The End of the Cold War and U.S. Foreign Policy toward the Horn of Africa in the Immediate Post-Siyaad and Post-Mengistu Eras

Abstract

American foreign policy toward the Horn of Africa between 1945 and 1990 was guided by a series of Cold War rationales that looked upon the region as a means for solving nonAfrican problems. Specifically, U.S. policymakers did not perceive the countries and peoples of the Horn of Africa as important in their own right but, rather, as the means for preventing the further advances of Soviet communism. As a result, U.S. relationships with various regimes in the region evolved according to their perceived importance within the EastWest framework. Emperor Haile Sellassie, for example, was courted from the 1940s to the 1970s due to the importance of Ethiopia as part of a worldwide telecommunications network directed against the Soviet Union. When the U.S. -Ethiopian security relationship was shattered during the 1970s, Siyaad Barre subsequently rose to preeminence due to Somalia's importance as an access country from which the U.S. could militarily counter a perceived Soviet threat to Middle East oil fields. Indeed, not only was the U.S. preoccupation with anti-communism manipulated by these leaders to obtain greater levels of U.S. economic and military aid over $600 million for the Sellassie regime and nearly $800 million for the Siyaad regime it also served as an important rationale for Washington's general disregard for the authoritarian excesses of these regimes, as well as for a host of interventionist practices designed to maintain U.S. influence within the region.1