“A few acres of asphalt”

When looking at the origins of US policy towards the decolonization of Angola, what emerges is that, as a general rule, Washington seemed never to doubt the stability and staying power of Salazar’s regime and even that of Caetano. To the US, Angola was, almost to the very end, Portuguese. Therefore, what significantly determined US policy towards Angola were also the critical factors that governed US relations with Portugal. First and foremost among these was the importance of the Azores islands to US military and strategic interests.

Dean Acheson described the Lajes base as the single most important US base anywhere. In 1949, a CIA report prepared for Truman pointed out that:

The use of the air and naval facilities on the Azores would be extremely desirable in case of war with the Soviet Union.[i][i]

The logistical importance of these mid-Atlantic airbases for military traffic between the United States and Europe became critical. Their importance was demonstrated during the Berlin crisis in 1961. During that year, the airbases on the islands of Terceira (Lajes) and Santa Maria handled 14,000 departures (more than 40 flights a day). This weight of traffic underlined the importance of the bases for a general airlift of US troops, under girding the capacity of US strategic extension globally and particularly to Europe and the Middle East. Furthermore, US facilities on the islands enabled the tracking of submarines within a radius of 1,000 miles, a capability the Pentagon saw as essential to counter the burgeoning Soviet navy. Last but not least, the Azores provided the United States with naval facilities, midpoint between the Sixth Fleet stationed in the Mediterranean and its major supply depots on the east coast of the United States. According to a memorandum sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the State Department in 1963, ‘Loss of the Azores would seriously degrade the responsiveness, reliability and control of major US forces’.[ii][ii]

The wind of change

While Portugal loomed importantly for the US military and for the architects of European security, it stood inconveniently in the way of the efforts of those inside the Kennedy administration seeking to court the developing world and particularly the newly emerging African nations. Aware of the new world that was taking shape, some sought to establish from the beginning the influence of the United States among the new African nations emerging from European colonialism. The United States' ties to Portugal, which stubbornly refused to even consider the possibility of independence for its territories, seriously compromised this policy. Schlesinger believed that Kennedy was effective ‘...in making his African visitors understand the American dilemma over the Azores base [which] limited the harm that restraint on the Portuguese colonies did to our general position in Africa’.[iii][iii] Kennedy wrote in 1960: ‘We cannot continue to think of Africa solely in terms of Europe’.[iv][iv] According to Sorenson, Kennedy would rather have given up the Azores bases altogether than to have allowed Portugal to dictate his African policy.[v][v]

In April 1961, in the wake of the anti-colonial uprising and subsequent colonial backlash in Angola, the General Assembly approved resolution 1603 (XV), which called upon Portugal to consider introducing measures and reforms in Angola, in accordance with previous resolutions affirming the right to self-determination and defining Angola as a non-self-governing territory.[vi][vi] The United States voted in favour of this resolution, thus breaking with its voting pattern under the Eisenhower administration of abstaining on all resolutions concerning the status of colonies, which were unwelcome to the respective colonial master and Western ally. But, under the new US permanent representative at the UN, Adlai Stevenson, the Kennedy administration was taking a different, more assertive stand on colonialism at the UN.

When the decision was taken to vote in a manner contrary to the interests of Portugal, Schlesinger recalls:

There was token opposition from the Europeanists at State; but Kennedy took care that everything should be done with due concern for the feelings of Portugal and the solidarity of NATO. Salazar was informed of the American intention a week before the vote.[vii][vii]

In the Security Council, the United States followed this turnaround with a vote on 9 June in favour of a resolution that condemned Portugal's repression of the uprisings in Angola. In December of that same year, the United States also voted in favour of resolution 1699 (XVI), which condemned Portugal's non-compliance with the terms of Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter regarding the submission of information on non-self-governing territories.[viii][viii]

This dramatic shift in the position of the United States towards Portugal at the United Nations was greeted by anti-American demonstrations in Lisbon. But the effect in the developing world was to have the Kennedy administration ‘...acclaimed as the friend of oppressed peoples’.[ix][ix] During the 1960 US presidential election campaign, the victorious candidate had set out his view of the ‘wind of change’:

...I defend an Africa where countries are free to choose their own national trajectory without outside pressures or coercions.[x][x]

According to US congressman Frank Church, traveling through Africa, a great enthusiasm for the young president had been whipped up on the continent:

Whenever our presence was noted, anxious crowds would call out “Kennedy, Kennedy”...For the first time, our country was being identified with legitimate African aspirations.[xi][xi]

Early ties to the FNLA

The Kennedy administration also acted beyond the United Nations and sought directly to support an anti-colonial movement against the Portuguese. Robert Kennedy considered that Angolan independence was ‘just and inevitable’ and supported the establishment of direct links with the nationalists.[xii][xii] Holden Roberto, the UPA[xiii][xiii] (and later FNLA[xiv][xiv]) leader had by the end of the 1950s established a wide range of contacts in the United States. Due to its prominent role in the anti-colonial uprising in northern Angola in 1961, the UPA was the Angolan nationalist movement with the most international exposure. Washington authorized the CIA to extend support to Roberto and UPA.

The amount of support was never significant beyond the act of support that it represented. At this early stage, the CIA financed Roberto ‘...at the paltry rate of US$ 10,000-US$ 20,000 a year’. These small payments were received throughout the entire period between 1961 and 1975.[xv][xv]

The UPA leader warmly welcomed his new benefactor despite the lack of largesse. At a press conference held in Tunisia in June 1961, after the adoption of the Security Council resolution on Angola, Roberto declared:

We wish to take this opportunity to pay a ringing tribute to the new American administration and its young and dynamic chief, John Kennedy. Our country will be proud to have helped solidify the sharp change in American policy concerning Africa and decolonization.[xvi][xvi]

In a letter to Kennedy written in 1962, Roberto praised the inspiration he claimed to have received when they met in Washington in 1959:

The vivid memory of the ideas to which you exposed me allowed me to transmit to my people the certainty of your understanding and sympathy for our struggle.[xvii][xvii]

Later in 1991, Roberto spoke about that meeting with Kennedy:

I spent two hours explaining to Kennedy the meaning of our struggle in Angola. He told me that the United States had an anti-colonial tradition and could not continue to support the regime of slavery in Angola. We agreed that it was necessary to do something to stop the communists taking over the liberation movement in Angola.[xviii][xviii]

In speeches, Holden Roberto, tended not to refer to the United States directly or to the assistance it was providing to his movement. He would generally outline the case against Portugal and then appeal widely to ‘...democratically minded people of the whole world...to help end the oppression of 4.5 million people’.[xix][xix]

The Empire strikes back

The Portuguese response to Kennedy's support to Angolan nationalism was, of course, markedly different. As mentioned, anti-American demonstrations were held in Lisbon and Luanda, while Salazar waited until a ministerial meeting of NATO in Oslo on 8 May 1961, to express Portugal’s wrath. Lisbon threatened to leave the alliance and made clear that the United States could not be sure it would renew the Azores base lease.

The Kennedy administration, under pressure from the Pentagon, sought to placate Lisbon by reasserting its commitment to Portugal’s place in NATO. But in Lisbon, anger mounted. To the regime, there were multiple signs that the US was undertaking a campaign against Portugal’s position in Africa: a university scholarship programme had been established for African students from the Portuguese colonies; the military assistance programme for Portugal was cut back from the original US$ 25 million to US$ 3 million; a ban on commercial sales of arms to Portugal was imposed in mid-1961; and the US supported the prohibition on the use of NATO war materiel in Africa. These measures were neither extensive nor very effective. The ban on the use of NATO weaponry in Angola (and later in the other colonies) was impossible to verify and anyway clearly flouted by Lisbon. Nevertheless, these measures as a whole reflected the shift by Washington to support the aspirations of the colonized peoples and were anathema to Lisbon.

For a year or so, between 1961 and 1962, Washington tipped back and forth between proponents of those who advocated reaching out to Angolan nationalists and those who saw Portugal as a critical linchpin to US security. According to Schlesinger – a Kennedy advisor at the time - there was “… continuous wrangling in Washington - the Bureau of European Affairs vs. the Bureau of African Affairs; the Mission to the UN vs. the Pentagon..’[xx][xx]

Lisbon launched a strategy to show, much as the apartheid regime in South Africa did, that the West's interests, particularly in Africa, were intimately tied to those of Portugal. The Salazarist regime consistently held itself up to be not only the defender of Western interests in Africa but also the upholder of its values. According to Lisbon, the nationalist challenges in the colonies were part of an international conspiracy directed by ‘communist Russia’ that planned to gain footholds in Africa from where the Soviets would turn their sights on Portugal itself to get at Europe through its ‘soft underbelly’.[xxi][xxi] Because of this danger, argued Lisbon, its own resistance to anti-colonialism - or as the regime might have put it, its fight against the communist conspiracy in Angola - was a fundamental part of the global containment of Soviet power.

The campaign extolling the anti-communist virtues of Portugal was carried to the heart of the system of US government. The work of the pro-Lisbon Portuguese-American Committee for Foreign Affairs did not tire in describing what was happening in Angola as a communist-organized and instigated insurgency. Clearly well-funded, the Committee, supported by a New York public relations firm, Selvage and Lee, targeted the media, the White House, Congress and the State Department in an effort to sully the nationalists' cause and restore favour for Portugal in Washington.[xxii][xxii] The Committee used the substantial Portuguese-American communities in Massachusetts to target that state's representatives on Capitol Hill. On 4 and 5 October, twelve Massachusetts congressmen (including the Speaker and a former Speaker of the House) made speeches in the House of Representatives praising Portugal as a faithful and indispensable NATO ally, and condemning Angolan nationalist insurgency as communist-inspired terrorism.

The Pentagon also made its preferences clear. In an attempt to protect American-Portuguese relations, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a memorandum to the Secretary of Defence in July 1963, stating that, should concessions have to be made to African opinion, it was preferable to sacrifice American interests in South Africa rather than threaten US interests in the Azores. [xxiii][xxiii]

Others in the administration countered that narrow military operational concerns were compromising a much a larger picture critical to the standing of the US among the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia. Kennedy’s ambassador to India, John K. Galbraith, suggested angrily that in hesitating to take Portugal to task, the US was ‘trading off Africa for “a few acres of asphalt in the Atlantic”.’[xxiv][xxiv]

But, in the end, Lisbon did win. Washington was made to choose between Europe and Africa when the regime in Lisbon skillfully and successfully used the approaching expiration of the American lease on its Azores bases in December 1962 to reel Washington back in. While the US certainly had reason to doubt that Portugal would ever abandon its place in the Western alliance, Lisbon was nevertheless able to extract retreats from Washington in most of the areas mentioned above by threatening credibly to deny an extension to the Azores lease.[xxv][xxv]

Quietly at first, the President notified the State Department to call off all anti-Portuguese initiatives by the US government. By the end of 1962, the US had publicly signaled a return to its policy of appeasing Portugal when in December it voted against General Assembly resolution 1807 (XVII), which condemned Portugal.

In effect, the military and political considerations regarding the Azores bases and Portugal's membership of NATO had prevailed over the desire to widen US influence within the anti-colonial camp. The US continued to adhere to UN resolutions concerning the arms embargo on Portugal and to provide some support for the FNLA. But, in general terms, Washington reverted to conveying to Lisbon political, economic and even, if reluctantly, moral support. Growing international condemnation of Portuguese intransigence to nationalist forces in Angola and the other colonies did not move the US from its position of support to Lisbon. According to Schlesinger:

Our own capacity to act in this situation, however, was limited by our dependence, or alleged dependence, on the military and naval installations, which Portugal made available to us in the Azores.[xxvi][xxvi]

With such a clearly established value to the US military, the Azores bases were effectively Portugal’s lifeline to the Western alliance. Until 1971, the lease for the bases was renewed on a yearly basis, which effectively provided Lisbon with an inordinate amount of political leverage with the United States and NATO.

The cold war sets in

From 1963 onwards, Angola was rarely, if ever, seen in Washington beyond its cold war facets. Earlier in 1962, in a letter to a Republican critic, Roberto pleaded to keep the cold war out of Angola when defending the fact that the US vote against Portugal had placed Washington and Moscow on the same side in the Security Council:

Why then [he asked] cannot the issue [of Angolan nationalism] be isolated from the Cold War and judged on its merits?[xxvii][i]

Roberto’s plea was to be in vain. The US position on Angolan nationalism was from hereon essentially determined by cold war considerations, particularly those driven by the requirements of military and strategic competition with the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s, as the young Kennedy administration enthusiastically sought a new role for the US, Washington was widely considered to be one of the sources of anti-colonial support; so much so that, before 1964, the MPLA[xxviii][ii] attempted to conceal its ideological leanings so as better to garner support among Americans. Among Angolan nationalists, however, Washington soon became less and less of a destination on fund-raising tours after the United States was perceived to have nailed its colours to the Portuguese mast. After being seen to retreat vis-à-vis Portugal, the United States effectively lost credibility as a champion of decolonization. This certainly helped to push Angolan nationalists, particularly the MPLA, to go elsewhere for anti-colonial support, particularly the Soviet Union and China.

After the United States had effectively returned to a closer relationship with Portugal, the FNLA leader was at first cautious in his criticism of Washington. In March 1964, in a speech delivered in Leopoldville, Roberto lamented the failure of the UN unanimously to condemn Portugal and then turned on the American ambassador in Lisbon who ‘...dared to say that Angola is “an oasis of peace”’.[xxix][iii] Characterizing the ambassador's declarations as ‘a defiance of African opinion’, Roberto said that he would like to believe that this was a personal position ‘...which in no way bind[s] the attitude of the United States’.[xxx][iv]

In that same speech, Roberto also returned to the subject of NATO. Earlier, in a statement delivered in Libreville in 1962,[xxxi][v] Roberto had drawn attention to the conclusions of the UN Special Committee on Territories under Portuguese Administration, according to which NATO countries supplied a large part of the arms and equipment used by the Portuguese in Africa. Emphasizing that the use of NATO equipment had broken Portuguese promises, Roberto called for the attention of ‘...the Atlantic Pact members, particularly the United States, to this serious situation...’ In his Leopoldville speech in 1964 referred to above, the FNLA leader declared that he hoped that those countries that had ‘...voluntarily or involuntarily armed Portugal...’ were revising their policies.

But once it become apparent that US policy was unmistakably reverting to support for Portugal, Roberto no longer tempered his disappointment. The US embassy in Leopoldville conveyed to Washington the words of one of Roberto's advisors:

Since Roberto's recent return from New York he had found him [a] changed man...completely disillusioned with western, and specifically US policy on Angola. He was convinced that the US would never jeopardize its military ties with Portugal and that...it was US military aid to [the] Portuguese that enables them to hold Angola.[xxxii][vi]

Roberto himself warned those who would help Portugal:

...the situation could become seriously complicated... We are Angolans and Africans and nothing else. We want to be free...We will not overlook any opportunity: we will even ally ourselves with the devil, if necessary...[xxxiii][vii]

The statutes of the UPA and the FNLA both made clear that the movement could obtain ‘...without compromise, all the moral and material aid that the fight for liberation requires’.[xxxiv][viii] In effect, Roberto was threatening the West that, unless they showed greater enthusiasm for the nationalist struggle in Angola, he would approach the other side in the cold war for support.

The life of an anti-colonial movement cannot continue without funds. Once the US commitment to the FNLA had begun to weaken, necessity dictated the procurement of support elsewhere. As threatened, Roberto did seek aid for the FNLA in Moscow and, eventually with success, in Beijing. Despite these compromising contacts, Roberto knew, however, that he had to continue to stress the anti-communist nature of the FNLA to keep the US interested. As Stockwell has suggested, Roberto may have been:

...wise enough to know that competition between his “conservative” movement and the ominously Marxist MPLA would gain him sympathy in the United States.[xxxv][ix]

In Africa, however, the links to Washington were increasingly a liability. In July 1964, Jonas Savimbi, who had been serving as the foreign minister for the so-called Revolutionary Government of Angola in exile (GRAE), resigned, charging Roberto of being closely tied to the United States. Savimbi claimed that ‘American imperialism’ within the UPA and GRAE had been partly to blame for the incapacity of the movement and had led him to resign.[xxxvi][x] The soon-to-be leader of UNITA[xxxvii][xi] listed Roberto's ties to the United States: Roberto ‘hired Mr. Muller, an American citizen and in charge of public relations in the Adoula government, as a personal advisor’; ‘likewise took as a personal advisor, John Marcum...advisor to Averill Harriman on the question of Portuguese colonies’; ‘participated, late in 1963, in meetings organized by Adoula and also attended by Averill Harriman and Bahri (of Tunisia)’; ‘had eleven Angolans, who will soon create his personal security guard, trained by the counter-espionage service of Israel’; ‘hired Bernhardt Manhertz, in April of 1964, to lead the ELNA [the FNLA army]. This officer served in South Vietnam in the American army’. There was also ‘the creation of a section, at the American Embassy in Leopoldville, charged with the Angolan question and directed by Messrs, Heatter and Devnis...due...to these men's personal contacts with Holden Roberto’.[xxxviii][xii]

Savimbi’s charges indicate that, already in 1964, there was a close association between, on the one hand, a number of Americans in Leopoldville linked to the US embassy and the CIA, and on the other, Congolese political circles and Holden Roberto. Later in 1975, this triangle was to be instrumental in formulating the context for the US decision to provide covert support for the FNLA.

Clearly reflecting the now weakened status of the US, particularly among African states, the FNLA sought to deny that a link with Washington existed. In an attempt to counter Ghanaian claims that the FNLA ‘was an instrument of the Americans’, a GRAE document of 1965 suggested ironically that ‘the Americans, true masters of Angola, would hardly need four, five or six years (or more) of armed fighting against themselves to substitute Angolan puppets for Portuguese fascists’.[xxxix][xiii]

The Kissinger Era

After Henry Kissinger joined the American administration in the late 1960s, a major review of US policy toward Southern Africa was commissioned. This review, National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 39, was presented to President Nixon in early January 1970, along with Kissinger’s recommendation that the US adopt a policy based on its second option. This option recommended that the US establish a dual track policy, on the one hand, continuing to express public opposition to racial repression while, on the other, quietly relaxing the political and economic isolation of the white states in Africa, Portugal and South Africa. The conclusion favoured by Kissinger was that ‘the whites were here to stay’.[xl][xiv] It was, therefore, in Washington's interest to work for constructive change in the region through those minority regimes, while paying lip service to international opposition to South African apartheid, Rhodesian minority rule and Portuguese colonialism.

It is important to refer to NSSM 39 because, under Kissinger, it formed the basis for US policy toward Angola in the early 1970s until the Portuguese coup. The assessments made in the study - that Portugal in Africa, as a ‘white state’, was stable; that the anti-colonial movements were unrealistic alternatives; and that ‘a black victory at any stage’ was impossible[xli][xv]- were essentially faulty. These assessments led to the formulation of a policy by the US that was, therefore, unprepared, if not unable, to deal with the crisis in Angola when it erupted.

By the end of the 1960s, US policy towards Portugal and its African territories reflected more the desired state of affairs within Washington's global strategy than the reality of the situation in Portugal and Africa. Certainly, the conclusion that the ‘whites were here to stay’ in 1970 contrasted sharply with the opinion of the US ambassador to Lisbon in 1960 who believed that, ‘Portugal clearly does not have sufficient power to maintain these vast territories.[xlii][xvi]

The immediate result of the more relaxed US approach to Portugal over its African territories was an accord in December 1971 over the Azores bases, replacing the ad hoc process of renewal that had been in practice since 1962. In Lisbon, the regime headed by Marcello Caetano, who had succeeded Salazar in 1968, felt that the United States and Portugal were ‘...allies once again’.[xliii][xvii] The strategic importance of the bases was demonstrated during the Arab-Israeli war in October 1973. On top of providing strategic, military value, the fact that Lisbon gave permission for the US to use the Azores bases in the operation to supply Israel also scored political points in Washington. Since other Western European states had refused to allow American aircraft to use US facilities in Europe for that purpose, the Azores bases became crucial to support the long-range reach of US airpower. In return for this military and political favour, Portugal was offered a substantial aid package by the US.[xliv][xviii]

On the face of it, Washington was still adhering to the UN embargo on sales of weapons to Portugal destined for use in its African wars. But Lisbon benefited from other forms of military assistance from the United States, which supplied equipment that clearly had a dual purpose, both military and civilian, including heavy transport vehicles, jeeps and helicopters.[xlv][xix] Furthermore, Portuguese officers and pilots were trained at US military facilities in both West Germany and Panama, while an estimated 100 were being trained in the United States at any given time during this period. In early 1971, Nixon authorized the sale of four Boeing 707 jet transporters directly to TAP, the Portuguese state airline, which then violated its pledge to limit their use to commercial flights when they were used to ferry troops to and from Africa. Not covered by the embargo was the sale of defoliants and herbicides to the Portuguese, who used them in Africa in counterinsurgency warfare. In fact, had the April 1974 coup not brought down the regime, it is possible that the US may have been close to supplying weapons illegally to Portugal. During a visit in December 1973, Kissinger expressed the United States’ gratitude to Lisbon for use of the Azores during the October war and - apparently unaware of or at least unconcerned by the UN embargo[xlvi][xx]- agreed to meet Portuguese requests for weapons.[xlvii][xxi]

In addition to these military benefits, Portugal also drew economic advantage from its relationship with the United States. According to Marcum, the American Gulf Oil Corporation, which had discovered oil off the coast of Cabinda in the late 1950s, was by the early 70s contributing over US$ 60 million yearly to the Angolan treasury, even before the price of oil soared in 1973. Further receipts by the Portuguese treasury from US origins included annually: from tourism (US$ 80 million); the Azores bases operations (US$ 13 million); and in Angolan coffee exports to the US (US$ 100 million).[xlviii][xxii]

In this way, it has been argued that the United States played a significant part in keeping Portugal fighting in Africa. Marcum concludes that US financial transfers of just under US$ 400 million found their way to Portugal in 1973. This figure is significant when compared to Portugal's annual military-security budget, which was just over US$ 400 million.[xlix][xxiii] In the face of this equation, Marcum, and others,[l][xxiv] believe that it is difficult to refute the claim that the United States was effectively important in providing the means for Portugal to continue to wage its colonial wars. In any case, this was certainly the perception of those who opposed Portuguese colonialism.

The 25^th of April

The overthrow of the Caetano regime on 25 April 1974 is said to have caught the Americans by surprise. Seemingly unable to imagine the collapse of a clearly anachronistic power structure drained by costly overseas wars, Washington had not foreseen the need for a change in its policy towards Portugal and, therefore, Angola. Subsequently, the instability that reigned in Portugal after the coup dominated Washington's approach. Kissinger rejected the approach of the US ambassador in Lisbon, Stuart Nash, who advocated support for the new government in Portugal. Fearing a communist take-over in Portugal, which he believed would seriously imbalance the US-Soviet power ratio in Europe, Kissinger fired Nash and replaced him with Frank Carlucci, hoping for a ‘tough guy’ to hold US interests in Portugal.[li][xxv] But Carlucci came to the same conclusion as Nash: that the US should support the coalition government, particularly the more democratic figures and parties, and the communists would peter out.

Towards Portuguese Africa, Washington did not alter its perspective of looking at the question of self-determination in Angola and the other colonies from the point of view of Lisbon. Following the coup, the US gave support to the so-called ‘Portuguese commonwealth’ solution proposed by Spínola.[lii][xxvi] A more farsighted initiative by Donald Easum, the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, who traveled to Africa to court the movements that would make up the future independent governments of the soon-to-be ex-Portuguese territories, was cut short by Kissinger. Easum had engineered a meeting with FRELIMO[liii][xxvii] and was possibly on the way to establishing a favourable position for American influence with that Mozambican movement. But, Easum's maverick initiatives displeased Kissinger, who fired Easum two days after his return from Africa.[liv][xxviii]

In the immediate aftermath of the coup in Portugal, US policy towards Angola was a ‘hands off’ one. Between April 1974 and January 1975, Washington did not intervene in any significant way in Angolan political affairs. The State Department's view was that the forces in Angola - the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA - were balanced. Furthermore, it was known that the Soviet Union had suspended its support for the MPLA just before the coup in Lisbon, following an evidently negative report on the chaotic internal disarray of the MPLA filed in Moscow by a Soviet envoy.[lv][xxix]

The US engages in Angola

In mid-January 1975, barely two weeks after the Alvor accords had been signed by Portugal and the three movements on the steps to independence for Angola, a meeting took place in Washington, which changed the direction of US policy. The so-called ‘Forty’ Committee was convened by Kissinger to discuss US covert activities and, when Angola came up, the CIA proposed the reactivation of its programme of assistance to the FNLA.[lvi][i] According to Stockwell, the CIA had already been funding Roberto secretly since July 1974 without White House approval:

...small amounts at first, but enough for word to get around that the CIA was dealing itself into the race.[lvii][ii]

The amount proposed by the CIA at the meeting with Kissinger, US$ 300,000, was sufficient, the agency argued, to signal to the FNLA's principal backer, Mobutu, that Washington was sympathetic to Zaire's position on the Angolan question.[lviii][iii] The CIA argued that the FNLA would provide the ‘most stable and reliable government’,[lix][iv] this assessment despite Roberto’s movement's history of military ineptness and internal conflict. Kissinger accepted these arguments and ‘routinely approved’ the CIA's request to fund the FNLA.[lx][v] This decision to fund the FNLA set the US on a policy track from which it did not later withdraw and eventually led nowhere. It was a relatively minor grant but it represented the first step of a larger US programme to come of covert support for the FNLA and UNITA, that by the end of the summer of 1975 had US arms pouring into Zaire in order to stage an assault on Luanda. With the January decision, the United States entered the Angolan civil war on what would be the losing side.

US policy choices in Angola were framed in terms of the competition with Moscow. This confirmed to Kissinger what he wanted to believe: that the Soviet Union had hegemonic aspirations in Africa and was helping the MPLA take power as independence approached. When the CIA made this case to Kissinger at the January 1975 Forty Committee meeting, the Soviet Union had, in fact, resumed its flow of aid to Neto's movement. The conclusion was reached that the Soviet Union was intervening in Angola to ensure a favorable outcome for it in the struggle for power between the liberation movements.

Earlier, in 1973, an American congressional mission sent to evaluate Moscow's African policy, had concluded that Soviet aid to liberation movements was limited to maintaining lines of communication open, and that more substantial links, such as military aid or training programmes, did not amount to a significant level of commitment on the part of Moscow.[lxi][vi] However, by the time the Forty Committee took the decision to reactivate the FNLA in January 1975, the perspective in Washington had changed: Soviet expansionism in Angola was testing how deep were the waters of détente. In funding the FNLA, Kissinger was signaling the Soviet Union that the United States had taken note of Moscow’s support to the MPLA and that it did not approve. As Kissinger told a Senate subcommittee, ‘the Soviet Union must not be given any opportunity to use military forces for aggressive purposes without running the risk of conflict with us’.[lxii][vii]

Why the FNLA? Certainly, it was not the movement with the greatest potential. It was based around one man, Holden Roberto, and had originally been developed to defend the interests of one ethnic group – the bakongo – to which he belonged. It could also be said that it was more comfortable in Zairean politics than in Angola, raising questions as to how representative of Angolans it would have been had it succeeded in taking power at independence. But, it was precisely this Zairean dimension that helped to frame the situation for Washington, which was driven principally by the fact that the FNLA was fighting the Soviet-backed MPLA. As Marcum puts it, the Forty Committee decision was apparently motivated by ‘...an irrepressible habit of thinking in terms of “our team” and “theirs”...’[lxiii][viii]

The Forty Committee decision in January 1975 to make a somewhat modest payment to the FNLA provoked an almost immediate reaction in Angola: ‘American officials deny rumors, now very prevalent in Luanda, of heavy continuing CIA support for the FNLA’.[lxiv][ix] Laidi believed that, already at this stage, US funding was in support of the FNLA’s strategy ‘...to dislodge the MPLA from the capital city before the pivotal date of November 11, 1975’.[lxv][x] This is probably overstating the case since the transitional government was still sitting at this point and it is likely impossible to state that armed conflict was the only strategy being pursued by the movements. Furthermore, the relatively small amount of the payment would preclude such ambitious goals, falling well short of the funds needed to cover the FNLA's military expenses. Kissinger himself argued, not quite as convincingly perhaps, that the January aid to the FNLA was good only ‘...to buy bicycles, paper clips etc...’, and that it was essentially not for military purposes.[lxvi][xi] What is clear now, as it was then, is that this grant to FNLA signaled that the US was backing the FNLA, to the obvious detriment of the other movements and certainly of the joint transitional government that had been established in Alvor.

Not all concerned in the US administration shared Kissinger’s perspective on the Angola question or agreed with his policy measures. The State Department’s Bureau for African Affairs had a poor opinion of Holden Roberto and the FNLA, being more concerned with the standing of the US among African nations than so directly with the East-West conflict. These different priorities were evident in the initiative and dismissal of Donald Easum in November 1974. However, the new Assistant Secretary for African Affairs selected to replace him, Nathaniel Davis, took a similar view and argued against a covert war in Angola, which he felt the US could not win: ‘The worst possible outcome would be a test of will and strength which we lose...If we are to have a test of strength with the Soviets, we should find a more advantageous place,’ wrote Davis in a memorandum to the meeting of the Forty Committee on 14 July 1975.[lxvii][xii]

But these arguments fell on deaf ears. At the July meeting, the Forty Committee went further and recommended a covert programme of US$ 32 million in funds and US$ 16 million in military equipment to be channeled to the FNLA through Zaire, which President Ford approved.[lxviii][xiii] The opportunity for Washington to pursue a different policy path had been lost. The US was now committed to a covert presence in Angola. Davis quietly resigned and only later in 1978 did he give his reasons.[lxix][xiv]

This left Kissinger and the CIA as the principal US policy-makers towards Angola. According to Brenda MacElhinney, the CIA Angola Desk Officer in 1975 who had reopened the Luanda station for the agency:

...don't put all the blame on Kissinger, the CIA led the United States into the Angolan mess.[lxx][xv]

On the other hand, Isaacson claims that ‘not even the CIA was fully in favor of a covert program,’ and that its Director, William Colby, ‘...shell-shocked by Vietnam and buffeted by the congressional hearings into the agency’s past misdeeds, was not looking for any more trouble’.[lxxi][xvi] Furthermore, mid-level CIA agents recognized that since the US was limited to a covert programme, the Soviet Union had a ‘greater freedom of action’ to escalate its support for the MPLA.[lxxii][xvii]

Zaire frames the picture

Whatever wider concerns may have existed, the decision in January 1975 to fund covertly Roberto and the FNLA was largely framed by those whose perspective was formed in Kinsasha, Zaire. The role of Zaire in the Angolan civil war was significant in and of itself but it also served to define the parameters of US policy towards Angola.

At the time, Zaire was strategically far more important to the US than Angola and was its principal ally in central and southern Africa. American economic and political interests there far outweighed those in any other African country. So, Washington was from the very beginning more open to how the Mobutu regime conceived of and sought to address the situation in Angola. Furthermore, there had been a historical precedent. Washington's success in helping Kinshasa suppress the CNL, which had been supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, left a precedent of successful covert intervention in Zaire. Jackson concludes that, ‘...the assistance to the FNLA confirmed Washington's intention of repeating its alliance-seeking strategy, which had produced such success during the Congo crisis.[lxxiii][xviii]

According to reports, American intelligence agents helped Mobutu take over the government in Kinshasa in 1965 and his regime depended almost exclusively on American patronage.[lxxiv][xix] Conversely, the US depended on Mobutu ‘...to protect and maintain American interests in his country’.[lxxv][xx] This relationship also extended beyond Zaire's borders. According to Weissman, ‘...Kissinger was reportedly banking on Mobutu “to oppose Moscow's interests” in Africa generally...’[lxxvi][xxi] Substantial US economic interests in Zaire added to its strategic value, making the stability of Mobutu's regime a foreign policy objective of the US. [lxxvii][xxii]

Related through marriage, Mobutu and Roberto also had a very close political relationship. Seeking greater regional projection, Mobutu wanted Roberto in Luanda. This goal of the Zairean leader became a goal for the US. According to Bender, the CIA argued before Kissinger that aid to the FNLA:

...would signal to President Mobutu...that Washington was sympathetic to his position...Zaire was always a primary consideration in all American decisions concerning covert aid to the FNLA.[lxxviii][xxiii]

The CIA is said to have made a compelling case for covert support to the FNLA. In turn, the CIA’s perspective was heavily influenced by the view from the Kinshasa station, which was close to Mobutu and Roberto. In fact, it seems that even the diverging views of the American intelligence officers in Luanda at that time were cast aside in favour of the perception of events in Angola as seen from Kinshasa.[lxxix][xxiv]

The “kiss of death”

A complicating factor for US policy in the civil war that broke out between the movements in 1975 was Washington finding itself on the same side as Pretoria in supporting the FNLA and UNITA against the MPLA. The internationally isolated regime in South Africa had few friends, but here it was shoulder-to-shoulder, albeit clandestinely at first, with the United States, defending the interests of the West against communist adventurism. But for Washington, this association was extremely prejudicial.

The South African government was made fully aware of the clandestine support Washington had been giving to the FNLA through Zaire. According to Stockwell, the South African regime was kept informed through ‘...voluminous intelligence reports and detailed briefings...’ offered by the agency's station in Pretoria.[lxxx][xxv] The South African regime believed that the US was committed to the effort to topple the MPLA, even if this included the deployment of SADF[lxxxi][xxvi] troops in Angola. By intervening,

...South Africa hoped to demonstrate its commitment to the free world against communist expansionism. Angola seemed the ideal opportunity to do so.[lxxxii][xxvii]

Pretoria seemed to believe that, by identifying the intervention as a struggle against ‘communist expansionism’, the importance of that objective would prevail over any negative political consequences emanating from its own involvement. Overconfident of its worth to the West in the cold war, the South African regime was unable to calculate correctly what effect its support for UNITA and the FNLA would have in Africa. It eventually discovered that its involvement was the ‘kiss of death’ for the anti-MPLA coalition.

The South African government has claimed that Washington encouraged, if not incited, Pretoria into intervening in Angola:

To the question of whether Washington had ‘solicited’ South African involvement, Prime Minister Vorster subsequently responded that he would not call anyone who said that a ‘liar’.[lxxxiii][xxviii]

According to Vorster:

...South Africa would never have intervened had it not been assured that its forces would be resupplied if they encountered major opposition...it had only intervened at all on the express understanding that the US would continue to arm the SADF if it suffered heavy losses.[lxxxiv][xxix]

For its part, the US denied having given any such guarantees to Pretoria:

‘Some charge that we have acted in collusion with South Africa’, [Kissinger] said before the Senate Africa Subcommittee. ‘This is untrue. We had no foreknowledge of South Africa's intentions and in no way co-operated with it militarily.’[lxxxv][xxx]

The US was understandably unwilling to admit to any form of relationship with Pretoria, especially with regard to anything so sensitive as supplying arms to South African troops fighting in Angola.

As a [US] government official told Congress, no American government could undertake to resupply South African forces during a conflict in which its own forces were not directly engaged. He even underlined the fact by reminding it that the US had scrupulously adhered to the arms embargo throughout the conflict.[lxxxvi][xxxi]

US policy fails

Independence day for Angola, the 11^th of November 1975, arrived and saw the MPLA assume the mantle of power in Luanda and claim to be the legitimate government of post-colonial Angola. From hereon, the MPLA and its supporters were able to portray the power struggle as that of a young but legitimate government defending a newly independent nation from US and South African-backed rebels. The military conflict continued for a few months and into 1976, as the FNLA struck from the north, with Zairean troops and US support, and UNITA drove from the south with clandestine South African Defence Force columns. The MPLA successfully held Luanda with Soviet assistance and, particularly, a dramatic airlift of Cuban troops.

The revelation of the presence of the SADF on Angolan soil represented the beginning of the end of the civil war. Although South Africa was not the only state to intervene in Angola and Pretoria avidly pointed to the massive and unprecedented Soviet-Cuban effort as the real danger, it was South African intervention that became the most reviled act of the civil war. It was South African intervention that purportedly led Nigeria, hitherto a UNITA sympathizer, to revise its position and switch its support to the MPLA. International public opinion raged against the South African intervention, far outweighing the criticism directed against the Cuban intervention. Eventually, Pretoria's involvement in the conflict pushed the OAU and then the UN to recognize the legitimacy of the MPLA and in this way put an end to the civil war of 1975.

As the US administration found itself under fire in Congress over the covert operation in Angola, it became clear that further US support for the intervention against the MPLA would not be sustainable. Pretoria pointed a critical finger at Washington’s lack of resolve in not seeing through the fight against the ‘communists’. But the South Africans were blaming the US for what had essentially been their own miscalculation. Not only had they misjudged the negative impact of their own intervention, but they had also overestimated American willingness to enter the Angolan conflict overtly, something, incidentally, the Soviet Union managed to evaluate correctly.

After the extent of US involvement in Angola had been revealed in the press in late 1975, opposition to the covert programme became overwhelming and Congress voted to cut off new funds for Angola: the Clark amendment passed in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. Interestingly, it seems that it was the Director of the CIA, William Colby, who in secretly requesting Congressional approval for US$ 28 million in funds for the FNLA, inadvertently began the leak which lead to the story in the New York Times on 13 December 1975 detailing the covert programme. Senator Dick Clark, who had been fighting the funding in secret sessions, was then able to introduce the amendment that terminated US assistance to the anti-MPLA forces.[lxxxvii][i]

Kissinger did not conceal his bitterness towards these domestic limitations on his conduct of US foreign policy.[lxxxviii][ii] By the time US covert involvement in Angola was revealed, the White House was already witnessing Congressional attempts to curb the administration's freedom in the making of foreign policy. After the Watergate scandal, Congress sought more readily to intervene in the process. Investigations on Capitol Hill had revealed the extent of the CIA's activities not only in foreign destabilization campaigns, such as Chile, but also on the domestic front where it had been covertly monitoring the activities of over 10,000 American citizens.[lxxxix][iii]

Shorn of US backing, the FNLA and UNITA were unable to mount a serious challenge to the MPLA. This latter movement, bristling with Cuban-Soviet military capacity, did indeed become, as it had claimed, the widely recognized government of independent Angola. That which US policy had sought to prevent had occurred.

It seems clear that, as the decolonization of Angola proceeded and independence approached, US policy was being set by considerations that derived less from an accurate understanding of the situation on the ground than from global and regional concerns that were transferred onto the power struggle that broke out between the three movements that had agreed to cooperate at Alvor.

These concerns were not spurious from Washington’s point of view. In fact, intervention in Angola, when it did come, did show that the Soviet Union was able and willing to act militarily at the global level. As Edmonds put it, ‘the Angolan operation awakened many people for the first time to the fact that - strategic nuclear power apart - the Soviet Union was now capable of projecting its conventional power across the world, like the United States’.[xc][iv] The spectre of communism in Angola loomed in the words of the US permanent representative to the UN, Daniel Moynihan, who ‘...warned in December 1975 that unless appropriate aid was given to the FNLA-UNITA forces, ‘the communists would take over Angola and will thereby control the oil shipping lanes from the Persian Gulf to Europe’.[xci][v]

To Kissinger, the concern remained the relative global power of the United States vis-à-vis the Soviet Union:

I want these people to know that our concern in Angola is not the economic wealth or the naval base. It has do with the USSR operating 8,000 miles from home when all the surrounding states are asking for our help...I don’t care about the oil or the base, but I do care about the African reaction when they see the Soviets pull it off and we don’t do anything. If the Europeans then say to themselves, “If they can’t hold Luanda, how can they defend Europe?”[xcii][vi]

It was a matter of credibility. Dobrynin agrees that ‘considerations of superpower image only increased the obstinacy of both sides, since neither felt it could afford to “lose Angola”.’[xciii][vii]

Conclusion

According to the views of many, the United States, the Soviet Union and regional African powers were hugely responsible for the chaotic outcome of Portuguese decolonization. The non‑fulfilment of the Alvor accords and the war in Angola are seen to be the result of ‘intrigues by foreign interests during the heyday of the cold war’, as one observer put it.[xciv][viii]

The Angolan civil war of 1975‑76 did indeed involve a number of external actors and there can be little doubt that foreign interven­tion had a significant effect on the course of the war. Other events, such as the political chaos in Portugal following the coup, also had an effect on the conflict in Angola, even if unintended. But to view the Angolan civil war merely as a product of East‑West rivalry or of South African bids for regional hegemony is to misunderstand or to deny the real nature of the origins of the conflict. At the heart of that conflict was a decades-long struggle for power and ultimate responsibility for the civil war must thus rest with the Angolan parties to the war.

As independence for Angola approached in 1975, the United States was not so much executing a policy designed to enhance its own influence with the new postcolonial state as much as it was caught implementing a policy of neglect towards Angola, one that clearly did not comprehend these internal dynamics of Angolan political conflict but instead largely reflected the concerns of colonial Portugal and other external considerations: superpower competition, Zairian intrigue, South African regional power politics, etc.

Before the April coup in Portugal, Washington's Angolan policy was determined to a very great extent by the importance of its ties to Lisbon, particularly as they related to NATO and, above all, the Azores naval and air bases. The vital nature of the bases to US military power led time and again to the marginalization of other concerns that compromised good relations with Portugal. The US looked at Angola through the eyes of its colonial master and seriously overestimated the lifespan of Portuguese rule in Africa.

Of course, this was true of US policy elsewhere during the cold war and Angola was no exception. One bold but brief moment did see the Kennedy administration actively engage emerging post-colonial nations, recognizing, it seems, that the near future would not include colonial empires. The Kennedy strategy also recognized that in supporting anti-colonialism and in particular Angolan nationalism, the US was also competing against the attraction the Soviet Union held for anti-colonial campaigns, particularly those that became more radicalized – such as in the Portuguese colonies - due to the intransigence of the colonial master.

The more immediate and critical interests represented by the Azores bases, however, led the US to abandon this early effort in Angola. But its legacy was profound. It established the FNLA as the default Angolan nationalist movement for the US, reinforcing the motivations that led Washington in 1975 to throw its weight behind this movement instead of supporting the Alvor agreement or at least seeking an accommodation with the MPLA and consequently lessening Soviet influence. It also placed the US on the wrong side of the nationalist struggle against Portuguese colonialism, certainly contributing to the radicalization of the movements and their leanings towards Moscow and Beijing. Ultimately, as stated above, responsibility for the civil war falls not on the US but on the Angolans that, with great purpose and understanding, cast their internal struggles for power in terms of the cold war and the ideological struggle between East and West, But, the US is responsible for playing along and, conceivably, the outcome in Angola may have been different had its early policy towards Angola seeking greater support to the nationalist forces been sustained.

There had been those in Washington - the State Department bureau for African affairs, Galbraith, and then later, Easum and Davies – who had seen the dangers of the path set for US policy in Angola. They advocated engagement with Angolan nationalists instead of placating Lisbon and sought not to shun entirely the more radical among the Angolans so as not to drive them into the waiting arms of Moscow. They seemed to have a better understanding of the realities on the ground and sought to isolate the conflict from the cold war.

The cold war blinded the US to the opportunities that presented themselves earlier to engage and gain influence with the emerging nationalist forces in Angola. This myopia was correctly identified and exploited by the Angolan nationalists engaged in their own power struggle, who successfully manipulated the knee-jerk reaction of both Washington and Moscow to any potential extension of their rival’s influence and catapulted their civil war to centre-stage of the cold war. The cold war and the internal struggle for power in decolonizing Angola became fatally intertwined.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see clearly that US policy towards Angola would fail. The Soviet Union and the US were staring each other down in successive rounds of escalating support to their adopted movements but the constraints on the US policy described here meant that it had entered a game it could not win. Success in a covert operation was always wishful thinking in a situation when the movements were engaged in a winner-takes-all struggle and escalation would eventually bring the game out into the open and the US out of the game.