ABSTRACT
The alternatives facing the President were likely to determine whether or not there would be a US Cold War commitment to African independence, a commitment that would be more in line with what was desired by new African political leaders than what was required by old European interests. As Ball noted for Gullion, while US policy was to pursue the UMHK payment scheme in the hope that the practical integration of Katanga would be achieved, developments in Léopoldville were casting serious doubts over whether a moderate government could be maintained. The United States had to recognise that parliament was a millstone around Adoula’s neck preventing him taking the requisite actions to keep out communists/radical nationalists and reconcile Katanga under a moderate government. With the possible acceptance of a parliamentary motion calling for the suspension of the UN plan, a point had been reached where if the US was to attain its objectives without massive bilateral involvement a new American approach was required. Gullion was asked to assess whether, with the help of Kasavubu, Mobutu, Nendaka and Ndele, Adoula would prorogue parliament for 30 days as ‘installing a rightist government by a military coup’ was likely to cause a number of difficulties. Mobutu could maintain Adoula’s moderate government in power with ‘technicians’ who would ‘re-energise’ it and make a more vigorous effort to get an agreement with Tshombe. The US would be prepared to assist the GOC in creating an air force and urge the UN to neutralise the Katangan one.1 Although Tshombe’s final decision on the UMHK payments scheme was still awaited, a meeting with the president was fixed for 14 December and the US choice was narrowing between disengagement and a stronger approach2 which had been on the cards until the McGhee mission. Spaak, or ‘our friend Spaak’ as Kennedy referred to him, epitomised the dilemma of America prioritising its European or African friends. His political position in Belgium was being eroded by the ongoing Flemish-Walloon crisis and by what the American referred to as his ‘courageous, Congo policy’.3 He wanted to sweeten the pill for the right-wing Belgian supporters of the UMHK and Katanga while avoiding a split with Washington.4 The ambassador in Brussels believed that if conflict broke out in Katanga, Lefèvre’s government would fall as the Catholic party was reluctant to endorse Spaak’s Congo policy if it involved the use of force. Public indignation
was fanned by Libre Belgique and the right-wing press, with MacArthur himself receiving anonymous phone calls threatening to assassinate him.5 Papers for the ‘alternatives’ meeting with Kennedy included one from Roger Hilsman arguing that the US should use greater force to achieve reintegration on which Carl Kaysen commented. It seemed that the point had finally been reached where hard choices could not be avoided. Kaysen believed the paper overemphasised the Soviet threat – a frequent occurrence in US papers on the Congo – and that the importance of limiting the objectives was insufficiently emphasised.6 Papers were also produced by African Affairs and International Organisations along with some comments by McGhee. Interestingly one of the papers was from Chester Bowles, in response to Kennedy’s request, which argued that a ‘politically united, economically viable Congo is essential to the stability of the Central and Southern third of Africa and to US world interests generally’ and that with the imminent withdrawal of Indian troops the UN’s capability to unify the Congo would disappear within the next four to six weeks. Were the UN to fail a ‘chaotic, unmanageable’ situation would result in a Soviet takeover or a major US commitment to prevent it. Therefore ‘we are in urgent need for a program of vigorous action promptly implemented’(original emphasis). For Bowles this programme should be spearheaded by the UN with strong US support but with direct US involvement kept to a minimum. Effective economic sanctions, as distinct from the UMHK/Spaak payments proposal, would be resisted by the UK and Belgium and therefore the UN should take military measures including the destruction of the Katangan air force and the extension of the UN controlled area around Élisabethville to cut off the Rhodesian outlet for copper exports. At the same time Bowles supported the suspension of parliament while protecting Tshombe’s legitimate interests and obtaining Adoula’s continued commitment to oppose Soviet involvement in the Congo.7 The paper from Williams in African Affairs argued for dramatic and forthright initiatives from the US to support Adoula’s moderate government. These could be unpleasant but less so than a number of alternative options. Arranging another coup by Mobutu would provide propaganda for Tshombe and strain relations with the UN. Abandoning the Congo through US/UN withdrawal would leave central Africa open to communist influence operating under the cloak of African nationalism and if the Soviets were to become involved a civil war would be likely. On the other hand if secession were to be accepted, US influence in the Afro-Asian world would be severely damaged with Afro-Asian allies backing the Soviets in supporting a GOC attack on Katanga. Williams did not believe that replacing the UN with a regional grouping of African moderate states was feasible even with US financial support. He therefore recommended ‘dramatically’ supporting UN efforts to implement reconciliation through Phase Three of the UN (US) Courses of Action and pointed out that almost all AfroAsian states, like the GOC, would favour it whereas France, Britain and Portugal would not. The practical steps suggested were the diversion of UMHK payments, an embargo on Katangan copper and cobalt and Katangan oil imports, the
withdrawal of Belgian technicians and the establishment of GOC customs and immigration services in Élisabethville. The economic measures would be accompanied by UN military actions to neutralise the Katangan air force with the US providing additional aircraft.8 The goals of preventing bloc influence, reintegrating the Congo and establishing a moderate pro-Western government were easily agreed, but the issues of how to do it were still divisive. When the memo for the president was finalised on 13 December it noted that the assumption that reintegrating Katanga under a moderate GOC government could be easily secured ‘has turned out to be wrong’. Moreover it was not thought that economic sanctions would be very effective or that the measures under the U Thant plan would do much either. What was recommended was building up UN forces to make it inconceivable that they could be challenged by Tshombe’s gendarmerie; convincing Adoula to prorogue parliament with the backing of a pro-Western group headed by Mobutu; and continuing to pursue the more feasible parts of the U Thant (US) plan such as the division of revenue. In military terms UN ground forces, with the new Indonesian battalion, would be enough to handle the gendarmerie if they were not threatened from the air. It would therefore only be necessary to change the UNOC rules of engagement to permit the destruction of Katangan planes on the ground and ensure the present arrangements for Swedish, Ethiopian, Italian and Iranian equipment and personnel for the UN air force were implemented. The last and significant proposal was for an American fighter unit to be stationed in the Congo to back up the UN forces. This US military force, under a UN umbrella, would be there ‘for the purpose of avoiding the use of force’ not to take ‘a military initiative to destroy Tshombe’s government’ (original emphasis). Force to rule out a Katangan recourse to military resistance would buttress the political negotiation to produce reintegration.9 Ball presented this new Congo policy, with its significant shift of the pendulum, at the meeting with the president on 14 December. Adoula was portrayed as the best available leader in need of strengthening to secure reintegration with some measure of autonomy for Tshombe. Reintegration required reducing Katangan military forces to end Tshombe’s pretence at exercising sovereignty and to secure a fair division of revenues. As Ball explained to Kennedy, it was now clear that such a solution ‘could not be achieved by further negotiation’ as Tshombe had no incentive to move in this direction and it would therefore have to be imposed. With the UMHK payment scheme giving every indication it was ‘just another Tshombe dodge. . . . We must decide now on a show of force.’10 It was not entirely clear why this shift had primarily arisen. Was it a final acceptance that Tshombe was playing for time, a fear that an unsuccessful ending of the UN operation in the Congo would be unacceptable for US interests? Or was it concerns about the precarious situation of the moderates in Léopoldville and possible Soviet links with a more radical regime linked to Tshombe that might replace it? Another possibility was the realisation that changing the payments by the UMHK from Katanga to the GOC was flawed and was unlikely to produce a significant effect. And there was also the question of the domestic situation in
the US, along with that in Britain and Belgium, although the European situation was never likely to encourage the kind of US actions now being proposed. The president as ever was concerned with the US domestic situation. He did not believe that the alternatives to Tshombe and Adoula were seen by the American public as sufficiently damaging for US interests to justify American military intervention. Kennedy wanted suggestions about how such a view might be created. Interestingly Harlan Cleveland had produced a personal paper for Ball noting that 12 months ago the Department had had to be concerned about domestic public opinion in support of Tshombe. Now the situation was different and Tshombe’s chief propagandist Struelens was in the process of being expelled from the United States. The problem now was to avoid the impression that the UN and the world’s greatest power had been rendered impotent in the Congo because of a desire
1 To protect the illegal position of a tribal politician [Tshombe] who is conniving with communists against a government supported by this country
2 To protect the arbitrary and imposed tax and profit system of a mining company which is widely regarded as a prototype of an exploitativeimperialist-capitalist-monopoly . . . This administration cannot permit a recurrence of the kind of situation we had a year ago, when a single mercenary in the employ of a mining company with one jet trainer plane stopped cold the force of the world community in the Congo and indirectly lead to the death of Dag Hammarskjöld.11
