Betting on the Africans

John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalist Leaders

Philip E. Muehlenbeck

This is the first book which studies Kennedy's strategy for U.S.-African relations.
Utilizes archival materials from the continent (especially South Africa and Liberia).
Africa's important role in the Cuban Missile Crisis and Cold War superpower politics is detailed for the first time.
Only scholarly examination of U.S. relations with Tanganyika, Ivory Coast, and Liberia during this time period.

Betting on the Africans

John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalist Leaders

Philip E. Muehlenbeck

Description

At the start of his administration John F. Kennedy launched a personal policy initiative to court African nationalist leaders. This policy was designed to improve U.S.-African relations and constituted a dramatic change in the direction of U.S. foreign relations. The Kennedy administration believed that the Cold War could be won or lost depending upon whether Washington or Moscow won the hearts and minds of the Third World. Africa was particularly important because a wave of independence saw nineteen newly independent African states admitted into the United Nations during 1960-61. By 1962, 31 of the UN's 110 member states were from the African continent, and both Washington and Moscow sought to add these countries to their respective voting bloc. For Kennedy, the Cold War only amplified the need for a strong U.S. policy towards Africa-but did not create it. The Kennedy administration feared that American neglect of the newly decolonized countries of the world would result in the rise of anti-Americanism and for this reason needed to be addressed irrespective of the Cold War. For this reason, Kennedy devoted more time and effort toward relations with Africa than any other American president. By making an in-depth examination of Kennedy's attempt to court African nationalist leaders, Betting on the Africans adds an important chapter to the historiography of John F. Kennedy's Cold War strategy by showing how through the use of personal diplomacy JFK realigned United States policy towards Africa and to a large extent won the sympathies of its people while at the same time alienating more traditional allies.

Betting on the Africans

John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalist Leaders

Philip E. Muehlenbeck

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: JFK and the "Greatest Revolution in Human History"
Part One
Chapter 1: 'More Royalist than the Queen': Eisenhower/Dulles Policy toward Africa
Chapter 2: JFK's Early Support of African Nationalism
Chapter 3: Kennedy, Sékou Touré, and the Success of Personal Diplomacy
Chapter 4: Kennedy, Kwame Nkrumah, and the Volta River Project Decision
Chapter 5: Kennedy, Julius Nyerere, and Self Determination in Southern Africa
Chapter 6: Kennedy, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ben Bella, and North African Arab Nationalism
Chapter 7: Kennedy, Felix Houphouët-Boigny, William Tubman, and Conservative African Nationalism
Part Two
Chapter 8: The Kennedy-de Gaulle Rivalry in Africa
Chapter 9: The View from Pretoria
Chapter 10: Cold War Civil Rights and Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalists
Chapter 11: Contested Skies: U.S.-U.S.S.R. Competition for African Civil Aviation Markets and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Conclusion: The Kennedy Legacy in Africa
Bibliography
Index

Betting on the Africans

John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalist Leaders

Philip E. Muehlenbeck

Author Information

Philip E. Muehlenbeck, Professorial Lecturer, The George Washington University, United States

Philip E. Muehlenbeck is a Professor Lecturer in the Department of History at George Washington University.

Betting on the Africans

John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalist Leaders

Philip E. Muehlenbeck

Reviews and Awards

"Unlike other accounts of U.S. /Africa relations, Muehlenbeck's monograph covers the entire continent. Muehlenbeck's portrait of a charismatic American president engaged with the details of African political and economic aspirations is a contribution to the study of U.S./Africa relations as well as the JFK era." - Larry Grubbs, Journal of American History

"Muehlenbeck's well-researched work offers a compelling challenge to the conventional wisdom of continuity in American Cold War foreign policy toward Africa. The book's deep examination of the courtship of African leaders by President John F. Kennedy provides a unique perspective on personal diplomacy, specifically, and U.S.-African relations, generally, during one of the more volatile periods of the Cold War. A thought-provoking opening to our ongoing analysis of Kennedy foreign policy." - George White, Jr., American Historical Review

"In this fine book, Muehlenbeck...makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on US policy toward Africa...A well-written, crisply argued book that scholars, students in applicable classes, and general readers with a serious interest in US foreign policy and African affairs will love. Highly recommended." - CHOICE

"Challenging the conventional wisdom that judges John F. Kennedy's Africa policies to be little different from those of other American presidents, Muehlenbeck argues convincingly that JFK's strategy of personal diplomacy won the friendship of radical nationalists that other American leaders deemed lost to the Soviet camp. Based on extensive archival research, Muehlenbeck's in-depth analysis of the courtship of African leaders offers a unique window into U.S.-African relations during the early Cold War years." - Elizabeth Schmidt, author of Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958

"Phil Muehlenbeck provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of Kennedy's high-profile outreach to African leaders. He challenges previous interpretations that placed the Cold War at the center of Kennedy's relations with that continent's new nations. Muehlenbeck emphasizes instead the ways in which U.S. policy toward Africa in the early 1960s responded to the imperatives of decolonization and nationalism. Kennedy's personal attention to individual African leaders, in Betting on the Africans, represents a farsighted exception to the more common pattern of American disinterest in the lands between the Mediterranean and the Cape of Good Hope. Important reading for all those interested in America's relationship with the world, in African history, and in the global history turning point of the early 1960s." - Thomas Borstelmann, University of Nebraska-Lincoln