The "Tar Baby" Option: American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia
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The "tar baby" option: American policy toward Southern Rhodesia http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp2b20030 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org The "tar baby" option: American policy toward Southern Rhodesia Author/Creator Lake, Anthony Publisher Columbia University Press (New York) Date 1976 Resource type Books Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) Zimbabwe, United States Coverage (temporal) 1965 - 1974 Source Northwestern University Libraries, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, 968.9104 L192t Rights By kind permission of Anthony Lake and Columbia University Press. Description This study of U.S. policy toward white Rhodesia, based on extensive interviews with U.S. officials, covers the initial U.S. reaction to the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the shift to relaxation of sanctions by the Nixon administration, and the open violation of United Nations sanctions mandated by Congress in the Byrd Amendment in 1971. It also covers subsequent efforts by activist groups and members of congress to repeal the Byrd Amendment. Format extent 344 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp2b20030 http://www.aluka.org Northwestern University LIBRARY Evanston, Illinois The "Tar Baby" Option American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia I The "Tar Baby" Option American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia ANTHONY LAKE (.. A Study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace New York Columbia University Press 1976 Afri Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lake, Anthony. The "tar baby" option. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. United States-Foreign relations-Rhodesia, Southern. 2. Rhodesia, Southern-Foreign relationsUnited States. 3. United States- Foreign economic relations-Rhodesia, Southern. 4. Rhodesia, SouthernForeign economic relations-United States. 5. Rhodesia, Southern-Politics and government-1966- I. Title. E183.8.R5L34 327.73'0689'1 76-2455 ISBN 0-231-04066-0 ISBN 0-231-04067-9 pbk. Columbia University Press New York Guildford, Surrey Copyright © 1973, 1976 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Printed in the United States of America Contents Foreword by Thomas L. Hughes vii Preface xi 1 Southern Rhodesia: Two Nations in Search of a State 1 2 Dilemmas and Compromises: The International Responses to UDI 35 3 American Policy, 1965-1968: The Necessity for Compromise! 60 4 "Tar Baby": The Shift in Approach, 1969-70 123 5 Business As Usual: Assorted Activities Violating Sanctions 158 6TheByrdAmendment 198 7 Irony in Chrome: The Consequences of the Byrd Amendment 239 8 To Repeal a Policy 270 Appendix 1 United Nations Resolutions on Rhodesia 287 Appendix 2 Executive Order 11322 295 Appendix 3 Executive Order 11419 298 Bibliographical Notes 301 Index 307 Foreword Perhaps it is true that the United States has never really had an Africa policy. But it is also true that if you have seen one Africa policy, you have not seen them all. As Anthony Lake makes clear in his book, however uninspiring or humdrum our Africa policy may have been before 1969, at least it was not conspicuously wrongheaded, immoral, or illegal. How we went about squandering our limited assets and achieving all three of these latter reputations in recent years in our handling of Southern Rhodesia issues is the subject of this insightful account. President Nixon's decision to choose the "Tar Baby" option was explicitly based on the now obvious miscalculation that when it came to control of the brittle societies of southern Africa the "whites are here to stay." That assumption underlay the White House's decision to stay on too, out in front, with the decrepit Portuguese colonial regime right through the last week of Portugal's 500-year plan for Africa. Only after the old regime in Lisbon was exiled, and Portuguese withdrawal from Mozambique and Angola was underway, did Washington go through its ineffectual last-minute motions to accuse Congress of "losing" Angola by cutting off disparate, small-scale, covert funding. Meanwhile America's new Africa policy was already further discredited by appearing to be publicly guilty by association with a white South African military adventure inside Angola. The recent miserable Angolan side of the Tar Baby story was a sequel to a longer, sadder, but equally tawdry account of viii Foreword how Washington turned away from its moderate Rhodesian policy of the 1960s. The latter, which had uneasily but not disgracefully combined both the pro- African and pro-British wings of an anti-Salisbury posture, was cast aside in favor of deliberate moves toward "communication" with the white rebel regime. This was consistent with expanded contacts with white governments, relaxed arms sales policies toward Lisbon and Pretoria, benign neglect at the UN, the authorized violation of sanctions, and the temptations toward "business as usual" with the white regimes. The Tar Baby tilt was recommended by the Nixon NSC staff, approved by Dr. Kissinger, and secretly adopted by the President in the winter of 1969-70. As described by Anthony Lake, it resulted over the next five years in a striking display of four kinds of interacting politics on Southern Rhodesian issues: (1) regular private meetings between the NSC Africa staffer and the Washington representative of the racist Rhodesian regime; (2) unremitting bureaucratic politics inside the Executive Branch, usually pitting a skeptical State Department against an assertive White House; (3) persistent congressional politics against a divided Executive Branch which allowed the pro-Byrd Amendment pressures to succeed in officially positioning the United States before the world in violation of UN sanctions and international law; and (4) a dramatic handsacross-the-sea vignette of international partisan politics as the then-leader of the British Opposition attempted to lobby against the British government inside the White House on the symbolic issue of withdrawing the American consulate in Southern Rhodesia in the spring of 1970. All of these elements, and more, are detailed by Anthony Lake in this fascinating study of America's recent Southern Rhodesian policy. The book contains much new material. In the chapters on sanctions, Lake's account shows how the United States Executive and Congress alike succumbed to short-sighted lobbying. In the process we moved from one of the two best records on the enforcement of sanctions against Foreword ix Southern Rhodesia to become one of only three members of the United Nations (along with Portugal and South Africa) which, as a matter of official policy, allowed the import of Rhodesian goods in violation of international law. The decision to violate sanctions was, at first glance, limited to a relatively small country of little importance to the United States. But the decision has far-reaching implications. The most dire and immeasurable effect is the possibility that United States actions may have contributed to the continued suppression of the 95 percent by the 5 percent-of five million African blacks by 250,000 whites. That prospect does not bode well for U.S. relations with a future black Rhodesian government. It has right along been a major source of friction between the United States and independent African countries. But beyond that, the United States action has important implications for the remainder of southern Africa. During 1975, even South Africa recognized that failure to resolve the Rhodesian problem peacefully at an early date reduced the chances of a peaceful solution to black/white confrontations over Namibia and South Africa. Finally, there is the adverse effect on the development and strength of the United Nations and of respect for international law. For the United States, respect for both was obviously secondary when it came to sanctions, but Washington thereby may well have contributed to the further weakening of institutions which it may find useful if not essential in the future. How the United States decides and acts when faced with a choice between narrow short-term business and other pressures and broader considerations of the national interest has been a major issue in the debate about what is wrong with American foreign policy and, indeed, about what ails the United States in its 200th year. A number of Endowment publications from our Humanitarian Studies Program have also examined these policy questions with the objective of contributing to a better understanding of the issues involved. The issues themselves are seldom seen in better focus than in this x Foreword account from our Special Rhodesia Project about the combined White House- congressional willingness to tilt toward this pariah state in southern Africa. Anthony Lake directed the Special Rhodesia Project for the Endowment during 1972-74. A Foreign Service Officer from 1962 to 1970, he served in Vietnam, in the Department of State, and, in 1969-70, as Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. Currently, Anthony Lake is Executive Director of International Voluntary Services, a private multinational development organization.