Book Description
This book tells the story of how successive administrations--Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford--tried to maintain the confidence of its NATO ally, Portugal while facilitating the process of decolonization in Angola and Mozambique. Ultimately becoming an epic battle of democracy versus dictatorship, African nationalism versus geo-strategic pre-eminence, and East versus West, this book, largely based on primary sources, tells the story of one of the Cold War's most intense confrontations.
Engaging Africa: Washington and the Fall of Portugal's Colonial Empire SYNOPSIS
Most of Schneidman's career has been related to business with Africa, and he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs in the Clinton administration. During the Cold War, he says, the US government was torn between its historic commitment to self- determination and its geostrategic preoccupation with containing the expansion of Communist influence in Africa. He shows how that played out in the case of Portugal and its African colonies—Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Foreign Affairs
This book, a must-read for anyone interested in decolonization or Cold War diplomacy, is the definitive diplomatic history of U.S.-Portuguese relations in the 1960s and 1970s, in the context of Portugal's 1974 revolution and the end of its African empire. The 1974 military coup was motivated by unhappiness in the army over seemingly endless war in Portugal's African colonies, so rapid decolonization was an inevitable consequence. Schneidman argues that these events came as a surprise to the Nixon administration, its understanding of local dynamics clouded by an exaggerated fear of the communist threat in both Portugal and Africa. And he is critical of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's policies toward southern Africa, arguing that U.S. policy errors were in part to blame for the Angolan civil war, which did not end until 2002. Schneidman tells an engaging story, enlivened by personal interviews with many key figures and archival material he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
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