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An Analysis of Kenyan Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

In foreign affairs, Kenya presents various faces to the international community. In global terms external policy has been markedly radical in nature and characterised by a strong sense of morality and idealism. Rarely does a major Kenyan foreign policy statement fail to contain some allusion to the inequalities of the present international order or some reassertion of both the desirability and the attainability of a peaceful and just international community of nations. In East African affairs, however, Kenya's policy has often been governed by rather more conservative and legitimist thinking, notably where any radical departure from the status quo is contemplated. It would appear that where foreign policy issues touch directly on primary Kenyan interests—say, national security, national development—the overt radicalism of Kenya's broad international policy is subject to considerable restraint. This ambivalence in Kenya's foreign relations can probably be best explained by examining separately the basically domestic pressures towards a broadly radical policy internationally and towards a more cautious conservatism within East Africa. One further aspect of Kenya's foreign relations is in the field of inter-African affairs, where tentatively one may suggest that Kenya has come to play the role of a prestigious neutral between two amorphous, but often distinct, groupings of what have been termed ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ states.1 Here, foreign policy is far less a product of domestic pressures, and contingencies of history and factors of personality reassert their importance in foreign policy analysis.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

Page 29 note 1 Terms used, for example, by McKeon, Nora, ‘The African States and the O.A.U.’, in International Affairs (London), XLII, 07 1966.Google Scholar

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Page 33 note 2 The Reporter (Nairobi), 22 04 1966.Google Scholar

Page 34 note 1 The term ‘ideology’ is used here very widely to connote a set of prescriptive beliefs about international order.

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Page 35 note 1 The Reporter, 20 May 1966.

Page 35 note 2 K.A.N.U. Manifesto (Nairobi, 1965). 3–2.Google Scholar

Page 36 note 1 East African Standard, 15 December 1965.

Page 36 note 2 Africa Diary (Delhi), 23 09 and 17 10 1964.Google Scholar

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Page 46 note 1 Inverted commas, used once to indicate scepticism towards any attempt to classify African states into a rigid framework, are henceforth omitted.

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Page 47 note 2 Algeria, Congo-Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Tanzania, U.A.R., Somalia, and the Sudan.

Page 48 note 1 Central African Republic, Dahomey, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Malagasy, Togo, and Upper Volta.

Page 48 note 2 Rumours such as Murumbi receiving a cable from Nairobi during the O.A.U. meeting in Lagos in October 1965 telling him that the cabinet could not support his advocacy of force; and allegations, since denied, that James Gichuru, the Minister of Finance, had expressed an opinion during the Lagos Commonwealth Conference to the effect that Rhodesian Africans were not yet ready for independence. The Guardian (London), 2 12 1965.Google Scholar