ABSTRACT
The United States greeted Sudanese independence by identifying three valuable elements of the country. First, bounded by nine Arab and African countries as well as by the Red Sea, the Sudan constituted a strategic “bridge” between sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab Middle East. Second, in relation to its Middle Eastern neighbors, the Sudan had a superior natural resource endowment, which qualified it as an anchor for a new regional division of labor. Third, the Sudan was critical to the American effort to create a regional constellation of client states, revolving around Ethiopia, for purposes of containing international communism and regional neutralism. The deteriorating economic situation within the Sudan helped to strengthen the American position, for the failure of non-capitalist development had eroded much of the junta’s internal legitimacy by early 1971. The prospect of oil discovery had caused the economic importance of the Sudan to loom even larger in 1974.
