American Policy Towards Southern Africa in the 1980s

Abstract

The Approach of the Reagan Administration towards the Third World was criticised as too simply anti-communist: a growing ‘predisposition toward globalism’, 1 so it was claimed, led to a ‘Sovietcentric orientation’, 2 an ‘obsession with the Soviet Union’, 3 which obscured regional complexities. 4 But American decisions about what actions to take in Southern Africa during the 1980s were part of a surprisingly effective strategy that often ignored Reagan's doctrine of aid to anti-communist resistance. That strategy was shaped by several hands, and the President's were not even the most important.