The Challenge of Western Neutralism during the Cold War Britain and the Buildup of a Nigerian Air Force ✣ Marco Wyss Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/20/2/99/699411/jcws_a_00817.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 Introduction On 22 January 1962, the British and Nigerian governments announced that they had agreed to abrogate the Anglo-Nigerian Defense Agreement, which had been signed only a year earlier upon Nigeria’s independence.1 This dra- matic move was supposed to protect and strengthen the pro-British govern- ment of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, which, because of its pro-Western stance in general and the defence agreement with Britain in particular, had faced in- creasingly strong opposition in the Nigerian parliament and on the streets of Lagos, as well as criticism from other African states.2 The abrogation was welcomed by the domestic opposition, which was dominated by the Action Group, the Nigerian Youth Congress, and the National Union of Nigerian Students. Not only was termination of the agreement considered “a blow against neo-colonialism,” but the opposition also rejoiced that the major ob- stacle to “the declared policy of the Federal Government of ‘non-alignment’ in foreign matters” had been removed.3 According to the West German am- bassador in Lagos, Harald Count von Posadowsky-Wehner, it was instructive that the defence agreement was seen as a neocolonial scheme that conflicted 1. Defence Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and North- ern Ireland and the Government of the Federation of Nigeria, 5 January 1961, in The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNAUK), DO 118/218. On the abrogation, see “Defence Pact Ab- rogated,” West African Pilot (Lagos), Vol. 25, No. 7,402 (22 January 1962), p. 1, in National Archives of Nigeria Ibadan, University of Ibadan (NANI), Newspapers. 2. “Defence Pact Scrapped,” Nigerian Morning Post (Lagos), Vol. 1, No. 96 (22 January 1962), p. 1, in NANI, Newspapers. On this aspect of the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Agreement more generally, see Marco Wyss, “A Post-imperial Cold War Paradox: The Anglo-Nigerian Defence Agreement, 1958– 1962,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 44, No. 6 (2016), pp. 976–1000. 3. “Defence Pact Reactions,” West African Pilot, Vol. 25, No. 7,403 (23 January 1962), p. 8, in NANI, Newspapers. Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 20, No. 2, Spring 2018, pp. 99–128, doi:10.1162/jcws_a_00817 © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 99 Wyss with the principle of nonalignment. In his view, “with this agreement im- mediately after independence,” Britain had “demonstrated little psychological empathy.”4 Only a year-and-a-half after this watershed in Anglo-Nigerian relations, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) became responsible for the buildup of the Nigerian air force. This was made possible by Britain’s diminishing in- fluence on Nigerian defense in the wake of the abrogation of the defence agree- ment and by Nigeria’s increasingly strong neutralism, which induced Lagos to Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/20/2/99/699411/jcws_a_00817.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 search for alternative sources of military assistance. Thanks to several factors— the inability of Commonwealth countries other than Britain to replace British military know-how and hardware, the Western outlook of the Nigerian gov- ernment, the fact that Germany’s colonial past seemed long behind, and the long-standing German tradition of military prowess—the FRG by mid-1963 had become responsible for Nigeria’s third armed service. This was a setback for the British, who had fully expected that the Nigerians would turn to their “mother country” and the Royal Air Force (RAF) when seeking to establish an air force. This scenario was clearly envisaged in the Anglo-Nigerian Defense Agreement. After the agreement was annulled, UK officials had still expected that through military assistance they could maintain a British security role and interests in Nigeria. Moreover, despite the “failure” of the formal defense relationship, the British and Nigerian governments promised each other they would remain faithful to the spirit and main clauses of the defence agree- ment.5 The press release on the abrogation had stated that “each Government will, however, endeavour to afford the other at all times such assistance and facilities in defence matters as are appropriate between partners in the Com- monwealth.”6 In response to this press release, the opposition, notably Action Group leader Obafemi Awolowo, was quick to exclaim that the “military al- liance with Britain is not yet completely broken” and that “its spirit remains and lives on.”7 In this climate, and with nonalignment on the rise in the Third World, Lagos wanted to demonstrate that it was living up to its proclaimed foreign 4. Anglo-nigerianisches Verteidigungsabkommen, Posadowsky-Wehner (German Embassy Lagos), 23 January 1962, in Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin (PA/AA), B14, 81.04, 737. 5. Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to Antony Head (UK High Commission Lagos; hereinafter Lagos), n.d., in TNAUK, AIR 19/1023; and Head (Lagos) to Balewa, 20 January 1962, in TNAUK, DO 195/105. 6. Abrogation of U.K. Defence Agreement, Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), 22 January 1962, in TNAUK, AIR 19/1023. 7. C. Chijiado, “AG Congress Begins at Jos: Awolowo Drops a Bomb: Says Defence Pact Not Totally Off,” Nigerian Morning Post (Lagos), Vol. 1, No. 107 (3 February 1962), p. 1, in NANI, Newspapers. 100 Britain and the Buildup of a Nigerian Air Force policy of nonalignment by reducing its defense ties with London.8 In Nige- ria, however, the British faced a variant of neutralism that was—at least at the governmental level—anti-Communist and pro-Western, albeit as marked by anti-colonial and African solidarity sentiments as it was by the Cold War struggle. This helps to explain why Lagos turned to another Western coun- try, one that was neither a colonial power nor a superpower, rather than the Soviet Union or another East-bloc country, as an alternative to British mili- tary assistance. The possibility that newly independent African countries like Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/20/2/99/699411/jcws_a_00817.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 Nigeria might turn to the Soviet bloc for weapons and military training hung like a Damoclean sword over the head of British policymakers. In the wake of decolonization, the Cold War had arrived in Africa.9 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s calls for an offensive in the Third World were followed by deeds. As the first African countries gained independence in the late 1950s, the Soviet Union tried to establish a foothold on the continent. The Soviet Union ben- efited from France’s decision to sever relations with Guinea after the govern- ment there rejected General Charles de Gaulle’s Franco-African Community. Soviet leaders also benefited from Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah’s anti-colonial and at times anti-Western Pan-Africanist agenda and Congolese President Patrice Lumumba’s disillusionment with the United Nations (UN) and the Western powers, especially the United States. As a result, by the be- ginning of the 1960s, the Soviet Union had made important inroads into West Africa, notably in Guinea, Ghana, the Congo, and, after the breakup of the Mali Federation (i.e., Senegal and the Sudanese Republic), Mali.10 This inevitably led to heavier involvement by the United States, which responded with extensive development aid, force (notably in the Congo), and even a charm offensive by President John F. Kennedy to forestall and roll back Soviet advances on the African continent.11 Nonetheless, the Soviet Union was not the only Communist country the United States and the former colonial powers confronted in Africa. In 8. Mark Atwood Lawrence, “The Rise and Fall of Nonalignment,” in Robert J. McMahon, ed., The Cold War in the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 143–145. 9. For overviews of the Cold War in Africa, see Jeffrey James Byrne, “Africa’s Cold War,” in McMahon, ed., The Cold War in the Third World, pp. 101–123; and Elizabeth Schmidt, “Africa,” in Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 265–285. 10. Sergey Mazov, A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956– 1964 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). See also Robert Legvold, Soviet Policy in West Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). 11. See, for instance, Philip E. Muehlenbeck, Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy’s Courting of African Nationalist Leaders (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Lise Namikas, Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo, 1960–1965 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). 101 Wyss addition to China’s growing involvement after the Sino-Soviet split, the So- viet Union was closely supported by some of its East European satellites, espe- cially Czechoslovakia.12 Loyal to Moscow and in pursuit of economic oppor- tunities, international legitimacy, and Communist ideals, the Czechoslovak government became heavily involved in Africa. Drawing on Czechoslovakia’s industrial base and historical experience of Africa, the authorities in Prague became important partners for several African states, especially the so-called “radical” ones. Starting in the late 1950s and thanks to a well-developed arma- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/20/2/99/699411/jcws_a_00817.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 ments industry, Czechoslovakia became a significant source of weapons ship- ments to Guinea, Mali, and Ghana, notably in the field of military aviation.13 Because supplies from Czechoslovakia tended to arouse less suspicion than those from the USSR, the Czechoslovak government by the mid-1960s also began to establish military relationships with “conservative” African states, no- tably with Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Morocco.