ABSTRACT
The principal Cuban military advantage for the Africans has been their familiarity with Soviet weapons, especially heavy armor. African motives and objectives for involvement with Cuba have been largely the product of deep weakness. More than twenty years after independence, most of the fifty-two independent African states are doing poorly. A number of African states prefer to rely on former colonial powers if intervention is needed or to organize pan-African forces. Cuba had by mid-1977 come up with a powerful new rationale for its African policies. As in Angola, military victory in Ethiopia marked the beginning rather than the phaseout of Cuban intervention. A dozen or more African states and movements need Cuban technical, military, or security aid, generally available on generous terms with few strings, Angola and Ethiopia need Cuba for their survival; Cuba needs them as political triumphs in an austere economy and society.
