Battleground Africa

Battleground Africa PDF

Author: Lise Namikas

Publisher: Cold War International History

Published: 2015-09-16

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780804796804

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Winner of the 2013 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title Battleground Africa traces the Congo Crisis from post-World War II decolonization efforts through Mobutu's second coup in 1965 from a radically new vantage point. Drawing on recently opened archives in Russia and the United States, and to a lesser extent Germany and Belgium, Lisa Namikas addresses the crisis from the perspectives of the two superpowers and explains with superb clarity the complex web of allies, clients, and neutral states influencing U.S.-Soviet competition. Unlike any other work, Battleground Africa looks at events leading up to independence, then considers the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the series of U.N.-supported constitutional negotiations, and the crises of 1964 and 1965. Finding that the U.S. and the USSR each wanted to avoid a major confrontation, but also misunderstood its opponent's goals and wanted to avoid looking weak or losing its political standing in Africa, Namikas argues that a series of exaggerations and misjudgements helped to militarize the crisis, and ultimately, helped militarize the Cold War on the continent.

Crisis In Africa

Crisis In Africa PDF

Author: Arthur Gavshon

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-20

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0429725612

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The great power rivalry surging across Africa today is a heritage of those European statesmen who a century ago in Berlin ruled straight lines on school atlases to carve up a continent-and whole nations with it-into tidy colonial compartments. With African states searching for a political identity in the post-colonial era, the superpowers are now j

Remaking the World

Remaking the World PDF

Author: Jessica M. Chapman

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2023-07-25

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0813197503

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Between 1945 and 1965, more than fifty nations declared their independence from colonial rule. At the height of the Cold War, the global process of decolonization complicated US-Soviet relations, while Soviet and American interventionism transformed the decolonizing process. Remaking the World examines the connections between the Cold War and decolonization. Through six carefully selected case studies—India, Egypt, the Congo, Vietnam, Angola, and Iran—historian Jessica M. Chapman addresses the shifting of Soviet, American, Chinese, and Cuban policies, the centrality of modernization, the role of the United Nations, the influence of regional actors like Israel and South Africa, and seminal post–Vietnam War shifts in the international system. Each case study analyzes at least one geopolitical turning point, demonstrating that the Cold War and decolonization were mutually constitutive processes in which local, national, and regional developments altered the superpower competition. Chapman presents the complexities of international relations and the ways in which local communist and democratic movements differed from their Soviet and American ties, as did their visions for independence and success.

A Military History of the Cold War, 1962–1991

A Military History of the Cold War, 1962–1991 PDF

Author: Jonathan M. House

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2020-09-24

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 0806167742

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Study of the Cold War all too often shows us the war that wasn’t fought. The reality, of course, is that many “hot” conflicts did occur, some with the great powers' weapons and approval, others without. It is this reality, and this period of quasi-war and semiconflict, that Jonathan M. House plumbs in A Military History of the Cold War, 1962–1991, a complex case study in the Clausewitzian relationship between policy and military force during a time of global upheaval and political realignment. This volume opens a new perspective on three fraught decades of Cold War history, revealing how the realities of time, distance, resources, and military culture often constrained and diverted the inclinations or policies of world leaders. In addition to the Vietnam War and nuclear confrontations between the USSR and the United States, this period saw dozens of regional wars and insurgencies fought throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Cuba, Pakistan, Indonesia, Israel, Egypt, and South Africa pursued their own goals in ways that drew the superpowers into regional disputes. Even clashes ostensibly unrelated to the politics of East-West confrontation, such as the Nigerian-Biafran conflict, the Falklands/Malvinas War, and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, involved armed forces, weapons, and tactics developed for the larger conflict and thus come under House’s scrutiny. His study also takes up nontraditional or specialized aspects of the period, including weapons of mass destruction, civil-military relations, civil defense, and control of domestic disorders. The result is a single, integrated survey and analysis of a complex period in geopolitical history, which fills a significant gap in our knowledge of the organization, logistics, operations, and tactics involved in conflict throughout the Cold War.

United Nations Peace Operations in Africa

United Nations Peace Operations in Africa PDF

Author: Saleem Ahmad Khan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-22

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1000859487

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This book provides a comprehensive overview of the United Nations peace operations in Africa with a focus on civil-military coordination and state-building. With case studies from Sudan, South Sudan, and Congo, it examines themes like the colonization of Africa and long-term conflicts; United Nations peace operations in Africa from 1956-1964; and United Nations’ return to Africa in the 1990s and 2000s. The author investigates how modern civil-military coordination gradually becomes an effective tool to assist in national-level state-building in conflict-ridden countries. The volume also discusses the organizational culture of civilian and military entities as well as civil-military cooperation in health, agriculture, energy, sports, and education to showcase the strategic direction for long-term peace in the region. Rich in ethnographic analysis, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of African Studies, UN studies, peace and conflict studies, defence and strategic studies, international relations, and military studies.

Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945-1968

Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945-1968 PDF

Author: Philip Muehlenbeck

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-11-04

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1137566663

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This book explores Czechoslovakia's diplomatic relations with African states and places them within a wider Cold War historiography, providing contextual background information on the evolution of communist Czechoslovakia's pro-Soviet foreign policy orientation. This shift in Soviet foreign policy made Africa a priority for the Soviet bloc.

The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa

The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa PDF

Author: Erik Kennes

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2016-07-04

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0253021502

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A history of the 1960s unrecognized state’s army and their role in Central Africa’s political and military conflicts. Erik Kennes and Miles Larmer provide a history of the Katangese gendarmes and their largely undocumented role in many of the most important political and military conflicts in Central Africa. Katanga, located in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, seceded in 1960 as Congo achieved independence, and the gendarmes fought as the unrecognized state’s army during the Congo crisis. Kennes and Larmer explain how the ex-gendarmes, then exiled in Angola, struggled to maintain their national identity and return “home.” They take readers through the complex history of the Katangese and their engagement in regional conflicts and Africa’s Cold War. Kennes and Larmer show how the paths not taken at Africa’s independence persist in contemporary political and military movements and bring new understandings to the challenges that personal and collective identities pose to the relationship between African nation-states and their citizens and subjects. “A fascinating story which is tied to the colonial development of Katanga province, cold war politics in Central Africa, the crisis of the postcolonial state in the Congo, and the interregional politics in the Great Lakes area.” —Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, University of North Carolina “A major contribution to our understanding of postcolonial politics in Africa more broadly and sheds light on the survival of militias over time and forms of subnationalism emerging from regional consciousness.” —M. Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison

The Ideological Scramble for Africa

The Ideological Scramble for Africa PDF

Author: Frank Gerits

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2023-03-15

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1501767933

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In The Ideological Scramble for Africa, Frank Gerits examines how African leaders in the 1950s and 1960s crafted an anticolonial modernization project. Rather than choose Cold War sides between East and West, anticolonial nationalists worked to reverse the psychological and cultural destruction of colonialism. Kwame Nkrumah's African Union was envisioned as a federation of liberation to challenge the extant imperial forces: the US empire of liberty, the Soviet empire of equality, and the European empires of exploitation. In the 1950s, the goal of proving the potency of a pan-African ideology shaped the agenda of the Bandung Conference and Ghana's support for African liberation, while also determining what was at stake in the Congo crisis and in the fight against white minority rule in southern and eastern Africa. In the 1960s, the attempt to remake African psychology was abandoned, and socioeconomic development came into focus. Anticolonial nationalists did not simply resist or utilize imperial and Cold War pressures but drew strength from the example of the Haitian Revolution of 1791, in which Toussaint Louverture demanded the universal application of Europe's Enlightenment values. The liberationists of the postwar period wanted to redesign society in the image of the revolution that had created them. The Ideological Scramble for Africa demonstrates that the Cold War struggle between capitalism and Communism was only one of two ideological struggles that picked up speed after 1945; the battle between liberation and imperialism proved to be more enduring.

Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics

Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics PDF

Author: Lazlo Passemiers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-11

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1351138146

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Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics argues that as much as the ‘Congo crisis’ (1960-1965) was a Cold War battleground, so too was it a battleground for Southern Africa’s decolonisation. This book provides a transnational history of African decolonisation, apartheid diplomacy, and Southern African nationalist movements. It answers three central questions. First, what was the nature of South African involvement in the Congo crisis? Second, what was the rationale for this involvement? Third, how did South Africans perceive the crisis? Innovatively, the book shifts the focus on the Congo crisis away from Cold War intervention and centres it around African decolonisation and regional geopolitics.