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During the South African Border War, large numbers of foreign personnel fought or provided material support for both sides. Throughout the conflict, the South African Defence Force (SADF) was backed directly by two Angolan factions fighting in the Angolan Civil War, namely the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). South Africa recruited heavily among Angolan citizens for some of its specialist units, namely 31 Battalion and 32 Battalion. Following the end of the Portuguese Colonial War and the Rhodesian Bush War, the SADF absorbed a number of foreign veterans from those conflicts, namely into elite counter-insurgency units.

The South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) and its armed wing, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), established bilateral military relations with a number of sympathetic African states as well as most constituent nations of the Warsaw Pact. In terms of the volume of financial and military aid the Soviet Union was PLAN's primary supporter. From 1970 to 1989, the Soviet government provided the bulk of PLAN's weapons, training, and finances. Cuba, which had a large military presence in Angola, was also one of PLAN's closest allies. Apart from Cuba, the Soviet Union also directly or indirectly involved some of its socialist allies in the South African Border War. For instance, North Korea and East Germany trained PLAN recruits at camps in their respective countries.

In the context of Cold War politics, the South African Border War has been described as a proxy war, in which rival powers armed, trained, financed, or otherwise encouraged the belligerents. The degree of foreign involvement on behalf of PLAN, especially by the socialist states, compelled the South African government to perceive it was locked in a war by proxy with the Soviet bloc as opposed to a strictly regional or local conflict.

United States
Following the end of World War II, the US took no formal position on South African domestic issues but displayed a particular interest in South West Africa, coloured by traditional American antipathy towards colonialism. During the 1940s the US and South Africa clashed over the latter's nettlesome attempts to annex South West Africa as a fifth province. The US consistently voted against annexation proposals in the United Nations and even urged the International Court of Justice to deliver an advisory opinion opposed to South African territorial ambitions. However, South Africa's hardening anti-communist attitudes, its prompt repayment of its Lend-Lease debt, and participation in the Korean War gradually resulted in a change in US perceptions. Washington was thereafter more inclined to view South Africa as a useful Cold War ally. Forceful condemnations of that country's controversial racial policies and its attempted annexation of South West Africa were reduced, lest the US lose South African strategic support against potential communist military initiatives on the African continent.

By the late 1960s, the outbreak of the South African Border War and other regional bush conflicts prompted a review in policy by the US National Security Council. President Richard Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, promulgated the Tar Baby Option, which called for the maintenance of "public opposition to racial repression but relaxing political isolation and economic restrictions on the white [minority] states", including South Africa and Rhodesia. Kissinger argued that change could only come if the white governments assented to peaceful political transition, and that the US should not encourage black Africans to gain political rights through violence. The sale of American military equipment to South Africa was approved as long as it could be classified as having a dual military and civil nature. Meanwhile, SWAPO and PLAN made several covert attempts to seek aid from the Western powers and the US specifically for armed struggle. SWAPO representatives approached US diplomats in Tanzania about the possibility of military aid, but were met with suspicion and rebuffed. The party accused the US of being duped by South African propaganda depicting it as an overtly communist organisation; according to SWAPO it was only after this experience that it became dependent on Soviet backing.

SWAPO's short-lived attempt to solicit arms from the US was not considered unusual at the time, as the US had attempted to court anti-colonial forces under previous administrations. Its postwar anti-colonial rhetoric made it a potentially important source of anti-colonial support, and for a time Washington was a major stop for nationalist leaders touring the world for benefactors. But when campaigning for official or private US aid, anti-colonial movements found that anti-communist credentials were valued above all others. SWAPO's Marxist style rhetoric and promises of ending foreign exploitation of South West Africa's resources did little to endear it to the US, which had significant investments in the territory. By the peak of the Vietnam War, many African anti-colonial movements had become more definitively oriented towards the Soviet bloc and adopted forms of national liberation movement ideology. This radicalisation helped reinforce a wider shift to the left in Third World politics and made the Soviet Union the more credible of the superpowers in anti-colonial causes. By contrast, the US was increasingly regarded as a neocolonialist threat.

Ford administration
From the Carnation Revolution onward, US African policies under President Gerald Ford was heavily focused on the disintegrating Portuguese colony of Angola, which was bound for civil war between three rival nationalist movements—the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The US was predisposed towards the FNLA for a number of reasons. Firstly, FNLA president Holden Roberto was already a notable anti-communist figure in the international political arena and had excellent contacts in North America. Despite accepting some material aid from the People's Republic of China, the FNLA had attempted throughout the 1970s to remain, as much as possible, in the anti-colonial camp without compromising its appeal to anti-communist circles, especially in the US. Roberto visited the US on several occasions beginning in 1959 and attempted to present himself to the American public as the face of Angolan nationalism. During these trips, he succeeded in cultivating close ties with US civil society and the federal government. Secondly, the FNLA's chief rival was the avowedly Marxist MPLA, which was linked to both the Portuguese and French Communist Parties in addition to the Soviet Union. After 1964, its intimate relationship with the Soviet Union gave the MPLA a markedly different international profile than that of the FNLA. At the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America conference in Havana in January 1966, which included communist delegates from Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the MPLA was recognised as the sole authentic representative of the Angolan people. It received a million dollars' worth of Soviet arms in 1974 alone, and its militants had received training in the Soviet Union. The US and South Africa perceived the MPLA as little more than a Soviet proxy. Soviet backing for the MPLA was construed as a thinly veiled attempt to establish a communist foothold in southern Africa and extend the Soviet bloc's global sphere of influence. To counter this challenge the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched Operation IA Feature, a covert intervention in Angola on behalf of the FNLA. Between 1974 and 1975 the CIA would ship almost 20,000 rifles, 622 crew-served heavy weapons, and 4,000 anti-tank rockets to the FNLA and to a lesser extent, UNITA. The South African government was equally determined to prevent an MPLA victory, since it feared a Soviet-backed regime in Angola allied with PLAN would lead to an escalation of the South West African conflict. In July 1975 it began providing rifles, mortars, and basic weapons instruction to the FNLA and UNITA. Since the CIA lacked sufficient charter aircraft to deliver the enormous quantity of arms it had acquired, the South African Air Force agreed to help airlift these weapons to the Angolan factions. "South Africa was isolated," the SADF's former director of operations, General Constand Viljoen commented on the partnership. "Although it was done secretly, it was good for South Africa to be cooperating with a big force like the US, even though it was clandestine".

An upswing in Soviet arms shipments to the MPLA forced the CIA to reevaluate its Angolan programme. The MPLA's armed wing, the People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) was rapidly emerging as a formidable conventional fighting force in its own right. On June 9, 1975 it deployed tanks for the first time, driving the FNLA out of the Angolan capital Luanda. In early September FAPLA began deploying BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers, which were used to deadly effect against the FNLA at Caxito. The CIA wanted to match FAPLA's new capabilities, but was precluded from doing so by budgetary restraints and the fact that highly trained personnel with technical skills were needed to operate more sophisticated hardware. South Africa reached a similar conclusion at about the same time, although it remains unclear whether this was the result of its correspondence with the CIA. Regardless, the South African government claimed to have received requests from Washington "at the highest level" for direct military assistance to the UNITA-FNLA coalition. It began sending regular combat troops into Angola to fight alongside the FNLA and UNITA in October 1975, an initiative codenamed Operation Savannah.

There was no formal coordination between the US and South Africa during Operation Savannah, although whether the former provided tacit encouragement for the intervention is a matter of dispute. The US National Security Council acknowledged that South Africa wanted a joint military effort, but rejected this notion for political reasons. Director of Central Intelligence William Colby repeatedly argued in favour of downplaying South Africa's role in Angola and especially all ties it held to the US. He was concerned that any revelation of an SADF and CIA alliance in Angola would become a public relations disaster due to South Africa's poor international image. The result was that while the US could not officially condone Operation Savannah, it likewise did nothing to discourage it. The CIA carried out all its dealings with South Africa at the time through back channel sources, including verbal and informal correspondence, presumably to ensure no written record existed of explicit collaboration. While Operation Savannah was in progress, the South African Bureau of State Security held regular meetings with the CIA in Kinshasha. The bureau head also visited Washington twice for meetings with Jim Potts, head of the CIA's African operations.

South African prime minister B. J. Vorster expected open American support for Operation Savannah, and conveyed this message during a meeting with US ambassador William G. Bowdler in November 1975. Bowdler wrote that Vorster had implicitly suggested the US dissuade the Soviet Union from further involvement in Angola, whether through diplomatic channels or otherwise. By December, however, word of the SADF's presence with UNITA and the FNLA had been leaked to the European press. This made concrete US support for Operation Savannah more vital, as Vorster believed it would lend legitimacy to what would otherwise be regarded as a unilateral South African power play in another African nation. However, the prospect of being exposed as a South African ally was unpalatable to Washington, and the National Security Council believed Operation Savannah only served American interests as long as it remained covert. South African requests for American 155mm ammunition, which were badly needed for its M1 howitzers, were turned down. Likewise, the US also rejected requests for fuel, which the SADF was experiencing difficulty in sourcing due to the ongoing oil embargo. A CIA proposal to ship arms to the FNLA through Walvis Bay in South West Africa was shelved for similar reasons.

Director Colby reiterated to an oversight committee that "the problem is, if we get more South Africans, we get more political trouble...I think this is political dynamite. The press would be after us. They and Africans would say that the MPLA is supported by the big, brave Russians, while the others are backed by the bad South Africans and Americans. That would be unpleasant". Kissinger responded to formal SADF requests for an increased US commitment with a noncommittal letter that highlighted concerns about Soviet bloc expansionism but carefully avoided any references to direct assistance. Simultaneously, the US began to cut off the supply of arms to the FNLA and UNITA. On December 5, US senator Dick Clark recommended to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that all US involvement in Angola be terminated. Two weeks later, his decision was accepted by the senate. On January 27, 1976 the US passed the Clark Amendment (also known as the Tunney Amendment) which barred the Ford administration from allocating further funds to the FNLA and UNITA. In a testimony before the US Senate, Kissinger denied all knowledge of Operation Savannah: "in early September the poorly equipped UNITA forces turned to South Africa for assistance against the MPLA...South Africa responded by sending military equipment and some military personnel, without consultation with the United States". He also stated, "we had no foreknowledge of South Africa's intentions, and in no way cooperated with it militarily".

The SADF subsequently consented to withdraw from Angola under heavy international pressure. The withdrawal commenced in February 1976 and formally ended a month later. As the FNLA and UNITA lost their logistical backing from the CIA and the direct military support of the SADF, they were forced to abandon much of their territory to a renewed FAPLA offensive. The FNLA was almost completely wiped out, but UNITA succeeded in retreating deep into the country's wooded highlands, where it continued to mount a determined insurgency.

South Africa blamed the US, and more specifically partisan politicking in Congress, for the failure of Operation Savannah. In a diplomatic cable dated February 1976, William Bowdler wrote, "Vorster believes US has done irreparable harm in Africa by its failure to block Soviets in Angola, and regards us as indecisive and unreliable". Vorster continued to maintain that the SADF had US approval before it crossed the border. Defence minister P.W. Botha was no less explicit, informing South African parliament that the US had encouraged the SADF to intervene: "I know of only one occasion in recent years when we crossed a border, and that was in the case of Angola when we did so with the approval and knowledge of the Americans. But they left us in the lurch".

Other African states
This was pursued as part of a longstanding Soviet strategy to support anti-colonial movements on the African continent in the hopes of cultivating local socialist clients. Cuba, which had a large military presence in Angola, was also one of PLAN's closest allies. Cuban advisers provided training for PLAN and occasionally fought alongside the insurgents in defensive actions against SADF raids. During the final years of the war, regular Cuban combat troops formed joint battalions with PLAN close to the South West African border, implicitly threatening that territory with a conventional invasion. Apart from Cuba, the Soviet Union also directly or indirectly involved some of its socialist allies in the South African Border War. For instance, North Korea and East Germany trained PLAN recruits at camps in their respective countries. Angola's Marxist government supported PLAN as a proxy to use against its primary domestic opponent, UNITA.

In the context of Cold War politics, the South African Border War has been described as a proxy war, in which rival powers armed, trained, financed, or otherwise encouraged the belligerents. The degree of foreign involvement on behalf of PLAN, especially by the socialist states, compelled the South African government to perceive it was locked in a war by proxy with the Soviet bloc as opposed to a strictly regional or local conflict. Although it refrained from directly taking sides in the conflict between the SADF and PLAN, the United States did cooperate with South African officials to arm UNITA and the FNLA as a proxies against the Angolan regime.