1 - An introduction to US foreign policy toward Africa

Summary

No other continent has been so consistently ignored by our policy-makers, and yet none but Europe has been so continually connected to important developments in America, from the founding of the Republic in the era of the Atlantic slave trade to the inauguration of training exercises for the new Rapid Deployment Force.

Introduction

As the nationalist urges of independence movements swept the countries of Africa during the 1950s and these so-called “winds of change” marked the beginning of the end of European colonialism, two politicians of widely divergent political perspectives underscored the necessity of rethinking US foreign policy toward the continent. “For too many years,” Vice President Richard M. Nixon noted in 1957 after returning from a twenty-two day tour of the African continent, “Africa in the minds of many Americans has been regarded as a remote and mysterious continent which was the special province of big game hunters, explorers and motion picture makers.” Recognizing the importance of an emerging Africa in the international scene — especially within the context of the East—West struggle — Nixon recommended that President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorize the creation of a separate Bureau of African Affairs within the State Department, an idea which reached fruition in 1958.