Angola War Books

Format:	Book
Author:	Maier, Karl, 1957-
Title:	Angola : promises and lies / Karl Maier.
Publisher, Date:	London : Serif , 2007.
Description:	224 p. : map ; 22 cm.
Subject:	Angola -- History -- Civil War, 1975-2002.
	Angola -- History -- 2002-
	Angola -- Social conditions.
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-216) and index.
ISBN:	1897959524 (pbk.)
	9781897959527 (pbk.)

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Combining finely detailed
reportage with anecdotal snapshots of the horrors of war, Maier, a
correspondent for The Independent and the Washington Post who began
reporting on Angola in 1986, offers an explanation of the Angolan civil
war for the rest of us. His engrossing chronological account lays out
the nearly two decades of conflict that have ripped apart the southern
African nation. An inability to resolve differences rooted in race,
political ideology and tribal ethnicity has set contemporary Angola on
a highway to hell instead of the road to prosperity its vast reserves
of natural resources promised. Maier notes with some irony that
American oil companies have continued their drilling operations
throughout the war. He also intelligently positions the conflict's
historical import as one of the last battlegrounds for the combatants
in the Cold War. Despite a glossary defining the plethora of acronyms
that riddle the pages, some readers may have a hard time following
which faction is fighting for what side during, first, Angola's war for
independence from its colonial Portuguese rulers and, second, the
lengthy civil war that continues today. Maier tells his story in the
present tense, which makes the book read like dispatches from today's
paper. The writer's sharp eye for detail catches a swarm of hungry
Angolans falling upon a bag of maize that foreign aid workers have
dropped onto an airport tarmac. The powder sifts through their
emaciated fingers as they try to stash it in strips of fabric tied
around their concave chests. More of this kind of personal observation
and reflection would have added to the book's compelling narrative.
(Sept.) Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information.

Format:	Book
Author:	Devlin, Larry.
Title:	Chief of station, Congo : a memoir of 1960-67 / Larry Devlin.
Edition:	1st ed.
Publisher, Date:	New York : PublicAffairs, c2007.
Description:	xi, 288 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., map ; 25 cm.
Subject:	Devlin, Larry.
	Diplomats -- United States -- Biography.
	Intelligence officers -- United States -- Biography.
	Espionage, American -- Congo (Democratic Republic) -- History -- 20th century.
	Congo (Democratic Republic) -- History -- Civil War, 1960-1965 -- Personal narratives, American.
	United States -- Foreign relations -- Congo (Democratic Republic)
	Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Foreign relations -- United States.
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9781586484057 (alk. paper)
	1586484052 (alk. paper)
LCCN:	2006028475

Booklist Reviews

When Belgium ceded independence to the
Congo in 1960, one of the cold war's most acute crises erupted. The
French-speaking Devlin was there as the CIA's man in Leopoldville
(today, Kinshasa) with a charge to defeat a Soviet and Chinese
Communist surge into the country. This memoir shows the author in best
light as a station chief with personal courage and cultural astuteness,
a quick thinker in sticky situations, many potentially lethal. The
hair-raising incidents, often at roadblocks, once with burglars in his
house, so common in Devlin's narrative will instill those interested in
operational intelligence careers with the 24/7 risks of a posting in
the field, while his involvement with political developments in
chaotic, post-independence Congo contributes primary testimony to the
history of the period. Devlin acknowledges, for example, receiving an
order to assassinate leftist premier Patrice Lumumba, but says he
opposed it as immoral and did not carry it out. Including his personal
impressions of Mobutu, the eventual victor in Congo's early 1960s
turmoil, Devlin's retrospective will rivet the espionage set.
((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

A
spy comes in from the dripping heat.Devlin, long retired from The
Company, recounts a busy career fending off Soviet ambitions in Africa
as a CIA agent and then station chief, a spook’s version of ambassador.
In most parts of the world, he writes, that rivalry was an aptly named
cold war, whereas in Congo, where he was stationed, it was decidedly a
hot one. Newly independent from a once-rapacious Belgium, for whose
colonial administrators Devlin has little use, Congo faced its first
major crisis when the new leader, Patrice Lumumba, “promised all
government employees a pay raise, all, that is, except the army.” In a
country where the army has all the guns, that is always a dicey
proposition, and Lumumba found himself facing civil war, urged along by
the American government, which wanted to see him gone; one memo of Aug.
26, 1960, puts its baldly: “if Lumumba continues to hold high office,
the inevitable result will at best be chaos and at worst pave the way
to a Communist takeover of the Congo. . . . Consequently, we concluded
that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under
existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert
action.” By his account conscience-stricken, Devlin resisted doing the
wet work. By other accounts, which Devlin cites, he was roundly
implicated in the eventual ouster and assassination of Lumumba. Given
what seems to be an air of late-in-life candor, it seems reasonable to
trust the author, but you can’t ever know for sure. In whatever case,
Lumumba’s absence opened the door to long-reigning dictator Mobutu,
whom Devlin considers a pretty good guy overall; America’s interests
were thus well served, thanks as much to Soviet ineptitude as to
anything the CIA did.An unusually open look at CIA operations in the
Eisenhower-Kennedy era, adding an interesting, perhaps controversial,
footnote to the still-much-debated death of Lumumba. Copyright Kirkus
2006 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

In
this vivid, authoritative account of being CIA station chief in Congo
during the height of the Cold War, Devlin brings to life a harrowing
tale of postcolonial political intrigue, covert violence and the
day-to-day reality of being a key player in a global chess match
between superpowers. Posted to Congo in 1960, Devlin quickly found
himself at the swirling center of conflict— the Belgian colonial
rulers had pulled out, the local strongmen had begun what would be a
decades-long struggle for power and the Soviet Union was sending agents
to influence events. Arriving on the scene with his wife and young
daughter in tow, Devlin finds "central authority had broken down; there
was no one in control who could prevent random acts of barbarity." As
the country begins to fall apart and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba
starts flirting with the Soviets, orders come from Washington for "his
removal." Within weeks Lumumba is not only out of power but dead. While
the rest of the book is full of exciting cloak-and-dagger derring-do
and scrapes with death, it is this incident that haunts Devlin. He
devotes the last chapter of the book to a point-by-point refutation of
his or the agency's involvement in Lumumba's death. That alleged
assassination is often used to illustrate the hypocrisy in U.S. foreign
policy. Devlin's straightforward, plainly written approach to the task
lends credence to his assertion of innocence. (Mar.)

[Page 42]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

The United States and South Africa, 1968-1985: Constructive Engagement and Its Critics (Hardcover)

by Christopher Coker (Author)

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr (Tx) (June 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822306654
• ISBN-13: 978-0822306658

Constructive Engagement?: Chester Crocker & American Policy in South Africa, Namibia & Angola (Paperback)

by J. E. Davies (Author)

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Ohio University Press; 1 edition (December 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821417827
• ISBN-13: 978-0821417829

Product Description

The
notion of engagement represents an indispensible tool in a foreign
policy practitioner’s armory. The idea of constructive engagement is
forwarded by governments as a method whereby pressure can be brought to
bear on countries to improve their record on human rights, while
diplomatic and economic contracts can be maintained. But does this
approach succeed? To answer this question this book offers a critical
evaluation of one of the best-known examples of constructive
engagement—the Reagan administration’s policy toward South Africa.

Chester Crocker was appointed as Reagan’s assistant secretary of state
for African affairs in 1981. Crocker maintained that unvarying hostile
rhetoric leveled at the apartheid regime in South Africa only served to
increase Pretoria’s mistrust and dislike of Washington and hardened
Pretoria’s intransigence.
Crocker asserted that an open dialogue,
together with a reduction of punitive measures, such as export
restrictions, would gain the confidence of Pretoria, enabling
Washington to influence South Africa toward a gradual change away from
apartheid.
This book aims to determine how successful Crocker’s
constructive engagement policy was in South Africa and the neighboring
states of Namibia and Angola. In this timely and brilliant study,
Davies examines the implications for current applications of
constructive engagement as a tool of foreign policy.

About the Author

J. E. Davies taught international relations at the University of Wales, Swansea, and is now a freelance writer living in Wales.

Ovambo Politics in the Twentieth Century (Paperback)

by Allan D. Cooper (Author)

• Paperback: 362 pages
• Publisher: University Press of America (December 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761821104
• ISBN-13: 978-0761821106

The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Paperback)

by Odd Arne Westad (Author)

• Paperback: 498 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (February 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052170314X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521703147

Review
'This is a genuinely 'international' history ... few
genuine research monographs are so wide ranging chronologically and
geographically, while also trying to absorb insights from sociology and
social anthropology ... taken as a whole no historian has dealt with
the links between the Cold War so fully, so broadly and so thoughtfully
as Westad in this new account ... a truly seminal work, whose findings
will exercise those researching the Cold War for many years.' Reviews
in History 'The Global Cold War is a powerful account of the way in
which the third world moved to the center of international politics in
the closing decades of the 20th century. Drawing on a stunning
multiplicity of archival material, Odd Arne Westad integrates
perspectives and disciplines which have, until now, remained separate:
US and Soviet ideologies, their politics and the interventions that
flowed from both; insurrection, rebellion, revolution and the power of
competing models of development, systems of support or subversion
(sometimes synonymous) that in part determined their outcome. Westad
writes with the combination of clarity, wit and passion that have
always characterized his work. This time the canvas is large enough to
do full justice to his scholarship and his humanity.' Marilyn B. Young,
New York University 'Odd Arne Westad's new book is an extremely
important contribution to the historiography of the Cold War. With
broad erudition, amazing geographical range, and inventive research in
archives around the globe, Westad tells the tragic story of the United
States and Soviet Union's involvement in what became the 'Third World'.
The newly emerging nations of the 'South' - of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America - barely emerged from their humiliating subservience to
European colonialism before being dragged by Cold War rivalries into
ideologically-inspired upheavals that ended up bankrupting their
countries and devastating their peoples. Westad's study enables his
readers to integrate the Third World into the history of the Cold War
and confronts them with the meaning of intervention in the past for the
international system today.' Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University 'In
a reinterpretation of the Cold War that is as thorough as it is
important, Westad places Soviet and American interventions in the Third
World at the center of their struggle. Driven by ideology and the need
to affirm the rightness of their principles, both superpowers felt
compelled to contest with the other in areas of little intrinsic
importance. The results were almost uniformly failures, and in the
process brought much sorrow and destruction to the Third World. The
picture is not a pretty one, but Westad shows that studying it reveals
much about the Cold War, and about the current world scene.' Robert
Jervis, Columbia University 'Based on prodigious research, this
ambitious and wide-ranging book presents the most important account to
date of the Cold War in the Third World. Westad's study represents
broad-based, international history at its best. He deftly weaves
together the tale of world politics writ large with stories about
variegated processes of revolution and social change across the Third
World. This should prove an indispensable work for anyone interested in
the history of the twentieth-century.' Robert J. McMahon, University of
Florida 'For the serious student of our times Odd Arne Westad's The
Global Cold War could provide a serious weapon for their scholastic
arsenal.' Open History: The Journal of the Open University History
Society '... Westad's work combines sophisticated analysis, insight
into the motivations and behaviours of non-Western actors, historical
perspective, fair-mindedness and a sympathy for the victims on all
sides. Westad's pioneering work in Soviet archives means that his book
illuminates better than any other work I have read in English the
thinking and motivations of the Soviet leadership and its advisers when
it came to the Third World.' London Review of Books '... Westad
presents a finely crafted and immaculately researched study that
presents some of the findings from the archives of the former Soviet
Union and its communist allies alongside the more familiar American and
western sources.' International Affairs 'There are already a number of
books on the Cold War, and more are likely as more information becomes
available. This work will remain important, however, for shifting the
focus away from Europe and North Korea, to the wider world in which the
superpower struggle took place. It is well written and draws on a wide
range of materials. Many will not agree with all the arguments, but it
is a major contribution to our understanding of how the world became as
it is.' Asian Affairs 'Westad's brilliant, bitter account, based on
prodigious research, is an indictment of the superpowers. They treated
the Third World as their playground and left it devastated. ... The
authors provide new insights into the Berlin crises of 1958-63.' Martin
McCauley


Review
"Based on prodigious research, this
ambitious and wide-ranging book presents the most important account to
date of the Cold War in the Third World. Westad's study represents
broad-based, international history at its best. He deftly weaves
together the tale of world politics writ large with stories about
variegated processes of revolution and social change across the Third
World. This should prove an indispensable work for anyone interested in
the history of the twentieth-century."
-Robert J. McMahon, University of Florida

"The
Global Cold War is a powerful account of the way in which the third
world moved to the center of international politics in the closing
decades of the 20th century. Drawing on a stunning multiplicity of
archival material, Odd Arne Westad integrates perspectives and
disciplines which have, until now, remained separate: U.S. and Soviet
ideologies, their politics and the interventions that flowed from both;
insurrection, rebellion, revolution and the power of competing models
of development, systems of support or subversion (sometimes synonymous)
that in part determined their outcome. Westad writes with the
combination of clarity, wit and passion that have always characterized
his work. This time the canvas is large enough to do full justice to
his scholarship and his humanity."
-Marilyn B. Young, New York University

"Odd
Arne Westad's new book is an extremely important contribution to the
historiography of the Cold War. With broad erudition, amazing
geographical range, and inventive research in archives around the
globe, Westad tells the tragic story of the United States and Soviet
Union's involvement in what became called the 'Third World.' The newly
emerging nations of the 'South' - of Africa, Asia, and Latin America -
barely emerged from their humiliating subservience to European
colonialism before being dragged by Cold War rivalries into
ideologically-inspired upheavals that ended up bankrupting their
countries and devastating their peoples. Westad's study enables his
readers to integrate the Third World into the history of the Cold War
and confronts them with the meaning of intervention in the past for the
international system today."
-Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University

"In
a reinterpretation of the Cold War that is as thorough as it is
important, Westad places Soviet and American interventions in the Third
World at the center of their struggle. Driven by ideology and the need
to affirm the rightness of their principles, both superpowers felt
compelled to contest with the other in areas of little intrinsic
importance. The results were almost uniformly failures, and in the
process brought much sorrow and destruction to the Third World. The
picture is not a pretty one, but Westad shows that studying it reveals
much about the Cold War, and about the current world scene."
-Robert Jervis, Columbia University

"Westad's
account is sharply observed and deeply researched...this book is
superb: few scholars could match Westad's mastery of the sources."
-Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006

"The Global Cold War is remarkable for its geographical and historical breath"
-Robert A. Goldberg, University of Utah, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This
study is a comprehensive, well-documented, and well-written history of
the Cold War in the Third World. Westad has done a superb job of
explaining how the world of today, both at home and abroad, is largely
a product of the Cold War era. His book belongs on the shelf of every
serious student of recent world history."
-Ronald Powaski, The Historian

"This
particularly impressive and clearly written account of the Cold War is
especially valuable because of its global perspective, and its focus on
the worldwide impact of superpower confrontation...an impressive work
that deserves attention."
-Jeremy Black, University of Exeter, The Journal of Military History




Product Description
The Cold War between the
former Soviet Union and the United States indelibly shaped the world we
live in today--especially international politics, economics, and
military affairs. This volume shows how the globalization of the Cold
War during the 20th century created the foundations for most of today's
key international conflicts, including the "war on terror." Odd Arne
Westad examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and
the ideologies that drove the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. towards
interventionism. He focuses on how these interventions gave rise to
resentments and resistance that, in the end, helped to topple one and
to seriously challenge the other superpower. In addition, he
demonstrates how these worldwide interventions determined the
international and domestic framework within which political, social and
cultural changes took place in such countries as China, Indonesia,
Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua. According to Westad, these
changes, plus the ideologies, movements and states that interventionism
stirred up, constitute the real legacy of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad
is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics
and Political Science. In 2004 he was named head of department and
co-director of the new LSE Cold War Studies Centre. Professor Westad is
the author, or editor, of ten books on contemporary international
history including Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950
(2003) and, with Jussi Hanhimaki, The Cold War: A History in Documents
and Eyewitness Accounts (2003). In addition, he is a founding editor of
the journal Cold War History.


Book Description
This is a compelling and
controversial reexamination of the global conflict waged by the United
States and Soviet Union during the Cold War and the part it played in
shaping Africa, Asia and Latin America today. Arne Westad examines the
origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that
drove the United States and Soviet Union towards interventionism. He
argues that the real lasting legacy of the Cold War are the ideologies,
movements and states which interventionism has fuelled and which
increasingly dominate international affairs today.


About the Author
Odd Arne Westad is
Director of the Cold War Studies Centre at the London School of
Economics and Political Science. His recent publications include
Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 (2003) and The
Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003).

Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Paperback)

by Piero Gleijeses (Author)

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (December 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807854646
• ISBN-13: 978-0807854648

From Library Journal
Gleijeses (Sch. of Advanced
International Studies at Johns Hopkins Univ.; Shattered Hope: The
Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954) offers a Cold
War study not of two superpowers but of Third World policy in Third
World countries. This book looks at U.S. and Cuban foreign policies in
Africa, a continent generally ignored by American foreign policymakers
but highly important to Castro's Cuba. In examining small engagements
in Algeria and Guinea-Bissau, as well as larger engagements in Zaire
and Angola, Gleijeses argues that, contrary to American belief, Cuba
did not merely act as a Soviet pawn in Africa but pursued its own
interests. Castro viewed Africa as an important battleground to combat
"capitalist imperialism," usually contrary to Soviet policies.
Gleijeses conducted extensive research in writing this book, including
gaining unprecedented access to Cuban archival material and oral
histories. There is little material available on Cuban-African
relations, and nothing this comprehensive. Recommended for academic
libraries. Mike Miller, Dallas P.L.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the




Hardcover
edition.



Review
"Fascinating... and often downright
entertaining.... Gleijeses recounts the Cuban story with considerable
flair, taking good advantage of rich material." - Washington Post Book
World; "Gleijeses's research... bluntly contradicts the Congressional
testimony of the era and the memoirs of Henry A. Kissinger." - New York
Times; "With the publication of Conflicting Missions, Piero Gleijeses
establishes his reputation as the most impressive historian of the Cold
War in the Third World." - John Lewis Gaddis, author of We Now Know:
Rethinking Cold War History

A necessary corrective to past misinterpretations of how and why the Cubans intervened in Africa.
-- Los Angeles Times

Admirable.
-- The Economist

Gleijeses gained remarkable access to Cuban documents, and his major contribution lies in what he has discovered there.
-- Foreign Affairs

Rich and provocative.
-- Washington Post Book World

Angola: The Weight of History (Columbia/Hurst) (Hardcover)

by Patrick Chabal (Editor), Nuno Vidal (Editor)

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (November 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231700156
• ISBN-13: 978-0231700153

Review

"This book's
great strength is to put the contemporary, postwar condition of Angola
into a historical context and to show how the present cannot be
understood without this highly particular past. It is also very useful
as a basis for the comparative analysis of African polities and
economies." -- Chris Cramer, professor in development studies and chair
of the Centre of African Studies, School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London

Product Description

Multiparty
elections in 2008 will, it is hoped, cement a transition towards
peaceful stability in Angola, which has suffered from over forty years
of violent civil war. Since the end of the conflict in 2002, there has
been renewed optimism that Angola, a former Portuguese colony with
abundant natural resources, would finally evolve a political system
that would ensure the country's sustained economic and social
development. Some scholars and economists argue that the Angolan people
could be on the cusp of a giant leap forward, based on the state's
booming oil sector, which would lay the groundwork for long-term
economic prosperity. But is this a realistic scenario?

Patrick Chabal and Nuno Vidal's Angola
is a thorough introduction to the history and present-day reality of
one of Africa's most complex countries. Contributors, who are all
leading scholars in the field, offer incisive and original analyses of
Angola's colonial history, its economic, political, and social
evolution since independence, its current structural issues, and its
prospects for the future. Essays begin with a probing look at Angola's
difficult past and then discuss its move away from hegemonic domination
towards a multiparty political system and a civil society.

About the Author

Patrick Chabal is professor of Lusophone African studies at King's College London, University of London.

Nuno Vidal lectures in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal.