The London School of Economics and Political Science Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States and the Cold War, 1964- 1981 Götz Bechtolsheimer A thesis submitted to the Department of International History of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, March 2012 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 99,332 words. 2 Abstract On the 25th November 1965 Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu staged a bloodless coup to take charge of the political turmoil in recently independent Congo and establish one of the most brutal and corrupt dictatorships in modern African history. This thesis explores the story of the American hand both in Mobutu’s fortuitous rise and its subsequent sustenance of his regime in the name of its geostrategic Cold War agenda. Spanning the administrations of four presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter, this study considers the effects of the American Mobutu alliance on Congo and how its relationship with the Congolese leader in turn shaped the American approach towards the wider region and, ultimately, defined its Cold War in Africa. The thesis begins with the CIA-organised mercenary suppression of the Simba rebellion from 1964 to 1965, before offering a detailed analysis of the American role in bringing Mobutu to the helm of Congolese politics and ensuring the survival of his initially tenuous grasp on power. Having consolidated his grip on Congo, subsequent chapters investigate the American role in the establishment of the Mobutist ‘State Kleptocracy’, the part played by the Kinshasa despot in defining the American stand in the Angolan Civil War and, despite the by now obvious shortcomings of its Congo alliance, the Carter administration’s continued support for Mobutu when his regime was threatened by violent dissent once more. As such, this thesis aims to give a more comprehensive and detailed picture of the American Cold War alliance with Congo’s profligate dictator from 1964 to 1981. 3 Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States and the Cold War, 1964- 1981 Table of Content Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..p. 5 Chapter 1: Lyndon B. Johnson Faces Congo…………………………………….p. 24 Chapter 2: Clandestine King-Making: Lyndon B. Johnson and the Rise of Mobutu……………….…...p. 63 Chapter 3: Follies of Grandeur: Richard Nixon and Mobutu’s Congo………………………….……p. 87 Chapter 4: Breakfast with Mobutu: Kissinger, Congo and Defeat in Angola………..…………..…..p. 127 Chapter 5: Ambivalence and Continuity: Jimmy Carter and Mobutu’s Congo……....………………….......p. 168 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………p. 227 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………p. 235 4 Introduction 5 From the raids of the early Portuguese slave traders to King Leopold’s abusive personal colonial fiefdom and beyond Mobutu’s rapacious rule into the present; the history of foreign meddling in Congo1 remains a grim but seldom told tale of human tragedy the dimensions of which have rarely been paralleled even in Africa’s troubled past. Congo has consistently ranked as one of the front-runners on the Failed State Index in recent years.2 Fifteen years of violence (including Congo’s two wars in 1996-97 and 1998-2003 respectively) have killed some five million people with millions more displaced.3 Even today, the country is beset by corruption (the electoral fraud of the November 2011 election- only the second genuine national election since 1960- is but the most immediate example of this) while the population at large languishes in extreme poverty.4 Despite the official cessation of war some eight years ago, the abuses of local militias and the national army in the historically neglected Kivus in eastern Congo continue to include plunder, murder and extreme acts of sexual violence. Contemporary analysts and political scientists commenting on the roots of today’s seemingly perpetual crisis usually attribute the absence of a functioning state apparatus to the decay bequeathed by the Mobutu regime. These brief asides do not do justice, however, to the complex circumstances following Congolese independence that saw Mobutu rise to the helm of Congolese politics, create his peculiar version of a totalitarian state and amass a personal fortune estimated at some five billion dollars by the early 1990s against the backdrop of the Cold War superpower struggle in Africa.5 The odds were stacked against the successful development of an independent, prosperous and unified Congo even before the emergence of Mobutu as a political force. The arbitrary borders of the colonial era bequeathed a seemingly unworkable geography that has not been successfully mastered by democratic government into the present. The largest country by surface area in Sub-Saharan Africa, this vast territory of over two million square kilometres contains more than two-hundred- 1 The territory under consideration has endured a number of labels from Leopold’s ‘Congo Free State’, ‘Belgian Congo’, ‘Republic of Congo’ in 1960 to Mobutu’s ‘Zaire’ and into today’s ‘Democratic Republic of Congo’. For the purposes here, simply ‘Congo’ will be used throughout (except when quoting directly from documents or secondary texts). 2www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/17/2011_failed_states_index_interactive_map_and_rankin gs 3 International Crisis Group, No Stability in the Kivus, Africa Report No. 165, 16th November 2010; Human Rights Watch, Soldiers Who Rape, Commanders Who Condone July 2009; United Nations Security Council, Report of the Secretary General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 12th May 2011; Lacaille, Guillaume & Paddon, Emily, ‘Stabilising Congo’ Forced Migration Policy Briefing 8, December 2011 (Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford) 4 www.cartercenter.org/news/publications/election_reports.html#drc 5 Paul Nugent, Africa Since Independence (Palgrave MacMillan; Basingstoke, 2004) p. 236 6 and-fifty ethnic groups divided by a similar number of languages and local dialects.6 Furthermore, with only a forty-five kilometre coastline, an essentially land locked treasure chest of copper, uranium, gold, tin, cobalt, tantalum and industrial diamonds has struggled with what development economists have termed the ‘Resource Trap’.7 Added to this mix was the particularly brutal history of Western intervention. Three centuries of trans-Atlantic slave trading, the cruel chapter of the ‘Bula Matari’ exploitation under King Leopold II and the hasty and incomplete decolonisation from paternalistic Belgian colonial rule all contributed to Congo’s troubles even before the Cold War intrigues that followed independence.8 On 23rd September 1960, Kwame Nkrumah heralded the ‘momentous impact of Africa’s awakening upon the modern world’ at the United Nations General Assembly as sixteen former African colonies gained admission to the world body.9 1960 was to be the ‘Year of Africa’ as these countries followed the Ghanaian example of three years earlier and finally gained independence from respective French, British and Belgian rule. With the notable exception of the Algerian War, the first tide of decolonisation was a relatively peaceful affair as the former colonists sought to accommodate the growing African nationalist clamour in the hope of protecting their substantial economic interests on the continent and retaining political influence, if indirectly, on their former charges. Soon, however, events in Congo would stain Nkrumah’s optimistic pan-African dream as it became clear that both the old European order and the Cold War superpowers viewed this ‘African awakening’ as much as a danger to be managed as an opportunity to be exploited.10 The Belgian-abetted secession of the mineral rich Katanga province and the desperate pleas of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s ill-fated first Prime Minister, initially to the unresponsive United States and then to the Soviet Union for help in preserving Congo’s territorial integrity and political sovereignty brought the Cold 6 Roughly the size of Spain, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden; Congo was the second largest country by surface area in Sub-Saharan Africa until the independence of Southern Sudan from Sudan in 2011. 7 Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion (Oxford University Press, 2008) 8 ‘Bula Matari’ (or breaker of rocks) was the name given to the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, commissioned by Leopold II, for his cruel methods and soon became a synonym for the entire colonial state. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (MacMillan, 1999); Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa, 1876-1912 (George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991); H.M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Volume I & II (Harper Brothers; New York, 1879) 9 Samuel Obeng, Selected Speeches of Kwame Nkrumah Vol. 1(Afram Publications; Accra, 1979) pp.156-186 10 The African brands of socialism espoused by the likes of Guinea’s