A Familiar Frontier: The Kennedy Administration in the Congo ...

Congo crisis began well before America had even taken notice of the new nation, andviolence continued after the American-backed Mobutu was deposed, with Kabila fightinga second war in 1998 before dying under mysterious circumstances.Yet there is no evidence that the United States set out to sow disarray or conflictin the Congo. Neither Eisenhower nor Kennedy had anything to gain through the chaosand brutality that characterized the Congo for much of 1960 and 1961. Indeed, the goal ofboth Administrations was quite the opposite, to establish a stable and peaceful state in theCongo, both for access to the country’s mineral resources and also to deny the spread ofcommunism into central Africa. The United States realized that in the Congo, as in muchof the Third World, it could pursue its interests strongly without enduring much scrutinyfrom the international community. Worldwide attention was rarely focused on the Congo,certainly less than it might have been given the years of violence and political turmoil.Indeed, G. Mennen Williams found that the U.S. standing in Africa was improved by itshandling of the Congo Crisis, itself a stark commentary on the neglect of the EisenhowerAdministration.In the end, the policies of Eisenhower and Kennedy were substantially similarbecause their points of view on Africa turned out to be more similar than either mighthave anticipated. Kennedy considered the question more carefully than Eisenhower, buthe ultimately joined his predecessor in the belief that meaningful cooperation with thecountries of Africa was not worth its costs, if it led to tensions with America’s Europeanallies or the possibility of a communist victory on the continent. For all the effortexpended by the U.S. to deal with the Congo Crisis, genuine American interests in thecountry were fairly weak, something that Kennedy came to realize. This meant that for95