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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Since the last American troops withdrew from Vietnam during 1975, the strategic value of Africa to the United States has steadily risen. As a result of the renewal of cold-war hostilities between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and an escalating series of crises for American foreign policy in the Third World, the African continent is now a principal battlefield for competition involving the United States, Western Europe (particularly France), Cuba, and the Soviet Union. After the end of the Vietnam war, direct American military intervention in Africa was precluded for a short time by legislative restraints – notably the ‘Clark Amendment’ of December 1975 that blocked involvement in Angola – and by the public's reluctance to become entangled in another military commitment overseas, a phenomenon often referred to in Washington as the ‘Vietnam syndrome’. Furthermore, the United States lacked the military capacity to engage in such adventures, having suffered such heavy losses in Indochina and being preoccupied with the creation of a new all-volunteer army. Over the past five years, however, two Administrations in Washington have worked assiduously to ‘cure’ the so-called ‘Vietnam syndrome’ and restore America's military position abroad.
page 143 note 1 Washington Post, 20–21 08 1981Google Scholar; and Newsweek (New York), 31 08 1981, pp. 14–18.Google Scholar
page 144 note 1 Los Angeles Times, 20 and 29 July, 3–8, 10, 15–20, 22–24, 26–27, 30–31 August, and 3 September 1983.
page 144 note 2 Washington Post, 18 March 1983.
page 144 note 3 Ibid. 24 January 1980.
page 144 note 4 Time (New York), 16 03 1981.Google Scholar
page 145 note 1 ‘Remarks Prepared for Delivery by the Honorable Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, to the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, Tuesday, April 20, 1982’, News Release No. 168–82, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Public Affairs, Washington, D.C., p. 6.
page 145 note 2 Report of the Secretary of Defense, Caspar W. Weinberger, to the Congress on the FY 1984 Budget, FY 1985 Authorization Request and FY 1984–88 Defense Programs, February 1, 1983 (Washington, D.C., 1983), p. 191.Google Scholar
page 145 note 3 Ibid. pp. 194–5. Also Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1983, Part 6-Sea Power and Force Projection (Washington, D.C., 1982), 5, 8, 12, 15–16, 18–19 and 22–23 03 1982, pp. 3726–9Google Scholar; United States Central Command Force List, Department of Defense Fact Sheet, n.d. but marked current as of March 1983; Aviation Week and Space Technology (New York), 16 03 1981, pp. 14–17, and 20 12 1982, p. 70Google Scholar; and National Defense (Washington, D.C.), 07–08 1983, pp. 40–4.Google Scholar
page 146 note 1 Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, 5, 8, 12, 15–16, 18–19 and 22–23 March, pp. 3729–30 and 3737.
page 146 note 2 ‘Exercise Bright Star 81’, News Release No. 459–80, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Public Affairs, Washington, D.C., 7 November 1980; Report of the Secretary of Defense, February 1, 1983, pp. 204–5; New Tork Times, 13 september, 12–13 and 19 November 1980, and 9 March 1981; Washington Post, 27 May and 20 June 1980; and Army Times (Washington, D.C.), 24 11 1980.Google Scholar
page 147 note 1 Report of the Secretary of Defense, February 1, 1983, pp. 204–5; Los Angeles Times, 6 August 1983; and Washington Post, 10 May 1983.
page 147 note 2 Aviation Week and Space Technology, 16 and 23 March 1981; Africa (London), 104, 04 1980, pp. 35–7, and 118, 06 1981, p. 66Google Scholar; Washington Post, 27 May 1980, 13 April 1981, and 23 June 1983; New York Times, 19 and 26 August 1980, and 6 April 1981; and Washington Star, 19 and 22 February and 28 June 1980.
page 148 note 1 Report of the Secretary of Defense, February 1, 1983, p. 203; also Statement of Lawrence J. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower, Reserve Affairs, and Logistics), Before the Subcommittee on Military Construction, Senate Armed Services Committee, April 18, 1983, p. 11; and Los Angeles Times, 28 August 1980.
page 148 note 2 See Volman, Daniel, ‘Gendarmes of Africa’, in The Progressive (Madison), 03 1981, pp. 32–3.Google Scholar
page 149 note 1 Cot, Jean-Pierre, ‘What Change?’, in Africa Report (Washington, D.C.), 05—06 1983, pp. 12–16.Google Scholar
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page 149 note 3 Military Aviation News (Romford, Essex), February 1979.
page 150 note 1 New York Times, 1 February 1983. See also Volman, Daniel, A Continent Besieged: foreign military activities in Africa since 1975 (Washington, D.C., Institute for Policy Studies, 1980).Google Scholar
page 151 note 1 Washington Post, 29 June 1980. See also Race and Class (London), Special Issue on ‘Kenya: the politics of repression’, XXIV, 3, Winter 1983, pp. 221–6.