Climbing off the Back Burner: Lyndon Johnson's Soft Power Approach to Africa

Abstract

The general historiography of United States–African relations in the 1960s holds that the policies of Lyndon Johnson towards this continent were a failure. Johnson, most historians suggest, generally ignored Africa and, in doing so, squandered the good feelings that many Africans had developed towards his more charming and polished predecessor. However, such views do a disservice to the Johnson Administration, which in fact embarked on a quiet African programme rooted in American cultural and economic power, and which proved to be more successful than is generally believed. Two factors lay at the heart of Johnson's decision to rely on a soft power policy in Africa: the domestic political constraints of the civil rights movement at home; and the belief in modernisation theory that had emerged as a guiding principle for many of his advisors. Johnson, to put it simply, may have lacked his predecessor's style but he compensated with a substantive and imaginative policy that quietly produced a superior method of advancing both American and African interests.