Soviet Doctrine and the Military Coups in Africa
| Date | 01 September 1966 |
| Published date | 01 September 1966 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206602100302 |
| Author | Charles B. McLane |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Soviet
Doctrine
and
the
Military
Coups
in
Africa
Charles
B.
McLane*
The
military
coups
d'6tat
which
swept across
Africa
in
1965
and
during
the
first
months
of
1966
have
affected
the
calcula-
tions
of most
foreign
powers
concerned
with
African affairs,
perhaps
none
more
significantly
than the
U.S.S.R.
Moscow
could
-and,
as
we
shall
see,
did-place
in
a
convenient
context
the
Army risings
in
the
Francophone
states
and
in
Nigeria. The
coups
in
Algeria
and
Ghana,
however
raised
troublesome
prob-
lems.
Ben
Bella
and
Kwame
Nkrumah,
in
Soviet
eyes,
had
been
the
leaders
of
the
"progressive"
movement
in
Africa.
Algeria
and
especially
Ghana
had
been
singled
out
repeatedly
as
models
for
other
developing
nations.
"There
is
no
country
in
tropical
Africa,"
a
Pravda
correspondent
wrote
several
months
before
Nkrumah's
fall,
"which has
made
such
efforts
and had such
real
success
as
Ghana
in
the
struggle
for
independence."
1
The question, accordingly which
students
of
Soviet
foreign
policy
are
now
asking,
is
what
shifts
in
Moscow's
policies
in
Africa and
in
the
"Third
World"
can
be
discerned,
or
are
likely
in
the
wake
of
these
military
upheavals
9
Let
us,
first
of
all,
place
theory
in
its
proper
context
in
Soviet
behaviour
in
Africa-an
exercise which
students
of
Rus-
sian
strategies
in
an
theatres
repeatedly
undertake.
Not
all
Soviet
activity
of course,
is
directly
attributable
to
theory
Moscow's
wide
diplomatic contacts
in
Africa,
for
instance,
in-
volving
ambassadorial
or
consular
exchange
and
other
relation-
ships
with
nearly
all
independent
nations
on
the
continent,
need
not
be
understood
exclusively
or
even
predominantly
in
the
context
of
ideological
considerations.
An
inspection
of
these
contacts
during
the
first
five
months
of
1966
reveals
no
decrease
in
their
intensity
and
shows
recent
ties
with
many
states-such
as
Chad,
the
Central
African
Republic,
Zambia,
Togo,
Somalia,
the
Sudan,
Mauritania
(to
name a
few)-in
which
Moscow's
Professor
of
Government,
Dartmouth
College.
1
V
Korovikov
in
Pravda,
October
9,
1965,
p.
3.
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