Roger Fontaine. The
Washington Times. February 12, 2002.
One of the stranger episodes of the Cold War is the story Piero Gleijeses
tells us in "Conflicting
Missions." It is a story of revolutionary ambition (perhaps to be
confused with personal ambition) in unlikely places and America's response to
all that.
Mr. Gleijeses, professor of American foreign policy at the School of
Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, covers more than
a quarter-century of struggle on that part of the African continent that
stretches from Algeria to Namibia. The author can do so at length and still
paint with a fine brush. The detail largely based on interviews and documents
from archives can be quite striking. He convinces me that Cuba, for example,
acted on its own in supporting "revolutionaries" in the eastern Congo
and Angola. The Cubans were not mere Soviet surrogates, puppets, or any other of
the impolite things they were being called by Cold Warriors at the time.
At least, not until after 1976, which is the author's cut-off date.
But that leaves us with just two sentences on the Cuban-Soviet adventure in the
Horn of Africa in support of the murderous regime in Addis Ababa. Nor can it
explain why the Cubans — not to mention the Soviets who made up for their
earlier caution — kept right on fighting for the MPLA (Popular Movement for
the Liberation of Angola) even after it became hopelessly corrupt and brutal.
That aside, Mr. Gleijeses does come close to explaining Fidel Castro
and Che Guevara's motives for being involved on a continent that few Cubans
until then knew or cared about. Of course, a good deal of this is guesswork
since the top Cuban leadership has not provided any interviews or given a
detailed account of what they are doing other than the usual revolutionary
bromides. Havana's archives have, however, been opened up a crack for the author
thanks to his persistence, for which he deserves both credit and admiration.
(The Soviet archives remain sealed shut.)
In contrast, Mr. Gleijeses uses the abundant, once secret American
record and treats it fairly. He, quite rightly, cites the generally competent
analysis of the U.S. intelligence services, but deplores the nation's top
leadership for not acting on their work. So what else is new? Analysts, for one
thing, are not driven by political concerns such as remaining in office.
Politicians, need we say it, do, and will always do so as long as they are held
responsible to the electorate. It may be messy, but it beats what Havana's
self-appointed leaders did in Africa, largely kept secret from their own people.
Although generally sympathetic to Cuba's involvement in Africa, the
author demolishes what's left of Guevara's reputation as a guerrilla commander.
His attempt to support the Simbas in the old Belgian Congo in 1965 falls just
short of being ludicrous. He knew nothing about them, less about the Congo —
his plan: to conquer that vast chaotic, central African melange in three years —
and still less about what it takes to fight a war in Africa. In less than one
year, he and his small group of Cubans were run out of the place by a rag-tag
assortment of white mercenaries. His farewell address to the beaten, but brave
companeros reveals much about Guevara's surly ingratitude toward anyone that did
not successfully serve his ambitions.
The Angolan venture was more sophisticated, but by then Guevara had
long met his end in Bolivia in yet another revolutionary misfire. There is
little doubt according to this account that without Cuba's timely intervention
in November 1975, the MLPA stood no chance against its Angolan rivals. Or for
that matter, the South Africans who came close to seizing Luanda, the capital,
thus ending a war that continues to this day, more than a quarter-century later.
South Africa, that is, white-run South Africa, comes in for a
predictable beating for supporting the anti-MLPA forces, although goodness knows
it could be argued that Pretoria was defending itself in a very rough
neighborhood. Nor is the author's depiction of Henry Kissinger's Angola policy
as "amoral" quite right either. Amoral, after all, is a weasel word.
Was it immoral or not? My view is it was poorly thought out although the
secretary got good advice from professional diplomats like Nathaniel Davis, but
didn't listen.
As for the Soviets, much less the Cubans or their African allies,
there is hardly a word of condemnation. To be sure, Mr. Gleijeses admits the
MPLA became corrupt and incompetent after a promising start. But even here he
blames Washington for MPLA's descent into corruption and misrule, as if one
became kleptocratic and incompetent after a forced dependency on the Soviet
bloc. I don't think so.
Nevertheless, this will be as good an account of the whole episode as
one will likely get. In the end Cuba accomplished little, the Soviet Union is no
more, apartheid is dead, and Africa remains Africa. Goodbye to all that.
Roger Fontaine is a writer in Washington. He served on the
National Security Council staff during the first Reagan administration.
© 2002 News World Communications, Inc. |
