United States—Zaire relations
From Roach Busters
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Zaire's relationship with the United States has been a long and complex one, varying at times from intimate friendship to outright hostility. Ever since its chaotic debut as an independent nation in 1960, the country has been of immense strategic value to the U.S., due to its location in the center of the continent and its vast mineral reserves. The U.S. was determined above all else to ensure that the Republic of the Congo, as the country was then known, did not slide into the Soviet camp. The radical nationalist prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was regarded as a grave threat to Western interests in the region, not only because of his socialist rhetoric, but because of his stance which the U.S. and Belgium regarded as being too pro-Soviet. U.S. officials constantly sounded the alarm, assuring all and sundry that the Congo was another Cuba waiting to happen. President Eisenhower, at a meeting with the National Security Council, bluntly stated that Lumumba had to be "eliminated." Accordingly, the Central Intelligence Agency concocted several schemes to try and assassinate Lumumba. One scheme involved poisoning Lumumba's food or toothbrush, so he would die of an illness symptomatic of one of the many tropical illnesses prevalent in the Congo, and thus make it look like a natural death. None of these plans came to fruition, and the Katangan secessionists in the south beat the U.S. to it; in early 1961, Lumumba was flown to Élisabethville, the capital of Katanga, where he was assassinated by firing squad, reportedly with the complicity of Belgian officers. His body was never found. This event, which provoked massive demonstrations in several capitals around the world, made Lumumba one of the most famous martyrs of the 20th century. Highly controversial at home and abroad, he is nevertheless regarded as the father of Congolese independence and a pillar of militant African nationalism.
In the tumultuous years that followed, U.S. support steadily increased. In 1964, when radical Maoist rebels called the Simbas seized the town of Stanleyville (now called Kisangani - see the article renaming of places in Zaire for details) and took several hundred white missionaries hostage, the U.S., in concert with Belgium, staged Operation Dragon Rouge, and managed to rescue the missionaries, although many were killed before the Belgian paratroopers landed. White mercenaries, mainly from Rhodesia and South Africa, later repulsed the Simbas.
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In November 1965, Lieutenant General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (later called Mobutu Sese Seko), seized power in a coup. The extent of U.S. involvement, if such there was, remains the subject of speculation to this day, but the U.S. was among the first to recognize the new regime.
As an ardent anticommunist, Mobutu received the full support of the Western world, and both American and Western European companies engaged in a headlong rush to invest in the Congo. President Nixon received Mobutu at the White House in 1970, and again in 1973, and, in addition to lavishing the young Congolese president with praise, promised continued aid, and extolled the virtues of the Congo as a sound place for U.S. investment.
U.S. relations with the Congo did, however, sour significantly in late 1973, after Mobutu proclaimed his "radicalization of the revolution" which marked the beginning of Zairianization (by then, the country had been renamed Zaire). The nationalization of U.S. industries, without compensation, provoked a furor in the U.S., and relations cooled to an all-time low, culminating in the expulsion of several U.S. diplomats from Kinshasa in 1975, after Mobutu accused the CIA of plotting his overthrow.
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However, that same year, relations thawed when Mobutu and the Ford Administration found themselves supporting the same side in the escalating Angolan Civil War. Both sides supported the pro-Western National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), while the Soviets supported the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and the Chinese supported the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. Mobutu intervened militarily on behalf of the FNLA, but suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Cuban soldiers, who had been deployed to protect the fledgling MPLA government from a South African invasion disguised as a mercenary operation.
Angola did not forget Zaire's involvement in 1975, nor did it forget Zaire's support (which began shortly afterwards) of UNITA. In 1977, Angola allowed an anti-Mobutu rebel group to use the country as a staging point for an invasion of Shaba. The Zairian military was humiliatingly defeated; only the intervention of elite Moroccan paratroopers, airlifted by France, saved the regime from defeat. The Carter Administration, which was critical of the Mobutu regime, provided little support. However, a year later, when the rebels again attempted an invasion, this time via Zambia, Mobutu adeptly played the anticommunist card by pointing to alleged East German and Cuban support of the invasion (whether they supported it or not is unknown, but most experts consider it unlikely), and Carter, prodded by his hawkish national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, provided support to Mobutu, in response to the alleged involvement by East Germany and Cuba.
Carter's criticism of Zaire's less than stellar human rights record meant that relations between the two countries remained cool throughout the Carter Administration. When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, he moved quickly to heal the rift, and was a staunch supporter throughout his presidency of the Mobutu government. Mobutu and Reagan struck up a warm relationship, and Mobutu thrice visited Reagan in Washington; in 1983, Reagan praised Mobutu as "a voice of good sense and good will."
Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, maintained the U.S.'s warm relationship with Zaire, in spite of increasing hostility from Congress, which, in response to the democratization sweeping Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the ever-closer end to the Cold War, saw no reason to continue supporting Mobutu simply for being anticommunist. In spite of Bush's protests, aid to Mobutu was cut substantially; after a massacre of dozens of college students protesting the regime in the early 1990s, all but humanitarian aid was ended.
