A01=Piero Gleijeses
Agostinho Neto
ANC (African National Congress)
Angola
Apartheid
Author_Piero Gleijeses
Category=NHH
Chester Crocker
Cold War
Cuba
Decolonization
Detente
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Fidel Castro
Jimmy Carter
John Vorster
Jonas Savimbi
Jose Eduardo dos Santos
Leonid Brezhnev
Mikhail Gorbachev
MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola)
Namibia
Nelson Mandela
P.W. Botha
Pik (Roelof) Botha
Ronald Reagan
Sam Nujoma
South Africa
Soviet Union
SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organization)
UNITA
United States
Yuri Andropov
Product details
- ISBN 9781469628325
- Weight: 995g
- Dimensions: 152 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 29 Feb 2016
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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During the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the superpowers. Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa's last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold War.
These sources all point to one conclusion: by humiliating the United States and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa. It was Cuba's victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans ""destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.
These sources all point to one conclusion: by humiliating the United States and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa. It was Cuba's victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans ""destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.
Piero Gleijeses is professor of American foreign policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is author of Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, among other books.
