Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our fourth annual writing contest by sending us their thoughts on strategy.
Now, we are pleased to present one of the essays selected for Honorable Mention, from Sam Wilkins, a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
While Africa had been a sleepy backwater of the global Cold War at the time of Richard Nixon’s first inauguration on 20 January 1969, the continent became a central battlefield of the conflict by the time of Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Africa leaped to the front page of major American newspapers as issues of decolonization, race, and regional rivalries interacted dynamically with Cold War imperatives, accelerating both the intensity and complexity of African conflicts. This period from 1969-1980 spanned the tenures of three American presidents: Nixon, Ford, and Carter and witnessed two explosions of violence—the Angolan Civil War and the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia—that ended with successful and large-scale interventions by the Soviet Union and its Cuban allies. How did successive American administrations formulate strategies for great power competition in Africa during this period, and how effective were those strategies for meting these Cold War crises?
Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon in 1978. (Jimmy Carter Library/Wikimedia)
All three administrations struggled to reconcile Cold War imperatives with regional realities and trends. The Nixon and Ford administrations attempted to anchor their Africa policy firmly in Cold War terms. However, the foundation of this policy, a realpolitik warming towards white minority rule in Southern Africa, invited both Congressional resistance around issues of majority rule and Soviet interference on behalf of frontline black states. Moreover, after a decade of disaster in Vietnam, America lacked the hard power, robust intelligence, paramilitary apparatus, and domestic consensus required for the full-throated Cold War proxy competition in Africa envisioned by Kissinger. While the Carter administration articulated and executed an effective strategy for southern Africa based around majority rule, they overestimated the continent-wide utility of this outreach to black Africa. Ultimately, Carter’s team failed to integrate Carter’s promised pivot towards a “more moral foreign policy” with America’s traditional Cold War interests.[1]
Although all three administrations made broad attempts to stabilize competition with the Soviet Union, none of them were able to execute détente in an African context.[2] The failures of détente in Africa would ultimately endanger the entire global approach. While popular narratives hold that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 ended the détente era, historians now know that it was Soviet and Cuban intervention in Ethiopia that buried détente, to quote National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, “in the sands of the Ogaden.”[3]
This essay takes a comparative approach to the process of strategy formulation and crisis management under successive American Cold War administrations. First, it reviews the initial development of Africa strategy under Nixon and Ford, before moving to examine its performance in the Angola crisis. Using a similar template, it will examine the intellectual roots and formation of Carter’s approach to the continent before studying his administration’s policy execution in the Ogaden war. Juxtaposing these two contrasting approaches to American Africa policy in development and execution serves to illuminate trends and offer original perspectives on this violent episode of the Global Cold War.
Realpolitik: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Development of a Realist Africa Strategy
South African Prime Minister John Vorster and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Getty)
“The whites are here to stay,” claimed Kissinger’s National Security Council in response to National Security Study Memorandum-39 (NSSM-39), the definitive policy document that sought to outline the Nixon administration’s approach in Africa.[4] While the response to National Security Study Memorandum-39 recognized the risks of closer relations with the apartheid regime in South Africa, it asserted economic and Cold War imperatives necessitated closer relations. The top American interest in Africa for Kissinger’s National Security Council? Global maritime traffic, which now flowed around the Cape of Good Hope due to the closure of the Suez Canal following the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbors.[5]
Kissinger’s National Security Council sought a warming of relations with apartheid South Africa to protect these interests and serve as a bulwark against communism in the region. This approach aligned with the broader contours of what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, which sought to rely more on regional partners in an effort to find an economical way to maintain the global order after Vietnam.[6] The response to National Security Study Memorandum-39 recognized this stance would hurt America’s standing with black Africa, but reckoned the downsides to such an arrangement, such as negative votes at the United Nations, was worth the cost.
Questions of race dominated America’s Africa policy during this period.[7] How closely should America, a multi-racial democracy after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, deal with brutal white-minority regimes? The response to National Security Study Memorandum-39 argued the economic and political resiliency of John Vorster’s South Africa proved the United States had no choice but to create change through engagement. While unstated in any National Security Council documents, the struggle over civil rights in America, and the subsequent backlash against it, also intersected America’s approach to southern Africa. In 1969, supporting the settler states appeared politically sustainable—even advantageous—for Nixon, who sought to win over the so-called silent majority of Americans disaffected by the triumph of the Civil Rights Act.[8] While issues of race remained unspoken, the Nixon administration’s policy reflected both his electoral strategy to win southern whites and Nixon’s own racial prejudices, which were fully on display in his secret audio recordings of White House conversations. In one recording, Nixon laughs while then-Governor Ronald Reagan notes, “…to see those monkeys from those African countries [Nixon laughs], damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”[9]
European Cold War imperatives also deeply informed the administration’s approach. The administration chose to tacitly support Portugal, a NATO member and dictatorship, in its efforts to maintain colonial control over territories in Africa long after other more powerful European states had been forced to decolonize. The Portuguese faced increasingly potent insurgencies in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Angola, as well as increasing domestic challenges from left-wing parties at home. However, the Nixon administration planned to continue non-lethal military shipments to Portugal, on the unenforced and unenforceable promise that they not be used in its colonial wars.[10] In practice, the administration’s policy towards the Portuguese Empire mirrored its approach to the apartheid regime in South Africa. While distasteful and impolitic, Kissinger reasoned the Portuguese Empire would endure and serve as a bulwark against Communist aggression, freeing American resources for more pressing concerns elsewhere.
Shifting Tides
The Nixon and Ford administrations went on to execute the strategy designed in response to National Security Study Memorandum-39 for almost five years without serious adjustment, despite shifting geopolitical currents. Africa policy remained a backwater for Nixon and Kissinger, who never conceptualized how Africa fit into their emerging concept of détente. Once Kissinger became Secretary of State, he grew even more dismissive of Africa’s strategic value—and frustrated with what he saw as the misplaced moralism of the State Department’s Africa Bureau.[11] Kissinger churned through four Assistant Secretaries of State for Africa, and frequently mocked the bureau both within Foggy Bottom and to outsiders. “If you see our position papers written by the African Bureau,” he once quipped to the Israeli Ambassador to Washington, “you will know why I don’t pay attention to them.”[12]
During Nixon’s second term, geopolitical events with origins outside the African continent shattered many of the foundational assumptions of National Security Study Memorandum-39. These changes emerged from the tumult in the Middle East following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Kissinger’s masterful handling of the post-war environment diminished Soviet influence in Egypt and set the conditions for a re-opening of the Suez Canal by 1975 during the Ford administration. While this geostrategic success could have enabled a pivot away from reliance on South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope sea lanes, according to archival documents no such re-examination occurred.[13]
The second shock was the 1973 oil crisis, where Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States, Portugal, South Africa, and others in retaliation for supporting Israel in the 1973 war. In the United States, the oil crisis elevated the strategic importance of black African oil producers, such as Nigeria. Following the oil shock, Nigerian crude represented a fourth of all U.S. oil imports, yet relations with that pivotal West African state remained abysmal due to American support for apartheid South Africa. Relations degraded so far that the Nigerian government refused landing rights to Kissinger when he attempted to visit Lagos in 1974.[14]
The OPEC embargo also proved to be, in the words of historian Odd Arne Westad, “the event that broke the [Portuguese] regime’s back.”[15] The economic crisis in Portugal brought about by the oil shock illustrated plainly that Portugal’s Caetano regime needed to choose between overdue economic reforms at home or continued maintenance of its imperial possessions. While the regime chose the latter, on April 25th, 1974, left-leaning officers fatigued with endless colonial wars in southern Africa and desultory economic conditions at home launched a coup. The new Portuguese government quickly moved to divest itself of its colonial possessions—a geopolitical earthquake that would remove the buffer protecting southern Africa’s settler regimes.[16] The Cold War in Africa was about to turn hot.
Things Come Apart
As the Portuguese prepared to withdraw from Angola, a three-way civil war erupted. On one side stood the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a Marxist group that had suffered from numerous iterations of factional infighting.[17] Despite these weaknesses, the Portuguese considered the MPLA “their most dangerous foe,” while the U.S. State Department’s Intelligence and Research (INR) Bureau considered the MPLA “the best disciplined and most effective” of the rebel groups.[18] The group was led by Augustine Neto, “a distinguished intellectual” who, according to the Intelligence and Research Bureau, “command[ed] widespread admiration from politically aware Africans and mulattoes in Angola.”[19] The MPLA held the region around the capital of Luanda and benefited from strong ties to Fidel Castro’s Cuba and intermittent support from Moscow.[20]
Against the MPLA in the country’s north stood the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), a nativist group led by the mercurial and corrupt Holden Roberto. Roberto and the FNLA depended deeply upon the sponsorship and sanctuary provided by Zaire’s brutal dictator and American partner Mobutu Sese Seko.
In the south sat the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the weakest of the three groups at the time of independence.[21] While UNITA was nominally a left-wing organization and armed by Communist China, its leader—the ambitious, charismatic, and brutal guerilla leader Jonas Savimbi—was essentially a political opportunist who also collaborated with both the Portuguese government and the South African Defense Forces (SADF) in his quest for power.[22]
Into this maelstrom strode Kissinger, who quickly sorted the various actors through his Cold War lenses. Kissinger sought to prevent what he saw as yet another Communist advance in the Third World after the humiliation of Vietnam.[23] Kissinger advocated strongly for a robust program that included covert support to the FNLA, encouragement for South African intervention, and even a limited covert assistance program to the left-leaning UNITA.
Not everyone agreed. Kissinger’s hand-picked Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Nathaniel Davis, pushed back against the covert action proposal in favor of diplomatic measures.[24] “The worst possible outcome,” Davis wrote Kissinger, “would be a test of will and strength in which we lose.” On the ground, the CIA station chief in Luanda also dissented. “Soviets enjoy greater freedom of action in the covert supply of arms, equipment, and ammunition,” he noted, “and can escalate the level of their aid more readily than we.”[25]
Moreover, the groups Kissinger advocated supporting proved deeply flawed. Due to corruption, weak leadership, and narrow popular bases of support, neither the FNLA nor UNITA possessed the organizational capacity to effectively absorb U.S. assistance and translate that aid into enduring military capability or political appeal. In contrast, the MPLA, according to Everett Briggs, the U.S. Consul General in Luanda from 1972-1974, represented “the only Angolan organization that had any national representativeness” and held “the allegiance of most of the best educated and skilled people in Angola.” Briggs’ successor, Tom Killoran, concurred with this assessment, noting that the MPLA was “head and shoulders above the other two groups.”[26] Unsurprisingly, by March 1975, the MPLA had achieved the dominant position in the strategic central and coastal regions of the country.
Nevertheless, the 40 Committee, which oversaw U.S. covert actions, approved an initial $300,000 infusion of cash to the FNLA in January 1975, followed by a $48 million aid program that included weapons funneled through Zaire.[27] Bolstered by this aid, the FNLA increased its activities in a bid for control before November 11, the date of full formal independence from Portugal. The rearmed FNLA, advised by a host of western mercenaries, South African officers, and CIA paramilitary officers pressed the MPLA in the north, driving to within 13 miles of Luanda by September 1975.
However, in a seesaw series of battles North of the capital in September, Roberto’s force faltered. The FNLA, according to Defense Intelligence (DIA) analysis from the time, lacked “competence as a military organization...the FNLA did not master the rudiments of organization for a successful military effort. Leadership, discipline maintenance, and command, control, and communications were all lacking.”[28] While Soviet-provided equipment and fewer than 500 Cuban advisors certainly contributed to the MPLA’s successes, ultimate responsibility for the campaign’s outcome at this phase lay in the hands of the Angolan groups themselves.
The situation changed again on 14 October, when 2,500 troops from the South African Defense Forces (SADF) crossed the border with occupied Namibia alongside UNITA rebels. While the evidence remains inconclusive, Kissinger likely encouraged, or at a minimum, endorsed, the South African entry into the war, known as Operation SAVANNAH. Statements by South African leaders and South African primary documents indicate the former.[29] This appeared to be National Security Study Memorandum-39 and the Nixon Doctrine in action—geopolitical order at a more economical cost for the United States.
A Soviet poster from 1967 reads, “The dawn of freedom cannot be prevented.” (Yevgeniy Fiks/Wayland Rudd Archive)
Kissinger, however, had overplayed his hand. While covert assistance to the FNLA and UNITA had proven indecisive, such assistance fell within the broadly accepted contours of détente in the eyes of Brezhnev and other key Soviet leaders in Moscow. The South African Defense Force’s invasion changed that calculus. After the invasion, Cuban forces and Soviet equipment began to flow to the MPLA in massive quantities. Historians know now it was Castro rather than Brezhnev who, seeing foreign-backed forces threatening to overwhelm the MPLA, pushed Moscow for a rapid airlift of Cuban forces into Luanda.[30] Brezhnev himself initially rebuffed these calls, fearing a disruption of détente with the United States.[31] However, continued Cuban lobbying, combined with the South African invasion and its wide denunciation in neutral African capitols, led Moscow to abandon its former hesitation. In the third week of October, Brezhnev approved an airlift of Cuban forces, and by December, over 4,000 Cubans were on the ground, cementing MPLA control over Luanda. While the Cubans claimed they conducted the airlift without assistance, Soviet archival documents examined by historian Odd Arne Westad indicate this was not the case.[32]
Cuban forces quickly proved their utility on the battlefield. Along the northern front, Cuban-rocket artillery provided critical fire support at the decisive battle of Quinfandongo, where MPLA forces routed Roberto’s FNLA forces and permanently ended the threat to Launda. Meanwhile in the south, Cuban mobile columns halted the South African Defense Force advance in the South in a series of sharp but bloody engagements along the Cuanza River.
Frustrated by what he saw as a violation of détente by Soviet proxies, Kissinger turned again to the 40 Committee for $28 million in additional covert assistance and the addition of frontline American paramilitary advisors.[33]
However, the CIA had exhausted its contingency budget for covert action and had to ask Congress for the additional funds. This request promptly leaked. On 13 December 1975, The New York Times published an explosive cover story that outlined the details of the program.[34] The Senate immediately passed the Tunney Amendment, banning covert aid to Angola’s warring factions, and quickly followed with the Clark Amendment, which extended and broadened the prohibitions.[35] With their foreign support drying up, the FNLA was routed in Angola’s north, while the South Africans, sensing abandonment, retreated in the south.[36] By January 1976, over 11,000 Cubans guaranteed the security of the MPLA in Angola.[37] Kissinger’s first foray into Africa had ended in total humiliation.
Jo Ractliffe’s Triptych I, is a series of black and white photographs from a 1975 mural on a house in Angola, showing Cuban leader Fidel Castro; the first Angolan president, Agostinho Neto; and Leonid Brezhnev, then president of the USSR (Jo Ractliffe)
“A Country of Little Importance”
In retrospect, shifting geopolitical currents should have prompted serious reflection on the core assumptions of National Security Study Memorandum-39, namely that colonial Portugal and apartheid South Africa represented reliable regional bulwarks under the Nixon Doctrine. While surprise at the collapse of Portugal was perhaps acceptable, given the paucity of intelligence at the time, the Portuguese Empire’s collapse should have prompted a re-evaluation of the relationship with the settler regime in South Africa and Rhodesia. While minority regimes appeared resilient in 1969, the environment had totally changed by 1974.[38] Minority rule had become an albatross that symbolized American hypocrisy and threatened to throw the entire region to communism. When South African Defense Force troops crossed the border from occupied Namibia in 1975, the American public and Congress, to say nothing of neutral African capitals, recoiled from Kissinger’s chummy collaboration with the apartheid regime.[39]
And then there was Angola. Kissinger framed the civil war as a test of American will versus the Soviets—a test that nearly every regional expert in the U.S. government accurately predicted the United States would lose.[40] Kissinger’s ill-fated covert action proved too small to make a difference on the ground but too big to be executed secretly, just as the CIA’s Angola station chief had warned.[41] Democracies have many strengths in long-term competitions with authoritarian regimes, but, as Kissinger discovered, waging secret wars is not one of them.[42]
Angola also demonstrated the utility of hard power in Africa. Soviet and Cuban military intervention, whatever its justification, created decisive facts on the ground and trumped similar American efforts. The United States proved unable and unwilling to introduce measures, such as a naval blockade or a timely diplomatic restriction of Cuban air refueling stops in neutral countries, that might have inhibited the flow of Communist equipment to the MPLA during the decisive pre-independence period.[43] Moreover, the United States, despite infusions of weapons, advisors, and cash, proved unable to sufficiently increase the capabilities of its proxies. While this failure certainly reflected the flaws of the FNLA and UNITA themselves, it also illustrated the weaknesses of America’s military and paramilitary services in the wake of Vietnam.
Angola also exposed wider flaws in the Nixon Doctrine and détente in general. As historian Hal Brands aptly points out, “The liability of this approach was that Moscow could not necessarily control its allies, who often launched these crises, any better than Washington could.”[44] Kissinger never recognized it was Castro rather than Brezhnev who pushed for intervention in Angola. Karen Brutens, the deputy head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) International Department, later explained the Soviets felt an imperative to support the Cubans, whom they abandoned during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We could not, he noted, let them down “a second time.”[45]
Kissinger also overestimated the degree to which détente, executed through the mechanism of linkage, could restrain the Soviets, who saw their ideology as ascendant throughout the Third World in the 1970s. While concerns about détente restrained Moscow in the early phases of the crisis, the entry of South Africans erased any hesitation in the Kremlin. For Soviet leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev, détente offered stability and legitimacy, but also promised to keep Third World flare-ups separate from the bilateral relationship. “We make no secret of the fact that we see détente as a way to create more favorable conditions for peaceful socialist and communist construction,” Brezhnev noted.[46] Success in Angola only bolstered Soviet confidence in their ability to intervene in the Third World and left many Americans skeptical of détente’s utility. The next conflict, in the Horn of Africa, would accelerate both these trends, and bury détente for good.
Enter Carter
The Carter administration arrived determined to set a different tone and direction on Africa policy from its predecessor.[47] Carter pledged to make human rights “the soul of our foreign policy” and forswore the secrecy and immorality that he believed characterized the Kissinger years. Carter’s team intensely focused on southern Africa, where it feared Soviet attempts to exploit the crises around majority rule. “The possibilities are there,” National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned, “to transform this from a black-white conflict into a red-white conflict.”[48]
Carter’s team appreciated how key shifts in the geostrategic landscape, such as the re-opening of the Suez Canal in 1975 and the oil crisis, had further diminished apartheid South Africa’s geostrategic importance. Finally, Carter’s team stressed the importance of African nations as a voting block at the U.N., votes Carter hoped to earn through both his new policy approach and the nomination of Andrew Young, an African-American Congressman, to the post of U.N. Ambassador.[49] Young understood these dynamics. “If you are thinking about these long gas lines,” he noted, “one out of every eight gallons of gasoline sold in this nation comes from Nigeria...We are talking about the kind of realities that I think white folk can understand.”[50]
However, Carter’s team overestimated the continental utility of its outreach to black Africa. This initiative meant little in the face of stubborn regional rivalries and rapidly changing political dynamics in the Horn of Africa. East Africa remained an afterthought for the new administration, despite warnings from the CIA that “developments during the past year point towards increasing problems.”[51] The overthrow of longtime American partner Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia and the emergence of the increasingly radical Derg government, the Soviet construction of a naval base at Berbera, Somalia, and the increasing irredentism of Said Barre all suggested the Horn could become Africa’s next Cold War flashpoint.[52]
Somali Tanks Entering Ethiopia at the Start of the Ethiopian-Somali War, 1977-1978 (Blackpast.org)
These concerns were largely downplayed as fundamental questions went unanswered in planning.[53] How would the administration reconcile Carter’s rhetorical support for human rights and America’s Cold War imperatives amidst the revolution in Ethiopia? More importantly, how would the U.S. meet a future Soviet-Cuban challenge along the model of Angola?
Crisis in the Ogaden
The Carter administration’s initial East Africa policy rested on three assumptions: that Ethiopia’s new government would seek to sustain its relationship with the United States, that Moscow would continue to prioritize its current relationship with Somalia over a potential relationship with the Derg, and that East Africa represented a low priority for the Soviets.[54] The chaos of Ethiopia’s bloody revolution rapidly threatened to overturn those assumptions.
A mere two weeks before Carter’s inauguration, Mengistu Haile Mariam finally prevailed in a brutal internal power struggle in Ethiopia. However, Mengistu’s revolution faced insurgent challenges from Tigrays, Oromos, Eritreans, and Ogadens on the peripheries of the former Ethiopian empire. [55] The Eritrean region, which also hosted an American signals intelligence station at Kagnew, posed the most serious challenge.[56]
Facing an immense demand for military equipment to fight these insurgencies, Mengistu’s government sought to continue the arms supply from the United States, while simultaneously reaching out to Moscow and Havana for assistance. The Carter administration initially sought to continue arms shipments, albeit in a diminished quantity, in order to forestall Soviet influence. However, the Derg’s increasing human rights abuses in Eritrea posed problems for the Carter administration, who campaigned on grounding foreign policy in American values after the secrecy of the Nixon/Kissinger years. In Congressional testimony, U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance noted offhandedly that American assistance to Ethiopia was being reviewed for cancellation due to human rights abuses. This news surprised Ethiopia—and the rest of the U.S. government.[57] While this proposed cut represented a mere $1 million out of the $62 million provided annually to Ethiopia, the move sent a clear message to Addis Ababa about the future of the relationship.[58]
Fidel Castro and Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam (Nazret.com)
Meanwhile, in Somalia, President Siad Barre sensed the chaotic situation in neighboring Ethiopia offered an opportunity to achieve his territorial ambitions in the Ogaden region, home to thousands of ethnic Somalis. Mogadishu began preparations for a conventional invasion.[59] A major part of these preparations was diplomatic outreach to the United States to confirm whether Washington was interested in replacing Moscow as the primary arms supplier to Somalia. The prospect intrigued Carter from the outset. “Tell Cy [Vance] and Zbig [Brzezinski],” Carter instructed Vice President Walter Mondale, “that I want them to move in every possible way to get Somalia to be our friend.”[60] The situation was further complicated on 14 April 1977 when Mengistu plunged Ethiopia into the revolutionary chaos of the red terror campaign.[61] Days later, over the opposition of Defense Secretary Robert Brown, Carter ordered the closure of the Kagnew station and terminated military assistance to Ethiopia. Mengistu responded by expelling all Americans from the country by the end of the month.
Over the next several months, Carter’s plan for winning over Barre proceeded apace. Arms and funds began to flow to Mogadishu from a U.S. organized consortium of third parties that included Saudi Arabia and Egypt. By June, 1977, this group provided $21 million worth of small arms, enough to equip approximately 10,000 men, a third of Somalia’s Army. Moreover, the U.S. “agreed in principle to respond favorably to Somalia’s request” for $500 million in weapons in early July. [62] While the State Department attempted to subtly link the eventual arrival of defensive weapons to an end to the conflict in the Ogaden, the nuance in this messaging was totally lost on Somalia’s diplomats.[63]
Indeed, Barre misinterpreted these diplomatically delicate signals as an unambiguous endorsement of future U.S. arms shipments and moved to achieve his territorial goals by force. While U.S. intelligence warned on 13 July that “a general Somali mobilization is underway, and at least one of the three Somali army divisions is en route to the frontier,” Carter’s team failed to provide direct warnings or issue public statements to restrain the aggressive Barre.[64] As predicted, the Somali National Army (SNA) invaded the Ogaden days later.[65] In response to the Somali invasion, the State Department issued what one historian described as a “watered-down reprimand” of the illegal Somali invasion of Ethiopia. The National Security Council walked back a stronger Vance-supported draft that condemned the invasion in order to avoid alienating Barre, who Carter and Brzezinski believed might be finally pried out of the Soviet orbit.[66]
While the Soviets initially tried to maintain their influence with both sides and mediate the conflict, this approach did nothing to slow the Somali onslaught.[67] By August 1977, the Soviets came down publicly in support of Ethiopia. Declassified Soviet and Cuban documents shed some light on this decision. These archives illustrate that Soviet and Cuban leaders had grown frustrated by Barre’s behavior, and simultaneously impressed by what they saw as the genuine revolutionary zeal and potential of the more populous Ethiopia.[68]
Soviet support for Ethiopia enraged the mercurial Barre, who expelled all Soviet advisors from Somalia in November 1977.[69] In one of the more bizarre moments of the Cold War, Soviet and Cuban advisors flew directly from Mogadishu to Addis Ababa.[70] Again misinterpreting the mixed signals from Washington, Barre believed that this expulsion would open an instant and much-needed deluge of American arms.[71]
The Soviet decision to massively intervene in favor of the Ethiopians in the late fall of 1977 totally surprised the Carter administration.[72] Over 100,000 tons of Soviet aid,1,000 Soviet advisors and 17,000 Cuban combat troops flowed into Ethiopia.[73] In February, 1978 this internationalized force expelled the Somali National Army from the Ogaden. With his army in tatters, Barre repeated his calls for Western aid. Following a 24 February 1978 meeting of the National Security Council, Carter’s administration authorized third country arms transfers of U.S. weapons and direct supply of “some items of our own (trucks, etc.)” in the event the Ethiopian forces crossed into Somalia. However, it demurred from stronger actions proposed by Brzezinski, such as sending an aircraft carrier to the Gulf of Aden.[74] Carter’s team also sought to mobilize global and public opinion through “efforts to publicize more widely the Soviet and Cuban role in Ethiopia.”[75] However, this “naming and shaming,” approach only served to highlight America’s weakness in the face of another Soviet aggression in the Third World.[76]
A Collapse into Incoherence
The Ogaden crisis represented a serious embarrassment for the Carter administration, as the press lambasted their inability to stop “Jimmy Carter’s Angola.”[77] While the outcome of the crisis was less negative than the contemporary perception—the Soviets also gained little from their alliance with Ethiopia, which ended up as a massive drain on their already stretched treasury—the crisis nevertheless represented an unexpected public humiliation for the Carter administration.
Obsessed with southern Africa (where it excelled), the Carter administration never conceived a sound approach to either the revolution in Ethiopia or Somali irredentism in the context of the Cold War. This duality—success in set-piece issues and incoherence in unexpected crises—flowed from unresolved tensions within Carter’s own worldview between liberal principles and Cold War geopolitical goals.[78] In this unexpected situation, Carter’s team proved unable to reconcile the administration’s lofty rhetoric around human rights with the President’s own emphasis on Cold War imperatives, leading to mixed messaging from his foreign policy team and confusion abroad.
Archival documents illustrate that it was Carter himself, not Brzezinski, who drove America’s opportunistic moves to pry Somalia from the USSR’s orbit. However, Carter’s clumsy half-embrace of Barre ignored obvious warnings that the purpose of American arms was to help Somalia achieve its territorial ambitions.[79] While Carter achieved his narrow Cold War objectives by ejecting the Soviets from Berbera, the costs—another prestige-harming Soviet-Cuban intervention, a humanitarian disaster in the Horn, and the demise of higher policy priorities such as arms control—proved too high.[80] Moreover, interventionist minded leaders in Moscow, fresh from successes in Angola and Ethiopia, saw the arc of history in the Third World as bending their way, albeit with the assistance of Soviet military muscle. Karen Brutens, the Director of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, commented after the Cold War’s conclusion that “Angola, in combination with Ethiopia, was the way to Afghanistan.”[81]
Two Crises in Africa and the Death of Détente
Like the Nixon and Ford administrations, Carter’s team struggled to resolve the overlapping of regional dynamics with Cold War imperatives. The strategic planning documents of each administration foreshadowed difficulties in crisis management and rested on flawed assumptions. While Kissinger’s National Security Council assumed apartheid South Africa represented a viable regional buttress of American interests, Carter’s team naively assumed that by solving issues around majority rule in southern Africa, America could forestall potential Soviet challenges throughout the continent. Both strategies failed to appropriately account for clearly evident regional trends and local rivalries that stubbornly resisted subordination into broader Cold War narratives.
Détente also proved unhelpful as an intellectual framework to help policymakers organize and execute Cold War competition in Africa. Neither the Nixon/Ford administrations nor the Carter administration successfully articulated in strategic documents what détente meant for Africa. This absence of planning rendered America’s foreign policy apparatus unprepared to face two successive communist advances on the continent. Kissinger oversold détente’s value, while the Nixon Doctrine’s reliance on local proxies stumbled in the racially charged environment of southern Africa and proved vulnerable to counter-moves by Soviet proxies. Carter, meanwhile, was ambivalent about détente’s virtues, but failed to create a compelling alternative to guide American policy in Africa. Whereas Carter succeeded in southern Africa by aligning America with the right side of history in the long march towards majority rule, his administration stumbled incoherently through the Ogaden crisis, where being on the right side of history was about as useful as being on the right side of an earthquake.[82]
Neither administration had a clear conception of what it was willing to risk, via linkage or direct measures, to restrain Soviet and Cuban adventurism in Africa. The failure to address these hard questions in strategic planning all but ensured inchoate responses to these tough crises. Even when they desired to push back directly, both administrations struggled to find the right tools for the job. Diplomatic statements chiding Soviet and Cuban interventions only served to highlight America’s own weakness, while America’s hard power backbone—from covert action to economic aid to military assistance to outright military force—was badly depleted from Vietnam. Meanwhile, public confidence in the utility of American power in the Third World was equally bankrupt, leading to aggressive Congressional oversight of Africa policy.
By the end of the Carter administration, the American people felt that the Soviets and their Cuban comrades had used détente to steal a march on the United States in the Third World, from Angola to Ethiopia to Afghanistan, and were eager to embrace a new grand strategy to pushback against Communist aggression. This approach under President Ronald Reagan would make the 1980s the bloodiest decade of the Cold War in Africa.[83]
Sam Wilkins is an active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces officer with deployments to Somalia, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. Sam is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and is currently a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). These views are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, Johns Hopkins SAIS, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
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Header Image: Ethiopian soldiers walk towards Somalian army in the Ogaden desert during fights at the Somalian and Ethiopian border, on June 14, 1978, in a war for control over Ogaden. (AFP)
Notes:
[1] President Jimmy Carter, as quoted in Vanessa Walker and David Schmitz, “Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights: The Development of a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History Vol. 28, No.1 (January 2004), 113-143. This performance mirrored the Carter administration’s struggles in Latin America and elsewhere. Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010).
[2] In French, détente means “calm, relaxation, easing.” The ultimate aim of détente, according to Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, was to shape Soviet behavior to ultimately alter its conception of international relations and integrate it into normal international activity. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 275 and Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1982), 226.
[3] Louise Woodroofe, Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden: The United States, the Horn of Africa, and the Demise of Détente (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2013) and Sam Wilkins, “Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden: Lessons from an Obscure Cold War Flashpoint in Africa,” War on the Rocks, 6 September 2019. https://warontherocks.com/2019/09/buried-in-the-sands-of-the-ogaden-lessons-from-an-obscure-cold-war-flashpoint-in-africa/
[4] “National Security Study Memorandum 39,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXVIII, Southern Africa.
[5] The response to National Security Study Memorandum-39 also outlined the importance of South Africa to America’s economic and scientific interests. In fairness to the Nixon administration, easing tensions with South Africa’s apartheid regime was somewhat popular in 1969. Even liberal-minded thinkers like George Kennan, the author of the containment doctrine, supported efforts to stop what he called counter-productive efforts to isolate the white minority regime. See Edgar Lockwood, “National Security Study Memorandum 39 and the Future of US Policy Towards South Africa,” A Journal of Public Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974), 63-72 and Nancy Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2016), 39.
[6] Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 400 and Hal Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2014), 61.
[7] See “Richard Nixon and Ronald W. Reagan on 26 October 1971,” Conversation 013-008, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [Nixon Telephone Tapes 1971, ed. Ken Hughes] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), “Richard Nixon and William P. Rogers on 26 October 1971,” Conversation 013-012, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [Nixon Telephone Tapes 1971, ed. Ken Hughes] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), Tim Naftali, “Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation with Richard Nixon,” The Atlantic, 30 July, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/, and John Farrell “How Do You Explain Henry Kissinger?” The New York Times Review of Books, 28 April 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/review/barry-gewen-inevitability-of-tragedy-henry-kissinger.html
[8] Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa, 118.
[9] To be fair, these racially-informed attitudes were not confined to one political party. Towering figures of the Democratic establishment, such as former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and George Kennan, author of the containment doctrine, also advocated for warmer relations with southern Africa’s notorious white-minority regimes. Kennan, for example, wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1971 that the U.S. should stop “belaboring” its “gestures of goodwill and solidarity” towards Black Africans. George Kennan, “Hazardous Courses in Southern Africa, Foreign Affairs (Jan, 1971), https://www-jstor-org.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/stable/20037833?origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953-71 (Yale University Press, 1992), 36. See “Richard Nixon and Ronald W. Reagan on 26 October 1971,” Conversation 013-008, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [Nixon Telephone Tapes 1971, ed. Ken Hughes] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), “Richard Nixon and William P. Rogers on 26 October 1971,” Conversation 013-012, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [Nixon Telephone Tapes 1971, ed. Ken Hughes] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), Tim Naftali, “Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation with Richard Nixon,” The Atlantic, 30 July, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/.
[10] Upon hearing of delays in granting export licenses for “grey” or dual-use items to the South African Defense Forces and the Portuguese, Nixon ordered Kissinger to expedite their issuance. Kissinger promptly issued NDSM-81: “Implementation of Arms Embargo on South Africa and Portuguese African Territories,” where he spelled out the categories, and even some specific types of aircraft, that were and were not permissible. The Portuguese and South Africans widely flaunted these restrictions once they acquired aircraft. “NDSM-81: Implementation of Arms Embargo on South Africa and Portuguese African Territories,” Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Box H-208, August 17, 1970.
[11] Interestingly, there are no sub-sections or chapters dedicated to Africa policy in the first two volumes of Kissinger’s memoirs, totaling over 2,670 pages. Only in the finale of this trilogy, Years of Renewal, does he discuss Africa policy in any depth. Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (New York: Little Brown and Company, 1979), Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1982), and Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999).
[12] Kissinger’s frustrations with the African Affairs Bureau were legion. He routinely made the department the butt of jokes at larger departmental meetings as well as in interactions with foreign diplomats, Kissinger was known to refer to its officers as “retired Protestant missionaries,” and felt that they sought to abandon American interest on moral grounds. Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa, 28.
[13] Due to travel restrictions around COVID-19, a thorough in person examination of documents proved impossible. However, I did closely consult the archival documents available digitally through the Presidential libraries of Nixon and Ford, as well as the State Department’s digital archives that closely cover this period.
[14] Mitchell, Carter in Africa, 5.
[15] Westad, The Cold War, 482.
[16] South Africa’s apartheid government quickly recognized this peril. In a private session, its security council noted that “the Portuguese had been in effect the marcher barons of southern Africa, holding off the black tide, well away from the white heartlands.” Ibid., 31.
[17] “Intelligence Memorandum: The Present Military Situation in Angola,” 26 January, 1976, Declassified on 1 April, 2003. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T00353R000100240009-1.pdf
[18] As quoted in Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 237.
[19] As quoted in Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 236.
[20] Cuban involvement with the MPLA grew over time from financial support, to training, to niche capabilities such as artillery, to direct maneuver combat units. This involvement generally outpaced the Soviet presence. MPLA officials frequently complained to their Cuban interlocutors about the limited nature of the initial Soviet support. See Major Raúl Diaz Arguelles to Major Raúl Castro Ruz. “Report about my visit to Angola,” August 11, 1975, Memorandum, (Document from the Centro de Informacion de la Defensa de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, CIDFAR, [Center of Information of the Armed Forces]). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/gleijeses5.pdf
[21] The US Consul General in Luanda estimated that UNITA held only approximately 600-800 men at the time of independence. See Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 241.
[22] UNITA’s base of support was amongst the Ovimbundu tribe. While UNITA began the struggle as a left-wing organization, it would end the war aligned with South Africa and the western block. During the Reagan administration, UNITA hired lobbyist in DC in an effort to rebrand their group as “freedom fighters” pushing back against communism. The group was largely armed by the CCP during its early years. Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 673.
[23] See Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 904 and Isaacson, Kissinger, 681.
[24] Davis was Kissinger’s fourth Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, as he had removed the previous three.
[25] Isaacson, Kissinger, 677.
[26] Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 237.
[27] Seymour Hirsch, “Early Angola Aid by US Reported,” The New York Times, 19 December, 1975. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/12/19/archives/early-angola-aid-by-us-reported-officials-say-cia-received-approval.html
[28] “DIA Thom” as quoted in Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 268.
[29] Vorster’s regime expected significant returns from the Americans for their participation, including an end to the arms embargo and acceptance of South Africa’s “homelands” schemes. Westad, The Cold War, 231.
[30] On 15 August 1974, Castro cabled Brezhnev and pushed strenuously for additional support for the MPLA. Prior to this date, Cuban forces with the MPLA numbered approximately 150, and served as general staff officers at the MPLA’s military headquarters. By October, a Cuban artillery battalion was on the ground and played a critical fire support role in battles against the FNLA. However, large scale introduction of the Cuban troops remained dependent upon Soviet approval and airlift, which would not begin until early November. See Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 232 and Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 231.
[31] Overall relations between the two communist nations had been extremely chilled following the missile crisis. Brezhnev saw Cuban adventurism in Latin America as “dangerous” and likely harbored similar suspicions about Cuban involvement in Africa. Contemporary CIA analysts commented that “Brezhnev thinks Castro is some kind of idiot, and Castro probably isn’t too fond of Brezhnev either.” See Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, 52 and Westad, The Cold War, 233.
[32] Westad, The Global Cold War, 209.
[33] CIA personnel had already crossed the border into Angola for short duration operations, such as setting up radio stations, prior to this time. Isaacson, Kissinger, 678.
[34] The story, by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hirsch, also correctly linked the resignation of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Davis to Kissinger’s decisions in the Angola crisis. Seymour Hirsch, “Early Angola Aid by US Reported,” The New York Times, 19 December, 1975. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/12/19/archives/early-angola-aid-by-us-reported-officials-say-cia-received-approval.html
[35] Robert Gates, “Detailed Response to the Director’s Question on Angola and the Clark Amendment,” Central Intelligence Agency Office of the Deputy Director for Intelligence, 14 April, 1983, Declassified July, 2010. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T00287R000400320001-4.pdf
[36] Westad, The Global Cold War, 220.
[37] Gates, “Detailed Response to the Director’s Question on Angola,” 2.
[38] In South Africa, the horror of the Soweto riots illustrated the bankruptcy of apartheid for the American public in live color television. Leonard Thomson, A History of South Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
[39] However, significant portions of Republican voters still supported the apartheid regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia. After Kissinger reversed the Ford administration’s policy towards Rhodesia in a major speech in Luanda, then candidate Ronald Reagan made supporting the whites to prevent a “race war” in Southern Africa a major campaign theme. Many in the Ford campaign blamed Kissinger for their loss of the Texas primary to Reagan. R. Nicholas Burns et al, “Henry Kissinger: Negotiating Black Majority Rule in Southern Africa,” Harvard Kennedy School Working Paper Series, December, 2016. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/henry-kissinger-negotiating-black-majority-rule-southern-africa and Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa, 32.
[40] Isaacson, Kissinger, 685.
[41] Ibid., 686.
[42] Matthew Kroenig, The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy Versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
[43] No attempt was made to introduce a naval blockade. The State Department belatedly pressured some Caribbean islands to deny refueling permission to Cuban troop transports, but the efforts were too late to interdict the flow of troops to Angola.
[44] Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy, 82.
[45] Relations between Havana and Moscow plummeted after Khrushchev agreed to withdraw Soviet missiles from the island. Castro felt abandoned and betrayed, while crowds in Havana chanted “Nikita, you fairy, what you give you cannot take back.” Brands, Latin America’s Cold War, 51.
[46] Westad, The Cold War, 478.
[47] Secretary of State Cyrus Vance sharply criticized Kissinger’s Angola debacle. Kissinger’s failure “to focus on the local causes of the Angolan civil war, the profound nationalism of the Angolan forces of whatever ideological coloration, his insistence on viewing the struggle…as a battle in the larger East-West geopolitical competition” led the U.S. to disastrous policy outcomes, Vance later argued in his memoirs. Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 24.
[48] Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa, 140.
[49] In a 3 March, 1977 NSC meeting, Carter’s team pledged to engage actively to reach a settlement on the transition to majority rule in Rhodesia, while pressing South Africa to support both majority rule in its northern neighbor and end apartheid at home. In their initial planning, Carter administration officials, who would later famously fracture between Cold War hawks and doves, unanimously agreed that aligning the U.S. with the right side of history and against minority rule in Africa represented both a moral and strategic imperative. “Presidential Directive/NSC-5: Southern Africa,” 9 March 1977, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVI, Southern Africa.
[50] Young as quoted in Mitchell, Carter in Africa, 5.
[51] “CIA Memorandum: The Ethiopian Revolution and Its Implications, 28 March 1977),” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVII, Horn of Africa and Mitchell, Carter in Africa, 184.
[52] The word derg is Amharic for “committee.”
[53] In fairness, Carter’s NSC did lead a policy review of Horn of Africa-related issues under Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 21 that asked appropriate questions, such as “how and when to terminate U.S. utilization of Kagnew Station” and :whether to continue, reduce, or suspend U.S. economic and military aid programs in Ethiopia.” However, the subsequent responses to those inquiries were insufficient and failed to clarify and prepare the administration for the upcoming challenges in the Horn. “Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC-21, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVII, Horn of Africa.
[54] Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVII, Horn of Africa.
[55] Instability in Ethiopia presented Somalia with an opportunity to realize its dream of a “Greater Somalia” that incorporated ethnic Somalis living in Ethiopia. The regime of Siad Barre initially sought to achieve this goal through irregular warfare. By May 1977, Ogaden insurgents, armed and led by Somali Army officers, controlled the majority of the rural areas in the lowland Ogaden region. The CIA documented the Somali’s extensive arms supply and relationship with the Ogaden insurgents in “CIA Intelligence Memorandum: The Ogaden Situation,” 7 April, 1980, Declassified March, 2012. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP97S00289R000100190006-3.pdf. However, historian Adam Lockyer argues that the insurgency in the Ogaden, while armed and at times controlled by Mogadishu, represented an organic and politically independent movement. Adam Lockyer, “Opposing Foreign Intervention’s Impact on the Warfare in Civil Wars: the case of the Ethiopian-Ogaden Civil War, 1976–1980,” African Security, (Fall 2018), 181-199.
[56] While Nixon had ordered Kagnew closed in NSDM-231 by the end of 1974, with the exception of designated residual functions. Kagnew later emerged as a major headache for the Carter administration after several Kagnew-based U.S. contractors were kidnapped by Eritrean rebels. See “NDSM-231: Ethiopia – Kagnew Station and Military Assistance,” Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Box H-208, August 14, 1973.
[57] Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa, 45.
[58] However, in fairness to the Carter administration, at this time the Derg had already reached out to Moscow and Havana for aid, and was growing more radical without any inputs from Washington. While Moscow sent smaller levels of aid to Ethiopia than it sent to neighboring Somalia, Cuba proved more receptive. Castro himself traveled to Addis Abba in March, 1977, and the Cubans were impressed with the sincerity of the Ethiopian commitment to the revolutionary cause. Westad, The Global Cold War, 282.
[59] Ogaden Somalis make up one of the five points of the white star on Somalia’s national flag, symbolizing the depth of Somali belief in the need to unify Somalis living throughout the Horn. Gebru Tareke, “The Ethiopia Somalia War of 1977 Revisited,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 33, No.3 (2000), 635-667.
[60] Mitchell, Carter in Africa, 199.
[61] Mengitsu initiated the terror by smashing vials of blood on the balcony as he addressed a massive crowd. Ibid., 209.
[62] Ibid., 272.
[63] Woodruffe, Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden, 59.
[64] “Memorandum from Secretary of State Vance to President Carter, 13 July 1977,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVIII, Horn of Africa, Part I.
[65] Ethiopian documents state that invasion began at 0300 on 13 July, while most narratives hold that the conventional invasion began on 23 July. Given the widespread use of SNA soldiers in irregular warfare, this date is less important than it may initially appear. Tareke, “Ogaden Reconsidered,” 640.
[66] Woodruffe, Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden, 64.
[67] Mengistu visited Moscow in May 1977 as the Soviets attempted to strengthen their ties with Addis Ababa while simultaneously maintain the relationship with Barre. However, the SNA’s military successes strained this approach, as many in Ethiopia began to blame the Soviets for their support to Mogadishu and inability to restrain Barre. Moreover, according to declassified Soviet documents, Soviet intelligence had learned of the budding arms relationship between Somalia and the Arab states. Radoslav Yordanov, The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War (Lanham, Lexington Books, 2016), 186.
[68] The author was unable to travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, see Yordanov, The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa During the Cold War, 186 and Westad, The Global Cold War, 280.
[69] Westad, The Global Cold War, 273.
[70] Vordanov, The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War, 184.
[71] Carter considered modifying U.S. assistance following the invasion, but ultimately demurred. In August, 1977, he reviewed a Memorandum from Acting Secretary of State Christopher entitled “Situation in the Ogaden” that reviewed the decision not to supply arms to Barre. Carter personally wrote in the margins of this memorandum “ok –I’m not sure what we should do – best to minimize military aid – probably.” State Department officials subsequently explained to a visiting Somali delegation that arms shipments would have to be delayed “until stability had returned to the Ogaden.” “Memorandum from Acting Secretary of State Christopher to President Carter, 3 August 1977,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVIII, Horn of Africa, Part I.
[72] Woodruffe, Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden, 77.
[73] The Soviet airlift represented a herculean logistical effort that involved over 225 heavy transport aircraft, a full 15 percent of the total Soviet stock, as well as 50 ships, which sailed through the Suez Canal. American 6th and 7th Fleets, as well as allied intelligence, detected much of the effort, but did not fully comprehend the scale of the assistance for approximately two weeks. Yordanov, The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa, 192.
[74] The issue of the dispatch of the aircraft carrier was considered during the 24 February NSC meeting, however, according to the transcript of the meeting, “the President did not approve at this time the deployment of a US aircraft carrier into the area but indicated willingness to consider moving a carrier closer to the area – for example, Diego Garcia. “Record of a Special Coordination Committee Meeting, 2 March, 1978” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume XVIII, Horn of Africa, Part I.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Bernard Gwertzman, “Carter Says West Can’t Ignore Moves by Soviets in Africa,” The New York Times, 31 May, 1978.
[77] Dan Oberdorfer, “The Superpowers and the Ogaden War,” The Washington Post, 5 March, 1978.
[78] This pattern mirrored his administration’s performance in other areas, such as Latin America, Middle East Peace, and Iran. Where Carter’s team had a pre-set plan, such as Middle East Peace, the Panama Canal, and Southern Africa, they excelled. In ad hoc situations, such as the Iran hostage crisis and the fall of the Nicaraguan government to the Sandinistas, Carter’s team struggled. Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa, 10.
[79] Direct statements from Somalia’s Ambassador to the U.S. and utterances from Barre himself to the U.S. Ambassador in Mogadishu clearly indicated the rationale for Barre’s outreach. Woodroofe, Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden, 60.
[80] The cost for the region would be felt for decades. The Derg’s mismanagement caused massive famines in Ethiopia, while Barre’s dictatorial nature, and debts from the war, isolated many clans and started the decades long civil war in Somalia, which has not had a true central government since 1988.
[81] Brutens quoted in Westad, The Cold War, 494.
[82] While this is a common retort, Michael Doran employed a version of this “right side of history/right side of an earthquake” phrase in his work on Eisenhower’s Middle East policy, and would employ it as a rhetorical device to attack the Obama administration’s handling of the Arab Spring. See Michael Doran, Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East (New York: Free Press, 2016).
[83] Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Cold War’s Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (New York: Harper Collins, 2018), 361.