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"NIXON DOCTRINE" AND AFRICA          OBATALA

States in Africa—has been sufficient to protect British and American investments. As early as 1877, for example, an American Naval Officer wrote to the African Repository (the Journal of the American Colonization Society) complaining of American dependence upon British military power and urging the creation of a fleet of steam powered warships to protect American interest in West Africa. "It was but a short time," he lamented, "since an English vessel sailed up the Congo River and battered down seven native settlements as punishments to the natives for attacking and robbing an American schooner. This state of affairs has existed so long," he complained, "that whenever an American along the western coast of Africa needs protection, he seeks it under the English flag."³  However, the rapid decline of British military power following the conclusion of World War II has brought about a reversal of this situation. The U.S. now assumed the responsibility for protecting British interests in Africa and elsewhere. As a consequence in the very near future, the Afro-American Movement will be confronted with the Herculean challenge of devising a program of effective resistance to American military conquest of progressive African states.

For the time being, however, overt military conquest is more a contingency plan than an American policy position towards Africa. Although there are a large number of American military installations placed at strategic points around the peripheries of the African continent—Congo (Kinshasa) in the Southwest, Ethiopia in the East, Morocco in the North and Liberia in the West for example—American foreign policy toward Africa falls mainly into the second broad category of control techniques: non-military control. Neither is this an attempt to ignore the indirect military involvement in Africa on the part of the U.S. through its Military Assistance Program (MAP). Indeed, I am aware from personal observations that the armies and police forces of Morocco, Congo and Liberia are almost totally equipped by the United States. Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are also often of a military nature.

Nevertheless, the strategy and tactics of U.S. imperialism in Africa, though in transition, are still largely of a non-military nature. I would like, therefore, to outline some of the non-military tactics used by U.S. imperialism to exercise influence and control over Africa.  But first, I will present a brief, yet suggestive sketch showing how and why Africa is of increasing importance to the United States since develop-
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³African Repository, July 1877.

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