Introduction

The Congo should be at the centre of the debates on the international and Cold War influences on African decolonisation despite being dismissed as a mere sideshow by those focusing on the nationalist pressures experienced by the French and British empires. Yet this large Central African country played a vital, if not fully understood, role in the Cold War and proved to be a fascinating example of complex African problems of decolonisation interacting with international forces. These forces were certainly not confined to the politics of Brussels and the influence there of Belgian settlers, nor to the United Nations and the United States. They also included international capitalism, particularly that dominated by European entrepreneurs, in ways that revealed a great deal about the problems inherent in colonialism and its end. The history of the Congo in the crises years following its independence from Belgium in June 1960 meant the demands of the Cold War had to confront the requirements of decolonisation in an explosive socio-economic and political mix. Issues of strategic importance or security were not perceived as significant considerations in the Congo. The real explosive cocktail mixed the requirements of Western capitalism with the lingering fear from the 1950s that communism would provide a more efficient political and, particularly, economic system. The more entrepreneurial and business oriented elites in Western society held similar fears to some government ministers about social stability in the less developed world. It was a similar story to those about Western Europe that had dominated anti-communist governments in the West immediately after 1945. This of course tells us little about the process of state formation in the early 1960s and how African socio-political problems were perceived and understood in the West. Indeed the complexities epitomised in the Congo conflict between the demands of the capitalist West, and the process of adapting to, and promoting, the transformation of colonialism to take account of African economic requirements remain largely opaque. Part of the problem lies in the fact that Africa in general, and the Congo in particular, is a vast geographical area rich in diversity and potential conflict. How the conflicts developed and manifested themselves may be subjected to general theories on the role of the domestic in comparison to the international but require some understanding of the specifics of the socio-economic and

political situations. In the Congo this difficult task is not helped by the blurring of an African focus as assessments of the Congo’s situation became interwoven with the international context. Given the Cold War and the way it was treated by the Kennedy administration, this is all the more significant especially once the country achieved its pre-Kennedy independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960. This book is only a small beginning to place a little more, if not enough, of Africa clearly into an international context dominated by the United States. The continent undoubtedly assumed, albeit temporarily, crucial Cold War importance in the early 1960s. Policy makers of the time were certainly aware of the Cold War’s African dimensions. Indeed, how they were treated in Brussels, London and Washington has produced an array of information, policy proposals and assessments of events that were duly considered by elected policy makers in the respective Western capitals. Historians and social scientists, however, have tended not to reproduce this African kaleidoscope, which in the Congo’s case generated a vast amount of paper that is now deposited in the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park Maryland and elsewhere. Even in the Kennedy Library in Boston the amount of policy papers and telegrams exceeds that pertaining to the so-called ‘special’ relationship with Britain. Not the Soviet Union nor China nor the countries of Western Europe ever generated anything like the same amount of paper as the Congo which under Kennedy was only exceeded by Vietnam. The British relationship may have been special in that open breaches in public, as opposed to policy disagreements in private, were frowned upon at the United Nations in particular. However one aim of this study is not only to draw attention to the relations between the United States and its allies, as part of the East-West conflict, but to emphasise the important African dimensions of the Cold War and their relationship to American policy in the global conflict. Other biases of historians and political scientists, like the biases of many Western policy makers on Africa, have attached prime importance to Cold War events outside the continent in explaining the Congo crises in the early 1960s. Attempts in the study of decolonisation to link the European and international forces to the internal aspects have been equally ineffective in a very different way. In particular, attempts to incorporate the role of Western capitalism in Central Africa and in the ongoing interactions of the Cold War and decolonisation have generally been neglected. Its role in the particular enterprises engaged in the development or exploitation of Congo resources and the generation of wealth is not treated as significant in the interpretation of Western policy and actions. The way that this wealth is distributed and used is hardly mentioned. The incentives to do so have become less as state formation has been downplayed while the abstract issues surrounding the politics of human rights and conflict prevention have risen from the ashes of the Congo and a marginalised African continent. Yet Africa in general has much to contribute to our experience and understanding of the international as it was linked to the domestic environment in the Congo crisis. By a greater understanding of the African

dimension of the Cold War conflict in the Congo, the nature of the Cold War itself can be better understood. There is no single approach taken here but an attempt to analyse, as well as to describe, those elements which were particularly important to the Congo and why they occurred. The key role of the important economic institutions and individuals is, in the interpretation favoured here, as it influenced the Cold War aims of the Western players both collectively, individually and institutionally who were trying to produce a newly independent and viable state. In terms of decolonisation, Belgians in Brussels and in the Congo are not primarily regarded as engaging in the activities usually ascribed to their British equivalents. For them there was no screen for, or justification of, their ‘responsibilities’ to Africans, only practical ways of ensuring that Belgian interests would not have to fund the belated preparations for decolonisation. At the same time they tried to ensure that decolonisation would not remove their ability to pursue their economic activities within the new state without sacrificing any significant advantages that the old Belgian Congo state had provided for them. In many respects the Belgian Congo never fully escaped from the capitalist company and financial structures imposed by King Léopold when he transformed his personal state into an exploitative enterprise shared by other less exploitative bodies both public and private. The key players with less specific interests and associations with Africa were the United States and the United Nations, which were both intimately connected to the crisis. There were important differences between members of the United Nations Congo staff under the Secretary General, whose organisation changed during the crisis, partly in response to the differing interpretations individuals had about the Congo situation, the goals of the organisation and how to implement them. For the US, the dilemmas that the Cold War and decolonisation produced for American policy had been a perennial problem for all administrations following the first real interest in the continent under Truman. Not surprisingly there were differences between the priorities of important governmental bodies in Washington, Léopoldville, New York and Élisabethville as well as between the outlooks and aims of individual policy makers. The competition between Africanists and Europeanists was incorporated into the Congo but not in a simply or clearly defined way, and the other key debate over differences between the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations is also illustrated by the events in the Congo. It is argued here that the significant differences were between the Kennedy and Johnson administrations more than between the Eisenhower and Kennedy ones. The new president in 1961, as in other areas, developed and gave more substance to the emerging policies of his predecessor in Africa and the Congo. The ideals and assumptions of the Johnson administrations were significantly different, which can be explained by crucial changes in the international environment that affected the implementation of Congo policies in particular. These changes cast new light on the requirements of Congo policies, albeit within the universal mind set of preventing the spread of communism and other radical ideas in politics and economics which threatened US

values. Maintaining the general requirements of dealing with international communism and left-wing radical nationalism from Vietnam to Latin America to the Congo produced new policies. In so doing the problems inherent in the conflict between the African requirements of the Cold War and the requirements of specific European interests were transformed. There remains a limited range of Cold War interpretations of Western Cold War policies in the less developed world. The collapse of the Soviet Union has not made the events that produced the Cold War and its development less of an emotive subject. Nor have many radical reinterpretations or alternative understandings of the Western approach to the global conflict during and immediately after the end of colonial rule been produced. This may be because of the substantive and highly successful US Cold War commitment to propagandise its ideology that was so effective in post-war America. It may be because one consequence of prioritising Cold War regions of significance has downplayed Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Generally the new light that has thus been shed on events in the less developed world essentially modifies, with important additions, a pre-existing framework of assumptions. While they provide a more detailed knowledge of important manifestations of the Cold War conflict,1 they tend to remain wedded to the universalist idea of the containment of a significant Soviet threat as an explanation for general US Cold War policy.2