ASRC 2630 - US Foreign Policy Toward Africa (Southern Africa)

Spring. 4 credits.

S. Grovogui.

This course analyzes and assesses American foreign policy towards Africa during the Cold War. While it examines US African policy in general, special emphasis will be placed on American objectives in Southern Africa. For practical reasons, this region extends for policy (as opposed to geographical) reasons from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (once Zaire) to South Africa and includes, principally, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia), and Namibia. The course examines US initial responses to decolonization from the time of the Eisenhower Administration to the difficulties encountered by Kennedy in reconciling the politics of the Civil Rights movements at home with the imperatives of freedom in Africa and the containment of communism to the Reagan Doctrine of rollback of communism and, later after Bill Clinton, US engagement with democratic transitions in the region.