Truman Administration and the Decolonization of Sub-Saharan Africa, The

Journal of Third World Studies, Fall 1997 by Okoth, P Godfrey

Munene, Macharia. The Truman Administration and the Decolonization of Sub-Saharan Africa. Nairobi: Nairobi University Press, 1995. 242 pp.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States of America is today the most powerful nation in the world. The U.S. maintained this powerful stature since the end of World War II. Because of this, analyses of its foreign policy have tended to be shrouded in controversy. Thus, Americans may see their foreign policy very differently from the non-Americans affected by such policy, just as academic analysts may see it differently from ordinary voters. There are, in my opinion, three major schools of interpretations of U.S. foreign policy.

First, the liberal or "bourgeois-liberal" school which most Americans sympathize with. According to the proponents of this school, the institutions of political democracy in domestic affairs lead to peaceful international relations. In this regard, the U.S. is "an unusually moral actor" in world affairs, fighting only when it is first attacked by someone else as was the case at Pearl Harbor in 1941. In the sane vein" the U.S. is seen as offering economic and political assistance to others as was the case in the Marshall Plan after World War II; a nation generally motivated by "altruistic" and generous motives, a "model for the world." As such, the participation of the U.S. in both World War I and World War II and in the Cold War, are seen as Washington "protecting' the freedom and self-determination of other nations, simply because Americans "identify with the well-being and happiness of human beings."

Second, the Marxist or radical school. This school encompasses some American critics of U.S. foreign policy and many non Americans around the world. According to this school of thought, the economic structures of capitalism are interpreted as causing the U.S., the leader of world capitalism, to be the number one imperialist country, a nation launching more than its share of gunboat diplomacy and armed invasions, provoking international tensions and arms races. This view was prevalent among academics in the former Soviet Union, former Eastern European countries and in most Third World Countries and it is intuitively endorsed by many downtrodden throughout the world.

Third, the realist school. The advocates of this school of thought contend that the U.S. is neither an unusually moral country nor an unusually avaricious country, but simply an ordinary country, pursuing self-interest and power as every other major power has done. This is a power-politics interpretation that attaches relatively little importance to either political democracy or capitalist economics as explanations for the conduct of foreign policy. According to this interpretation, the anarchic character of world politics dictates the basic behavior of a international actor; that such actors are driven to behave in the same fashion. This Morgenthaun interpretation became fashionable after World War II among those U.S. academics analyzing international relations.

It is against this background that Munene's book can be assessed. A book that grew out of the author's Ph.D. dissertation at Ohio University, Athens, should have tackled this theoretical, conceptual, historiographical issue as the foundation of his analysis. Although this is glaringly missing, it is not difficult to conclude that Munene's analysis of U.S foreign policy borders on the liberal and the realist schools. The book explores the role of the U.S. on the decolonization process after the end of World War II by concentrating on the Truman period. Munene, a senior lecturer in History at the University of Nairobi (by the time of writing this book), demonstrates that anti-colonialists admired the American affront on European colonialism and expected Americans to continue with their war-time policies. He contends that the Cold War, however, made it difficult for the U.S. to maintain an anti-colonialist posture while expecting European support against the Soviet Union and communism. Munene maintains that although it was "uncomfortable" with its new role and sought ways of mediating between anti-colonialists and colonialists, the U.S. "Sacrificed" its anti-colonialist ideals in order to decampaign communism. In the process, Munene claims, anti-colonialists became "disillusioned" with the U.S. in Africa and other Third World areas as well as in the U.S. itself

Organizationally, the took comprises seven chapters. The first chapter discusses the U.S. and colonialism during the pre-decolonization era. Chapter two traces the beginnings of decolonization from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Chapter three discusses the Truman Administration and the problem of the Trusteeship. Chapter four analyzes the Cold War and Africa's position in American foreign policy. Chapter five focuses on the Spirit of Point IV. Chapter six is on what Munene calls "A Bothersome Neutrality." Chapter seven draws a set of conclusions.

Overall, the book is well written. Munene used a wealth of archival and declassified U.S. Government sources to support his argument that the U.S. was interested in Africa even before the end of World War II and that the anti-colonial policy of Franklin Roosevelt was diluted by the Truman Administration because of the Administration's pre-occupation with the Cold War and its desire to support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies. The book is, therefore, a useful addition to the growing list of books on U.S. - African relations especially written by African scholars.