1960s–2000s: (Africa and the Cold War — The Continent as a Periphery Where Proxy Conflicts Were Fought, African Governments and Movements Seeking to Utilize …

1960s–2000s: (Africa and the Cold War — The Continent as a Periphery Where Proxy Conflicts Were Fought, African Governments and Movements Seeking to Utilize Superpower Rivalries While Becoming Their Victims, the Cold War Exacerbating or Creating Conflicts That Rumbled On for Years, and the West Justifying Support for Odious Regimes Under the Banner of Anti-Communism): Processes of decolonization and the first decades of independence must be understood against the Cold War. Africa shared with Southeast Asia and Central America the experience of being a location for proxy conflicts between the superpowers — a Cold War periphery that nonetheless witnessed the opening of ideological and strategic frontlines. African governments and political movements sought to utilize Cold War rivalries and themselves became their victims. The Cold War was crippling in many respects, exacerbating or creating conflicts that rumbled on for years and leading the West to justify support for some of the most odious regimes on the planet — from Mobutu’s Zaire to apartheid South Africa to Mengistu’s Ethiopia when it served Soviet interests. The ideological polarity was of little concern to millions of ordinary Africans, but it shaped the continent’s political landscape with consequences that outlasted the Cold War itself. In the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia successfully positioned itself as a champion of Western interests against communism, resulting in Eritrea being denied independence and hosting a huge US military base. In Angola, Mozambique, and elsewhere, liberation movements became theaters of superpower competition, with Soviet, American, Cuban, South African, and Chinese involvement prolonging and intensifying conflicts that might otherwise have been resolved more quickly. The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s removed one set of distortions but introduced others, as regimes that had been propped up for strategic reasons lost their external support and in some cases collapsed.