ABSTRACT
The chapter provides the historical background to the development of the Cold War and of the US intervention in Africa. This historical picture identifies the years from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s as the period in which the African continent became one of the battlefields of the bipolar conflict and was fully included in the American Cold War strategy, triggering US involvement in regional conflicts in Southern Africa and in the Horn of Africa. The chapter outlines the development of US foreign policy towards Africa during that decade and the influence of the bipolar competition in forging that policy in order to better understand the consequences of the end of the Cold War.
