both permanent members of the
Security Council with veto powers had vested interest which propelled the
fighting.
Rouke (2006) maintain the consequences of World War II manifested in the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany and the attempted to spread Soviet philosophy of communism which spurred its rejection through a global containment as was elevated into a doctrine by President Truman. Consequently, communism collapsed worldwide. By the Cold War, the United States motivated and challenged the Soviet Union from World War II exhaustion to super-power status. In spite of the Soviet large armies, the 51 Soviet Union was spurred into the atomic bomb, nuclear technology and space achievement. Similarly, the United States policies and strategies against communism in China had much the same effect there. The Berlin Wall was demolished and the two German nations were unified.
The
Cold War institutionalized the role of the United States in the postwar global
economic and political system. By 1989, the United States was the only man
standing responsible for military alliances with 50 countries and 1.5 million
US troops were posted in 117 countries (Rouke, 2006). The Cold War also
institutionalized the commitment to a huge, permanent wartime
military-industrial complex.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for example, warned of the adverse "geopolitical momentum" now running against USA from Angola to former Zaire, an area that Zbigniew Brzezinski calls the "arc of instability" and others describe variously as the "crumbling triangle" or the "crescent of crisis." Kissinger paints a picture of looming tragedy if the United States didn't somehow reorient and destroy the then current pattern of events. Unless this country acts decisively to constrain Soviet expansionism and prove to the Soviet leaders "that a relaxation of tensions is not compatible with a systematic attempt to overturn the geopolitical equilibrium," Kissinger worries, then "sooner or later a showdown between the two blocks is likely to occur with tremendous dangers for everybody” (jane, 1992)
Nye (2003) argue because the United States did not cut short Soviet (and Cuban) intervention in Angola and has not yet shown the wit or the will to discourage the Soviet Union from exploiting trouble elsewhere, according to him, it has risked the confidence of friends and allies. Echoing him, the London Economist (1972) write that the Vietnamese war lose to nationalist and socialist Vietcong forces mesmerized American reluctance to counter "the Soviet-Cuban success in Angola . . . led to the Soviet-Cuban success in Ethiopian 'dergue' revolution since 1974…. Which affected the political complexion of the whole triangle?" Within the "triangle" extending from Kabul to Ankara to Addis Ababa, the Economist warns that "former neutrals" may become "pro-Russian" and "some of the former pro-westerners nervously neutral." The result, it maintains, would be an alteration in the global balance of power more important than any of the Soviet Union's recent gains in Africa and even more important than "the growing strength of the Soviet military establishment in Central Europe."
Nye (2003) contends even the term Third World is synonymous with the Cold War describing the economically less developed states of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. The nonalignment movement began in 1955 during the Cold War era among Asian and African countries in Bandung, Indonesia to devise a strategy to combat colonialism because they sought to avoid entrapment in the Cold War. They tried through the nonalignment to maximize their own interests while minimizing their costs. The strategy energized both the United States and Soviet Union to renew their efforts to woo the uncommitted neutrals to their own network of allies. The Movement as a strategy died with the Cold War as its foundation of moral neutrality was undermined by the collapse of USSR and the two superpowers embracing each other like the end of a football match. According to Don Oberdorfer (1991) the end of the East –West conflict set forth unfamiliar circumstances when he stated that “a clear and present danger to delineate the purpose of power, and the basic shift invalidated the framework for much of independent Africa since World War
In Africa local proxy civil wars were intensified by superpower rivalry, leaving millions dead. The developing countries in the late 1980s lost to the arms race in a single year the equivalent of 187 million human years of income (Sivard 1991). Some of the economic and social tensions that underpinned Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Zaire, Ethiopia, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Liberia (Nye, 2003). In areas where the two superpowers had been waging proxy wars, and subsidizing local conflicts, many conflicts either slowed down or ended with the Cold War; and the occurrence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, or refugee and displaced persons crises declined sharply.
Nye (2003) maintains in some countries the breakdown of state control was accompanied by state failure, as was the case in Liberia. Many Africans, especially those tired of military dictatorships and faltering economies, and politicians out of power and in exile, applauded these prescriptions to dictatorships. Nevertheless, they wisely or cynically refrain from defining the criteria for their own political culture. The result is that both the US and many African leaders are created the basis for "disemia". This is a condition among local power seekers who, to please hegemony, either disguised those aspects of social life that conflict within society hoping tutelage powers protection, or create systems out of touch with local realities, or simply manipulate local conditions to cling on power (Skinner, 2012).
In addition, African leaders were now willing to contribute troops to help bring about peace, as demonstrated in Somalia. The shift in OAU attitudes first became evident in 1990's, when West African states concluded that if they didn't do something about the strife in Liberia to insure the stability of their region, no one else would; a Nigerian-led peace force intervened (Nye, 2003). In the past, the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other African countries, enshrined in the charter of the Organization of African Unity, gave leaders cover for inaction even in the face of blatant human abuses by strongmen like Haile-Mariam of Etthiopia. "We allowed the violations of human rights," Mr. Salim said. "We allowed the dehumanization of our people and used the charter as a scapegoat (Oberderfor, 1992).
Three main military movements had been fighting for Angolan independence since the 1960s: The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was a Nationalist Marxist organization centered in the capital, Luanda, and led by Agostinho Neto and Jose Eduardo dos Santos; The Bakongo based National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), led by Holden Roberto, was based in the north of the country and had strong ties to the U.S. ally, Mobutu Sese Seko, in neighboring Zaire; The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), an offshoot of the FNLA, was led by Jonas Savimbi and supported by the country's largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu. Following the Portuguese coup, these three revolutionaries met with representatives of the new Portuguese Government in January 1975 and signed the Alvor Agreement that granted Angolan independence and provided for a three-way power sharing government. However, trust quickly broke down among the three groups, and the country degenerated into fragile civil war of each against all as each faction struggled for spoils of power (Nye, 2003).
Savimbi continued to wage 'war in the bush' against the Luanda regime until his demise in the jungle in 2002 saw his lieutenants accept ceasefire and transformed UNITA into a political party. Health conditions in the country are said to have deteriorated sharply as a result of the war despite the rich diamond deposit and oil reserve in the northern parts of the country. Indeed the blood diamonds were exploited by warlords and shared with quislings, retinues, buffoons, charlatans and all manner of hangers on and reaction in the west and Africa as black children and women bore the brunt of the war and hundreds of thousand butchered by the cold war proxy machine.
It is estimated that 25,000 Liberians - about 1 percent of the population - were killed. Between 1980 and 1990, Liberia enjoined other military regimes. Led by the Armed Forces of Liberia supported by the U.S. Peoples Redemption Council of Liberia" in its position statement in 1980 proclaimed to wipe out corruption in the civil service. Prior to the military intervention, the Tolbert administration was quietly but largely viewed as corrupt within the country. The military rulers under Sgt. Doe with the determination to move the country to a better society and to install social justice swung into action but appeared quite inept to do so and generally inefficient, nepotistic, narrow and arrogant. This military regime may have set the clock back on Liberia more than imagination can tolerate. In December of 1990, approximately 10 ten years after taking over power, the South Beach massacre was reiterated in a larger form and Doe himself was tortured and brutally butchered in the process by prince Johnson’s army (Nye, 2003).
Dark days descended on Liberia when Charles Taylor's rebel group and a run-away group led by Prince Johnson caught the world attention as each tried to slice off the nation of Liberia. Monrovia was then evacuated and thousands of people became refugees in neighboring countries. The Liberian history had undergone a radical transformation as war machines reigned supreme as pockets of rag tag militia emerged to fill the power vacuum created by the breakdown of civil order. The mere callousness of the groups involved in the struggle - the defunct Liberian army, and those of the rebel groups led by Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson respectively, remains to be a puzzle. But soon the transition government led by professor Amos c. sawyer assassinated by the very forces he was trying to fight. In fact, Liberia was turned into a warlord state with campaign slogans of Charles Taylor saying “i killed your pa, I killed your ma and if you don't vote for me I will kill you too”.
Yet in Mozambique The country is on the mend from a 16-year civil war and famine. One Marxist liberation movement supported by USSR was FRELIMO, which signed a peace agreement in 1974, leading to independence in 1975. The peace lasted just two years. Mozambique imposed sanctions on Rhodesia. Rhodesia responded by creating an anti-FRELIMO guerrilla force, RENAMO.
Ronald Reagan was elected US President in November 1980 on a vociferously anti-Communist and US-focused policy platform. He intensified the Cold War through proxy wars in Angola, Nicaragua and Mozambique, where the US backed and helped to create, openly or covertly, armed opposition forces. In particular, he saw white South Africa as a bastion against Communism in neighboring states. South Africa adopted a policy of economic and military destabilization of its neighboring countries, involving sanctions, direct attacks and support for proxy forces such as RENAMO, which was given training and shipped into Mozambique with extensive air and sea support. From a mid-1980s population of 13–15 million, one million people died (7 per cent of the population) and five million were displaced or made refugees in neighboring countries (one-third of the population). Damage was estimated at US$20 billion.[17] UNICEF estimated that Mozambique’s gross domestic product was only half of what it would have been without the war. The number of first level health posts had been increased from 326 at independence to 1195 in 1985, but 500 of these were closed or destroyed by RENAMO militias; 60 per cent of all primary schools were destroyed or closed; more than 3,000 rural shops were destroyed or closed, and most never reopened.
For the Horn of Africa, Somalia, The United States, which mounted an international military effort to insure relief deliveries, gradually withdrew most of its forces as the United Nations was reluctant of the operation. Disarmament efforts have met with mixed success and little has been done to rebuild a stable political order. This paved room for growth of warlord-ism in the horn of Africa. Siyyad barres regime was bad and had all the potentials of pushing society on the verge of disaster, but the magnitude of destruction could not possibly be envisaged. Consistent threats to state power which weakened the Mogadishu government were waged by clan warlords in a futile attempt to capture political power in a resource deficient state (Nye, 2003).
Zaire's autocratic President, Mobutu Sese Seko, rewarded handsomely by the United States as their caricature during the cold war for his staunch anti-communism, easily resisted pressure to democratize. His country, facing demagogue pressures and growing lawlessness by unpaid soldiers plunged into anarchy and state collapse in destructive civil wars. In a conflict for power in Democratic Republic of Congo, each side continued to harm the other without outright victory in1990-1997. Zaire Diplomats warned of economic and political collapse as President Mobutu Sese Seko vehemently reject Western demands that he share power with his Prime Minister, Etienne Tshisekedi, who is supposed to be steering the country to democracy. Soldiers loyal to Mr. Mobutu who went unpaid appear increasingly bent on lawlessness, chaos and anarchy with their world’s richest president at the time on the wheel (Nye, 2003).
Salim A. Salim, Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity, said during a speech in Washington, I am very happy the Cold War is over. That I am saying is that there is diminishing interest in the issues of real human concerns. Perhaps the most significant development is the willingness of Africans to admit their own past mistakes - to stop placing the blame for the continent's underdevelopment entirely on the West and the legacy of colonialism, and instead condemn gross abuses by incompetent or venal leaders (Nye, 2003). In the past, the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other of other African countries, enshrined in the charter of the OAU, gave the African community stooge for inaction even in the face of blatant abuses by rulers like Idi Amin of Uganda.
Economic impact of the cold war in Africa
The fundamental
suggestion in Jane (1992) that because of the end of the Cold War, Africa had
become withdrawn from the global capitalist economy or may be Africa had
lost the ability and possibility to bargain in a manner and context which
would, to some degree, guarantee the space for her to exercise her right to
self-determination. As one of the students in Kenyatta University then,
confirmed that at around 1989, the great boom to university ended abruptly with
cold war. Students had no one to turn to for free monies and benefits
especially special meals in the student mess.
Africa had to accept that the time for all special and favorable consideration by the former colonial and imperialist powers, resulting in her preferential treatment, had come to end, and therefore that all argument about any continuing impact of the legacy of imperialism and colonialism would be treated as self-serving argument to justify our own failures as Africans; and, accordingly, the West had no particular and special responsibility to assist Africa to address what the then OAU Secretary-General referred to as issues of real human concern. These comments would have been read by many decision-makers in what was by then the sole world super-power, the United States, making for what was called a unipolar, post-Cold War world order.
Jane (1992) made the assertions that: the end of the Cold War had left Africa adrift in terms of the global Geo-strategic agenda and considerations of the sole world super-power and presumably its Western allies liberated from the obligation to secure the allegiance of independent Africa in the context of its global anti-Soviet struggle, the US had found that Africa was otherwise not of any importance in terms of its global strategic interests; as a consequence of this, the international community would leave Africa to her fate, except in the context of its a humanitarian crises thus reducing it to subsisting in the global geopolitics as a recipient of charity; Africa understood this reality, and pleaded that this “indifference and neglect” meant that Africa, left, could not, on her own, attend to what were her most basic human challenges; for Africa to regain her place as a worthy international partner of the dominant world capitalist system.
Africa had to establish a track record as a continent of democracy and the related free capitalist market economies, consistent with the paradigm that has been prescribed by the so-called Washington consensus. Africa had the responsibility to solve, on her own, the problems she had inherited as a legacy of the policies generated during the Cold War; among others, in this context, she had the responsibility to pull herself by her bootstraps to make herself a relevant economic player in the context of the global economy (Gladys, 1997).
Meanwhile, the US State Department, focusing on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, cut 70 positions from its Bureau of African Affairs and closed down consulates or embassies in Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria and the Comoro Islands (Gladys, 1997). The U.S. Agency for International Development slashed staff and programs serving Africa, and only the 11th-hour intervention of the Congressional Black Caucus kept the House Foreign Affairs Committee from merging its Africa subcommittee with the panel handling Latin America. Though recent Administrations have spoken of the continent's importance, US Presidents rarely set foot in sub-Saharan Africa since Jimmy Carter in 1978.
Africa seemed to suffer from 'Diminishing Interest'. "I'm not nostalgic about the cold war," Salim A. Salim, Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity, said during a speech “...What I am saying is that there is diminishing interest in the issues of real human concern." The issues are manifold. Though aid has increased dramatically since the mid-1980's, African countries remain saddled with debt and there is virtually no new commercial lending. While direct private investment has tripled in Latin America and increased fivefold in East Asia since 1985, it has declined in Africa. And from the Horn of Africa to the bulge to central and southern Africa, poverty, wars, chaos and ethnic conflict seem all too much the order of the day (Nye, 2003).
But to view Africa as nothing but a bleak dark and backward continent is to miss the blossoms among the weeds. Gladys (1997) posits:
"If you look from one week to the next, the cup is more empty
than full.”But if you look over the last
few years, the overall trend is in the right direction. The number of
democratic elections is going up. The
number of economic liberalization programs is going up. Peace gained roots in Mozambique and in Namibia, which won
independence in 1990 after decades of minority rule by South Africa in defiance of the United Nations. Kenya, Zambia,
Ethiopia, Mali and Benin are inching,
or in some places running, toward multiparty democracy after decades of one- party rule or military dictatorship.”
Under stings by the World Bank, 26 countries have restructured their economies and are expanding their trade. South Africa's moved toward multiracial democracy turned it from a pariah state into a democratic success example for the poly-ethnic nations of black Africa, and become a trading partner and source of capital for the rest of southern Africa. This was after realization that bad governance, bad politics and political corruption were crucial in accounting for contemporary under-development in Africa (Gladys, 1997).
Of course we can also cite other very negative developments which took place in Africa during the period of the Cold War. Where these developments must be attributed to administrations which the Soviet Union supported as progressive representatives of what was characterized as the non-capitalist path of development and what the U.S supported as a counter balance. For instance, Sekou Toure administration in Guinea Conakry and the Ethiopian 'dergue' led by Mengistu Haile-Mariam were described as revolutionary regimes attempting to discard antiquated traditional regime with a new social order. However, the balance of evidence makes the statement that much of the negative developments on African Continent during the period of the Cold War also derived from the determined efforts of the West to defeat what they saw and described as soviet expansionism. These are the countries which Renou (20060) said the African academy is reluctant or afraid boldly and accurately to characterize as imperialist and megalomaniac.
After spending what some African political scientists and historians might conclude is unjustified extended attention to the past of the Cold War years. However as much as, One would have preferred to overlook some of the all-too-obvious human errors and forge ahead, but it would be unfair to Africans not to raise questions about certain deliberate actions or policies of the past that continue to have grave consequences on the present. Indeed, it is not possible for us properly to understand our present reality without a proper assessment of what might seem, in terms of chronology, to be a dreaded past that we must discount. The hard truth is that absolutely each of our days is weighed down by the heavy burden of the past. It is certain that as we consider post-Cold War Africa, we will have to reflect on the continuing impulses which derive from the period of cold War Africa.
Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs Quarterly, Marguerite Michaels (1992), a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that the disintegration of the Soviet Union set America free to pursue its own interests in Africa - and it found that it did not have any. It is a harsh assessment. But with the end of the Cold War, Africa's strategic importance to the West has declined. With shrinking per capita income hampering the market for western imports, political instability and a poorly educated workforce made society to be in shambles making investment unattractive.
Conclusion
Among other things, the Cold War resulted in such negative developments is the political corruption of the African independence project through the establishment of the system of neo-colonialism and puppet strongman regimes, the overthrow of governments which resisted this, support for the white minority rule in south Africa and Zimbabwe, then seen as dependable anti-communist and anti-Soviet allies especially by the Reagan administration. Also the assassination of such leaders as Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara and Eduardo Mondlane, sponsorship of such instrumentalists as MPLA & UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique, support for predatory and client regimes such as those of Mobutu in the then Zaire, and of Houphouët Boigny in Cote D’ Ivoire, and even by extension such major catastrophes- the Rwanda genocide .
The
legacy of the Cold War continues to structure African affairs. The peaceful end
of the Cold War depicts that great power rivalry may not ultimately result to
armed conflict as both powers attempted to resolve the competitive difference
without warfare. The end has brought a transformed global hierarchy where the
United States has become world hegemonic leader without a major challenger
until the emergence of economically surging China in the second decade of the
21st century.
This has ultimately altered the face of world politics which according to
Former President George Bush “the collapse of communism has thrown open
a Pandora’s Box of ancient ethnic hatreds, resentment, even revenge”. Bush underscored the imminent fear
of uncertainty which the post Cold War years may offer in terms of security
dilemma, renewed economic competition, conflict and even warfare among the
emerging world powers. Furthermore, the very many causes of the Cold War are
still prevalent in the post Cold War era of anarchic international politics.
The Cold War indeed took a heavy economic and political toll on the world.
Let's hope that nations learn to live in peace throughout the 21st century, as
there are no winners in cold war, only damaging legacy to the wretched of the
earth
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