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The Reagan Foreign Policy Toward South Africa: The Ideology of the New Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Robert Fatton
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Extract

William Foltz (1978) has argued that the vital economic and strategic interests of the United States are so limited in scope that the making of an American policy toward South Africa is freed from any serious constraints. As such, South Africa represents “in political terms, something of a ‘freeplay area’ for American political leaders,” and an area where the “most prudent and cost-effective policy to protect American economic and strategic interests would be to work with, rather than against, the indigenous African forces of change” (Foltz, 1978: 267–68). While Foltz's argument may indeed be empirically and objectively correct it has certainly been rejected by the Reagan administration. This rejection stems in large measure from the administration's ideological world view which has contributed to the development of the policy of “constructive engagement” toward South Africa.

Constructive engagement holds that U.S. interests are best served by developing stronger economic and cultural ties with white South Africa. The conviction is that such ties will contribute to the gradual liberalization and ultimately to the demise of apartheid. These ties, it is argued, will support and encourage the political ascendancy of a modernizing autocracy of enlightened white elites. The latter's commitment to change, so the argument goes, will transform South Africa into a multiracial democracy and consequently into an acceptable and trusted partner in the overall Western system of defense. This line of argument rests on a particular set of intellectual constructs derived from a general system of beliefs.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 57 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1984

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