The Horn of Africa: US Foreign Policy in an Altered Cold War Environment

Abstract

U S foreign policy toward the Horn of Africa between 1945 and 1990 was guided by a series of Cold War rationales that viewed the region as a means for solving non-African problems. Specifically, US policymakers did not perceive the countries and peoples of the Horn of Africa as important in their own right but, rather, as a means of preventing the further advances of Soviet communism. As a result, US relationships with various regimes in the region evolved according to their perceived importance within an East-West framework. Emperor Haile Selassie, for example, was courted from the 1940s to the 1970s because of the importance of Ethiopia as part of a worldwide telecommunications network directed against the Soviet Union. After the US-Ethiopian security relationship was shattered in the aftermath of the 1974-77 Ethiopian revolution and the rise to power of a Soviet-backed regime headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Somali regime of Siad Barre achieved greater status in Washington because of Somalia's importance as an access country from which the United States could counter militarily any perceived Soviet threat to Middle Eastern oil fields. The US preoccupation with anticommunism not only was manipulated by these leaders to obtain greater levels of US economic and military aid-more than $600 million for the Selassie regime and nearly $800 million for the Siad regime-it also served as an important rationale for Washington's general disregard for the authoritarian