V o L u m e I : a d

Neither the commitment of more troops, the use of chemical weapons,

nor the replacement of the unpopular Kemal could bring Moscow any closer

to victory. Accordingly, by 1986 the Soviet leadership, now headed by the

reformist General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, began contemplating ways

of extricating itself from what many observers characterized as the “Soviet

Union’s Vietnam.”

In April 1988, Gorbachev agreed to a United Nations mediation proposal

providing for the withdrawal of Soviet troops over a ten-month period. One

month later the departure of Soviet military forces, which had grown to an

estimated 115,000 troops, commenced—a process that was finally completed

in February 1989.

Although the Soviets left Afghanistan with a procommunist regime, a

team of military advisors, and substantial quantities of equipment, the nine

years’ war had exacted a high toll, costing the Soviets an estimated 50,000

casualties. It seriously damaged the Red Army’s military reputation, further

undermining the legitimacy of the Soviet system, and nearly bankrupted the

Kremlin. For the Afghans, the war proved equally costly. An estimated 1 mil-

lion civilians were dead, and another 5 million were refugees. Much of the

country was devastated.

Bruce J. DeHart

See also

Afghanistan; Brezhnev, Leonid; Carter, James Earl, Jr.; Carter Doctrine; Détente;

Gorbachev, Mikhail; Olympic Games and Politics; Reagan, Ronald Wilson;

Soviet Union; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and Treaties; Strategic Defense

Initiative

References

Hauner, Milan. The Soviet War in Afghanistan: Patterns of Russian Imperialism. Lanham,

MD: University Press of America, 1991.

Judge, Edward, and John W. Langdon, eds. The Cold War: A History through Documents.

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.

MacKenzie, David. From Messianism to Collapse: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1991. Fort

Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1994.

Russian General Staff. The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost.

Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002.

The Cold War in Africa commenced with the end of the colonial era, con-

tinued through Africa’s independence movements, and finally ended in the

postcolonial period. The Soviet Union linked African national liberation

movements to its own Marxist-Leninist ideology in order to gain a foothold

in the continent. The United States, on the other hand, responded fitfully

and belatedly to African decolonization. In 1945 the African continent con-

tained a population of perhaps 224 million people.

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Africa

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Individual African states—and regions—were an important component

in the geopolitical chess match between the United States and the USSR,

but not until later in the Cold War. From the late 1950s to the late 1970s, the

United States purposely played a secondary role to that of the Europeans in

Africa. During President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term (1957–1961),

the U.S. National Security Council proposed a “division of labor” for the

developing world; the Europeans would be responsible for Africa, while the

United States would play the dominant role in Latin America. The White

House, in particular, expected France to police francophone Africa, while

Great Britain would take the lead in southern Africa. Nonetheless, it was also

the Eisenhower administration that created the Bureau of African Affairs

within the U.S. Department of State. In 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy

presciently warned of growing communist influence in Africa. As the Cold

War advanced, African countries became labeled as either pro-Soviet or pro-

American. A shorthand for this dichotomy was membership in either the rel-

atively radical Casablanca Group, led by Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah,

or membership in the more pro-West Monrovia Group.

From 1981 to 1988, U.S. military aid to sub-Saharan Africa amounted to

about $1 billion. During the latter days of the Cold War, American aid became

indistinguishable from U.S. geopolitical aims. Pro-Western governments

such as the one in Senegal under President Abdou Diouf received aid, for

instance, while Marxist governments such as President Didier Ratsiraka’s of

Madagascar did not. The United States routinely tied its aid to African nations

to their geopolitical importance.

Generally speaking, America’s Cold War geopolitical interests in sub-

Saharan Africa were narrow in scope, but where the commitment existed it

ran deep and often manifested itself in covert activity. Three regions deserve

special mention: the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia), where an

intense superpower rivalry played out; Zaire (Democratic Republic of the

Congo), one of the earliest battlegrounds of Cold War rivalry; and southern

Africa, where the superpowers fought a proxy war in Angola and where they

were directly or indirectly involved in an intricately latticed struggle for inde-

pendence and freedom in Mozambique, Namibia, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe),

and South Africa.

The Horn of Africa is comprised of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Djibouti.

Because it adjoins the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, flanks the oil-rich

states of Arabia, controls the Bab-el-Maneb Straits (an important choke point

for oil), and overlooks the passages where the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and

the Indian Ocean converge, it was a very important piece in the Cold War

geopolitical chess game. The competition between the United States and

the Soviet Union in the Horn was intense, and their policies were analogous,

if obviously in direct competition. American policy there was grounded on

four principles: the economic security of the West (i.e., oil), stability and secu-

rity in the Middle East and in the Horn, the ability to block Soviet attempts

to choke Western oil lanes, and keeping the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean

open for Israeli and Israel-bound shipping. The Soviet strategy in the Horn

was predicated upon strategic deterrence, naval presence, sea denial or sea

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