The Failure of America’s Post–Cold War

Foreign Policy: From the Persian Gulf to

the Gulf of Guinea

by Robert L. Ostergard, Jr.

I n the course of a country’s history, pivotal points, or critical junctures, mark

fundamental changes in that country’s foreign policy.1 For the United States, several
events in the twentieth century proved to be major, pivotal shifts for its foreign
policy. The entrance of the United States into World War I ended American
international isolationism, and its victory in World War II propelled it reluctantly into
the role of global leader against the communist threat. When the communist threat
ceased to exist in 1990, America once again experienced another pivotal point in its
foreign policy.
The focus of US foreign policy during the Cold War was based on a clear “us
vs. them” dimension, with “them” clearly as the communists and their ilk.
Containment of communism became the cornerstone of every administration’s
foreign policy during the Cold War. With the end of the Cold War and the
disintegration of “them,” a new attempt was initiated to redirect American foreign
policy toward a new objective. President George H. W. Bush made the first attempt
at redirecting America’s foreign policy by trying to create a multilateral framework of
security and cooperation under the auspices of the United Nations. Bush’s “New
World Order” brought together a United Nations mandate and a coalition of thirty-
four states to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait after Iraq’s 1990 invasion. With a
total force numbering between 500,000–600,000, the US-led coalition ousted Iraqi
forces, driving them back across the Iraq-Kuwait border. The “New World Order,”
however, was short-lived. Its demise was due in part to the United States’ inability to
act effectively outside of its own national interests, as was demonstrated in Somalia
shortly after the Persian Gulf War. The United Nations also contributed to the death
of the “New World Order” by showing complete ineptitude in handling the 1994
Rwandan genocide. Hence, the multilateral approach that drove Saddam Hussein
from Kuwait fell apart in the wake of two disastrous humanitarian interventions in
Somalia and Rwanda.
The second attempt to redirect American foreign policy in the post–Cold War
Robert L. Ostergard, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada,
Reno. The author would like to thank Shawna Sweeney for her invitation to present these ideas as
part of the Toby E. Huff Lecture Series at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He is also
indebted to Matthew Tubin of the University of Pennsylvania for his critical comments and
intellectual exchanges, which helped to flush out the finer details of the article.

43
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44 OSTERGARD, JR.

period came when Samuel Huntington proclaimed that future conflicts would no
longer be between states, but between civilizations. Huntington’s thesis first appeared
in 1993 in the influential policy journal Foreign Affairs, but at the time it was dismissed
by academics, scholars, and policymakers as vague and riddled with problems.2
However, policymakers in particular latched on to Huntington’s culture thesis after
the September 11th attacks on Washington, DC and New York City, which were
perpetrated by mostly Saudi Islamic extremists. Huntington’s image of a clash of
civilizations was much easier to accept in the aftermath of the attacks. It provided a
simple—albeit too simple—foundation from which the US could redirect its foreign
policy focus to a familiar “us vs. them” view of the world. The attachment to
Huntington’s thesis lingered as it appeared to put a reasonable perspective on the
unique situation that emerged from the September 11th attacks.

Huntington’s image of a clash of civilizations was much

easier to accept in the aftermath of the September 11th
attacks.
The United States was again at war against an ideology. In the twentieth century,
the US fought a hot war against Nazism and fascism, and a cold war against
Marxism-Leninism. In the twenty-first century, the United States has become
embroiled in a hot war against radical Islam. The threat from radical Islam is similar
to that faced by US troops in their fight against Japan in World War II. The
willingness of Islamic extremists to martyr themselves is reminiscent of Japanese
willingness to sacrifice themselves in the name of Emperor Hirohito, whom they saw
as the divine spirit of the Japanese people.3 The primary difference between the two
is that radical Islam is not centrally focused within a state, as fascist rule was in Japan.
Radical Islam has its adherents in states (Iran) and groups (al-Qaeda, Hezbollah), as
well as among individuals across the entire Islamic world. It is not just an ideology;
it is a movement fueled by anti-Western resentment.
In this sense, Huntington’s thesis could not be sustained within policy circles.
Ideologies are a byproduct of culture and regional politics. The major ideological
movements of the last 200 years—liberalism, communism, socialism, fascism, and
Nazism—are all Western in their origin. This time, the ideology is not Western and
is based primarily on a very cultural element—religion. What made Huntington’s
thesis problematic was that it painted the entire Islamic world with a wide brush of
radical Islam, when in reality such a brush should be extremely narrow. While radical
Islam has adherents that are geographically widespread, it makes up only a small
fraction of the entire Islamic world. Even so, radical Islam has helped to shape the
new vision of American foreign policy, which emerged in the post–September 11th
world as one that reflects the traditional “us vs. them” framework. President Bush
said as much in the 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States when he
noted that “America is at war. This is a wartime national security strategy required by
the grave challenge we face—the rise of terrorism fueled by an aggressive ideology

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of hatred and murder, fully revealed to the American people on September 11th,
2001.”4
Many of America’s former Cold War foreign policymakers spent much of the
post–Cold War period searching for the next enemy, or the next grand purpose, for
the United States. These two objectives have now come together in the
post–September 11th world in the war on terrorism through attempts to spread
democracy across the globe as a means of fighting terrorism. The identification of a
new enemy in terrorism, and the grand purpose of spreading democracy, have
become the greatest excursions into foreign policy idealism since Woodrow Wilson
declared that “the world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted
upon the tested foundations of political liberty.”5

FACING THE NEW THREAT: THE RESPONSE TO TERRORISM

In the twentieth and the first part of the twenty-first century, state-sponsored
terrorism, more so than independent terrorist groups, has been the greater threat.
Groups that perpetrate terrorism are typically responding to perceived grievances
they have with governments, foreign or domestic. Historically, military responses to
terrorism have provided only temporary relief, mostly because terrorist groups have
the ability to adapt to new security precautions and arrangements, while garnering
even greater support for their causes in the face of government hostilities. But can
terrorist groups be effective in achieving their objectives? One of the best indicators
of success seems to be the amount of support the group receives from the general
population, or what may be considered its constituency in the region in which it
operates.
Historically, this issue of constituency is borne out by the rise and fall of
terrorist movements in Europe. Groups such as Germany’s Baader Meinhoff Gang
and Italy’s Red Brigade were representative of leftist terrorist groups that sought to
overthrow their governments. In both cases, support within their respective
populations was weak and, by the end of the Cold War, both groups were effectively
neutralized. However, terrorist activities in Spain and Northern Ireland have taken a
slightly different turn. In Northern Ireland, support for the Irish Republican Army’s
objectives did not necessarily diminish, though decline in popular support for its
violent methods, which brought British government retaliations and the death of
more innocent people, ultimately led to negotiations between Sinn Féin, the political
arm of the IRA, and the British government.
In Spain, the same story unfolded; the Basque separatist group ETA did not lose
support for its goals and objectives, though it began to lose support for the violent
methods it had used. The popular resentment against the ETA began to build in
1995 with the failed assassination attempts on then future president José María Aznar
and King Juan Carlos I. Popular resentment further increased in 1997 when the ETA
kidnapped Partido Popular council member Miguel Ángel Blanco and killed him
after the Spanish government failed to meet its demands. In response, millions of
Spaniards marched in protest of the ETA’s assassination of Blanco, with some

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46 OSTERGARD, JR.

equating the ETA’s tactics to those of Spain’s fascist dictator Francisco Franco.6
While the Basque people still supported the objectives of the ETA, they clearly
rejected their methods. The lesson to be learned from these cases is that no matter
how brutal the government response to the terrorists’ activities, these groups either
saw their demise or their effectiveness decline substantially only after support within
the population, or within the terrorists’ constituencies, began to waver.

Populations across a number of countries sympathize

with or even support terrorist groups who have targeted
the United States and its allies.
If it is the case that terrorists’ success is predicated on popular support, the
United States has a major problem that has been consistently underplayed, and even
ignored: populations across a number of countries sympathize with or even support
terrorist groups who have targeted the United States and its allies. The current
administration under George W. Bush received overwhelming international support
and the American people garnered sympathy and compassion from around the world
in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The US enjoyed widespread support for
the retaliatory action taken against the Taliban regime that harbored al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan. However, when the administration turned its attention to Iraq,
international support was tepid at best.
Despite claims to the contrary, the old Iraqi regime had no involvement with the
September 11th attacks, or links to al-Qaeda.7 Likewise, the claims that Iraq was an
imminent threat to the United States were equally difficult to substantiate, given that
the US and coalition partners had effectively isolated the country since the Persian
Gulf War. When the Bush administration launched its war against Iraq in 2003, with
significantly less international support than in the Persian Gulf War, it launched a
war against an undoubtedly brutal and despicable regime.8 Few, if any, will bicker
over the tyrannical nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime or shed a tear over its demise.
However, the administration’s arguments for the war were simply unfounded.
The war on terrorism that the US launched in 2001 has become the new cause
celebré of American foreign policy, predicated on the notion that terrorism can be
identified and militarily defeated. It seems that the ultimate victory in the war on
terrorism would be the installation of democratic regimes able to suppress the
growth of terrorism, but this new foreign policy objective is based on a misguided
assumption, tainted by a major contradiction in America’s foreign policy that dates
back to the end of World War II.

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY AND THE PERCEIVED HYPOCRISY

The misguided assumption underlying American foreign policy is that the war
on terrorism can be won through militarily actions alone. This assumption is rooted
in the celebratory rhetoric that followed in the wake of the Cold War. While
communism and the threat it posed could be easily identified, the war on terrorism

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AMERICA’S POST-COLD WAR FOREIGN POLICY 47
has no clearly defined enemy. Therefore, it does not fit squarely into the rubric of a
military solution, especially one imposed by an outside power.
Terrorism is first and foremost a problem of governance, either in response to
government policy or as an act of government policy. In this sense, the major
contradiction in America’s post–World War II foreign policy has been that while the
US government has been willing to espouse Wilson’s liberal vision to make the world
safe for democracy, it has done so only as a matter of convenience to America’s
national interest. American support for brutal dictatorships that committed crimes
or terrorist acts against their own people came all too easily. American foreign policy
spoke of the liberal agenda for the world, but succumbed to the realpolitik of
America’s national interests. The liberal rhetoric could not be practiced in the face of
America’s immediate and short-term security concerns. The end result has been that
people around the world perceive a hypocrisy in America’s foreign policy—the
language of liberal democracy contradicted by actions meant to secure America’s
national security interests. That historical contradiction has now crossed paths with
the war on terrorism.
The most stunning and recent example of this foreign policy contradiction came
in the 2006 State of the Union address, when President Bush scolded the American
people, saying that “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable
parts of the world.”9 Implicitly, the administration was placing the problems in the
Middle East on the consumption of oil by the American people; blaming the
American people for their addiction to oil is like blaming a drug addict for the
addiction without mention of the peddler or cartel that supplies the drugs. What the
President forgot to tell the American people is that their addiction was aided and
abetted by decades of foreign policies that have enabled that addiction. There is no
doubt the president diagnosed the problem correctly in substance, if not in form.
However, no state has truly been immune to the addiction to oil; after all, the Pacific
theater in World War II erupted partly as a result for the quest for oil. The US
addiction to oil is one of the most dangerous diseases this country has faced.
The war that George Bush never launched was a war against these
contradictions and hypocrisies, a war that every administration back to Harry
Truman’s has never waged. This is what is partially at the root of America’s foreign
policy failures today. If the old saying that politics makes strange bedfellows is true,
then there could be no stranger bedfellows than the leaders of the free world
perpetually welcoming and befriending some of the most tyrannical dictators
throughout the world, particularly those in oil rich countries of the Muslim world.
Through both direct and passive support, the US has been, at times, a partner in
repression and a supporter of those that have oppressed their people. Every
president since Roosevelt has considered oil a strategic resource that drives America’s
national security, a policy that always has been a short-term, unsustainable
proposition simply transferred from one administration to the next. That
proposition has created an unhealthy and imbalanced strategic relationship between
the United States and its oil suppliers.

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48 OSTERGARD, JR.

How is it possible to champion liberal principles such as

freedom and democracy while providing unquestioned
support for tyranny?
During the post–World War II period, the oil relationship that dominated much
of US foreign policy with Middle Eastern states embodied a Jekyll and Hyde
complex. The United States has had a strong, friendly relationship with many of the
Muslim monarchs and dictators of the Middle East who, at the same time, have been
less than friendly to their own people. The people who lived under repressive rule
saw the United States as an accomplice because of its unwavering support for their
monarchs and dictators. But perhaps more importantly, these people saw an
unmatched level of hypocrisy on the part of the United States. How is it possible to
champion liberal principles such as freedom and democracy while providing
unquestioned support for tyranny? A case in point is the US relationship with Iran.
Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union vied for influence over
Iran in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In 1941, Britain and the Soviet
Union forced the ruler, Reza Shah, from power and installed his son, Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, as ruler. However, a nationalist movement led by
Muhammad Mossadegh attempted to drive the Shah from power in 1953. In doing
so, Mossadegh threatened to nationalize Iran’s oil production, threatening Western
oil interests in the country. Shortly afterwards, Mossadegh’s opponents, with the help
of the United States, overthrew his government, reinstalling the Shah as absolute
ruler in Iran. The Shah’s return translated into tremendous benefits for the West that
included large arms sales and the training of Iran’s secret police, the SAVAK. The
Shah grew increasingly autocratic, using the SAVAK to crush his opponents while
plundering the country’s oil wealth. Dissent grew at all levels of Iranian society as the
Shah allied himself more closely with pro-Western interests.10
The Shah’s October 1971 celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian
monarchy symbolically marked the turning point for the Shah’s rule. More than $200
million was spent to bring dignitaries from around the world for the celebration. The
week long celebration was marked with a feast prepared by French caterers, which
included over 25,000 bottles of wine. The celebration represented the high point of
excess and insensitivity toward his impoverished people while showing a complete
disregard for Iran’s Islamic heritage. The bloody suppression of dissenters ushered
in a new period of terror and intolerance of dissent within Iran.11
Despite the growing social unrest and the Shah’s brutal crackdown on dissent in
Iran, the US did not waiver in its complete support for the Shah. On June 24, 1973,
President Richard Nixon welcomed Iran’s monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi,
to the United States “…as not only an old friend, as a progressive leader of your own
people, [but] also as a world statesman of the first rank.”12 In a toast to the Shah and
Empress of Iran on May 15, 1975, President Gerald Ford told the audience, “the
present period will be seen by historians as a very major milestone in Iran’s ancient
and very glorious history. The leader whose vision and dynamism has brought Iran

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AMERICA’S POST-COLD WAR FOREIGN POLICY 49
to this stage, His Imperial Majesty, is clearly one of the great men of his generation,
of his country, and of the world.”13 On a state visit to the United States on
November 15, 1977, the Shah of Iran received President Jimmy Carter’s praise for
maintaining a “strong, stable and progressive Iran” under his leadership.14
President Carter, the champion of human rights in US foreign policy, would be
the last US president to express his public support for the Shah. Two major social
forces opposed to the Shah’s rule would change Iran’s history dramatically. Shia
Muslims were outraged by the Shah’s attempt to sidestep Iran’s Muslim heritage in
seeking a rebirth of the old Persian Empire (symbolically represented by the 1971
celebration). They joined forces with students and other progressives angered by the
Shah’s autocratic, corrupt, and tyrannical rule to oust him in the 1979 Iranian
Revolution. That revolution paved the way for a radical Islamic regime to come to
power. While the United States did not bring the Islamic regime to power, it was
certainly responsible for condoning the Shah’s policies, supplying him with the
weapons to make those policies possible, and providing him with large aid packages
and unconditional support. The social unrest combined with US support for the
Shah proved to be a “perfect storm” that converged into a massive social uprising
against the brutal monarchy. The Iranian people blamed the United States for
prolonging the regime, providing weaponry for its brutal policies, and for harboring
and protecting the Shah after he was ousted in the revolution.
Such policies are still in practice today around the Middle East and in parts of
the developing world. The American oil addiction, like any addiction, has an impact
on others besides the addict. When the United States supports repressive regimes in
the name of strategic oil acquisitions, it is supporting the brutality that is being
imposed upon people around the Middle East. Terrorist groups that target the US
and the monarchies of the Middle East get their support from populations who see
the United States as the friend of the oppressors. Terrorism against state interests is
supported, and even succeeds, in these areas because terrorism has been used in the
past by the states themselves. Thus the populations of these regions are more likely
to see terrorism as their only voice.

THE NEW FRONTIER IN AMERICA’S FOREIGN POLICY: WEST AFRICA

Recently, there has been a growing realization that the United States’ relationship
with Middle East monarchs is becoming untenable and that alternative sources of oil
must be sought. If the United States is going to remain politically, economically, and
militarily competitive, conventional wisdom dictates there must be a search for new
sources of petroleum. The alternative sources of petroleum that have emerged are
predominantly in Central Asia and West Africa, two regions that prior to September
11th had little strategic value to the United States. In the case of Africa, ironically,
the disappearance of the Soviet threat after the Cold War marked the beginning of
the United States’ diplomatic departure from the continent. Within three years of the
fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bureau of African Affairs in the US State Department lost
seventy positions; consulates in Kenya, Cameroon, and Nigeria were also scheduled

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50 OSTERGARD, JR.

to be closed.15

It has been easier for policymakers to seek alternative

sources of oil, rather than alternative resources.
Now, not only are new embassies being opened in West Africa, they are being
accompanied by military advisors and the possibility of a permanent US military
base. For the past few years, US military officials have focused on ways in which the
Gulf of Guinea can be secured from piracy and terrorist attacks. The Gulf of
Guinea, experts believe, has the largest deep-water, offshore oil reserves in the
world.16 The states that surround the Gulf of Guinea on the west coast of Africa
include Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Cameroon, Angola, and the Republic of
the Congo. While the present administration has vigorously denied any movement
toward building a permanent US presence in the region, all the signs seem to point
in the other direction.
Beginning shortly after the September 11th attacks, the US government and
private military companies began visiting parts of West Africa to set the framework
for an onslaught of American investment, including approximately $5 billion
invested in Equatorial Guinea alone.17 In a 2002 report, the US National Intelligence
Council predicted that by 2015 no less than 25 percent of US oil imports would
come from the Gulf of Guinea, compared to roughly 15–17 percent now.18 As such,
recent trade agreements between the United States and African states have improved
the conditions under which oil imports come to the US, leading some to claim that
the trade pacts were essentially aimed at increasing the flow of crude oil from West
Africa.19 Trade flows between the United States and Africa have been dominated by
oil; in 2000 about 68 percent of US imports from Africa were oil products, and 40
percent of the oil imports were duty free under either the Generalized Systems of
Preference or the African Growth and Opportunity Act.20 Those numbers have been
projected to climb in the coming years.
Given the prevailing economic and political conditions in the post–September
11th environment, it has been easier for policymakers to seek alternative sources of
oil, rather than alternative resources. Partly driving that decision are American
consulting and lobbying firms that have made strong moves to represent the Gulf of
Guinea states and their interests. Amongst them include former Oklahoma
congressman, JC Watts, who led several delegations to Abuja, Nigeria to investigate
the oil industry there and elsewhere in the Gulf of Guinea Region. Watts now heads
The JC Watts Companies, which lobbies on behalf of petroleum interests in the Gulf
of Guinea. Other Washington insiders include Calvin Humphrey, former assistant
secretary for International Affairs at the Energy Department; Andrew Young,
former UN ambassador; Walter Carrigan, former US ambassador to Nigeria; Walter
Kansteiner, former assistant secretary of state for African Affairs; Brent Scowcroft,
national security advisor to the first President Bush; and Whitney Schneidman,
deputy assistant secretary of state for African Affairs during the Clinton

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administration.21
Additional movements toward a regional security pact to protect these
investments in the Gulf of Guinea have included military assistance. In July 2004,
deputy commander of United States forces in Europe, Charles Wald, traveled to
Nigeria for high-level talks with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on
establishing a program named African Coastal Security, with its primary objective
being the protection of the Gulf of Guinea. Substantively, the African Coastal Plan
would simply exchange oil for military assistance on the part of the United States.22
Additionally, since 2003, the US military has been advising the government of Sao
Tome on how to restructure its military and to protect the country’s coasts. In
February 2004, the US Trade Development Agency financed the first studies on
constructing a deep-water port in Sao Tome. The only purpose such a port could
have would be to accommodate large oil tankers, as Sao Tome does not export large
amounts of any other commodity.23 Rumors have also persisted, though denied by
the United States government, that the US is either in the negotiating or planning
stages for a permanent military base in the Gulf of Guinea, most likely in Sao
Tome.24

West Africa may indeed turn out to be nothing more than

a distant manifestation of today’s Middle East.
The prospect of oil wealth has already begun to have disastrous political
consequences for some of these West African countries. Nigeria, which has
experienced political violence since its independence from Great Britain, has recently
confronted political violence related to its oil refining in the Niger Delta region. The
most recent attacks in the oil-rich Niger Delta provoked outrage from the Abuja
government, which expressed its concern for the growing instability in the region
while blaming the United States for being slow to assist in protecting the area.
Nigeria’s Vice President Atiku Abubakar noted that negotiations with the United
States for assistance did not “appear to be moving as fast as the situation is
unfolding.” 25 As a result, in 2005, Nigeria signed an $800 million deal to supply
PetroChina with 30,000 barrels-a-day of oil, and the Chinese have agreed to supply
the Nigerians with military equipment needed to fight rebels in the Delta region.26
However, Nigeria’s instability problems in the Delta region, primarily related to the
poverty and inequality caused by corruption in the government and oil industry, may
be the least of the country’s problems.
As a major oil producer with a large Muslim population—about 50 percent of
the total population—Nigeria has been on the periphery of the new war on
terrorism. Recent clashes between Islamic and Christian communities have
heightened tensions in the country. Islamic extremists are rumored to be operating
primarily in northern Nigeria. Such rumors are not surprising and their truth may be
more than either the United States or Nigeria wish to believe. Just prior to the US
invasion of Iraq in 2003, Osama bin Laden, in an address to the Iraqi people, called

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52 OSTERGARD, JR.

upon Muslim populations to rise up against oppressive regimes associated with the
United States: “We also stress to true Muslims that…they must motivate and
mobilize the umma to liberate themselves from their enslavement to these
oppressive, tyrannical, apostate ruling regimes who are supported by America, and to
establish God’s rule on earth. The areas most in need of liberation are Jordan,
Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.”27 If conditions in Nigeria
continue to deteriorate, it will become increasingly likely that Islamic extremism
generated both inside and outside the country will become an increasingly important
factor in Nigeria’s long-standing conflict between Muslims and Christians.28
While corruption and civil conflict are endemic in Nigeria, other Gulf of
Guinea countries have similar problems, which are now being exacerbated by their
newfound potential for oil wealth. In July 2003, forces in Sao Tome stopped an
attempted military coup against President Menezes. An agreement signed with the
rebels shortly afterward included provisions to manage the country’s oil wealth. In
Equatorial Guinea, one of the primary targets of US training and investment, the
2004 US State Department Report on Human Rights has said that
The Government human rights record remained poor, and the Government continued to
commit serious abuses. Citizens do not have the ability to change their government peacefully.
Security forces committed numerous abuses, including torture, beating, and other physical
abuse of prisoners and suspects, which at times resulted in deaths. Prisoners often were
tortured to coerce confessions….Members of the security forces generally committed abuses
with impunity. Security forces used arbitrary arrest, detention, and incommunicado
detention. Foreigners with legal standing were arbitrarily harassed, detained, and deported.
The judicial system repeatedly failed to ensure due process….Discrimination against ethnic
minorities, particularly the Bubi ethnic group and foreigners continued. The government
restricted labor rights. Child labor persisted and forced prison labor was used. The
Government passed an anti-trafficking law during the year, but trafficking in persons
continued, largely unchecked by the government. 29

Echoing the State Department’s Report, the Office of the Press Secretary released a
Presidential announcement on September 10, 2004, stating that under the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act of 2000, “… Sudan, Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea …
failed to make significant efforts [to stop human trafficking], and are thus subject to
sanctions, [but] the President has determined that certain assistance for these three
countries would promote the purposes of the Act or is otherwise in the national
interest of the United States.”30
What all three of these countries have in common is that they are, or are
becoming, significant players in oil production. Venezuela has long been a supplier
of crude oil to the United States. Sudan has long been suspected of having
significant oil reserves.31 As a result, the Chinese government has actively funded the
exploration of Sudan’s oil fields, building roads and bridges and community housing
in the region. The Sudanese government for its part has used these Chinese built
roads and bridges as a much more efficient method to ethnically cleanse the regions
where oil exploration has been occurring. Equatorial Guinea is considered one of the

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fastest growing producers of oil in West Africa, which has led to a willingness in the
US administration to turn a blind eye to its human trafficking problem. Such
malignant disregard of abuses, as noted earlier, has been a basic premise of US
foreign policy for decades. In general, Equatorial Guinea’s government is probably
best summarized by Geoffrey Wood who referred to it as a “criminal state.”32 Of
course, it is not just the United States that is involved in the move toward African oil;
other countries including Russia, China, and even Saudi Arabia and South Korea
have already invested millions of dollars into exploration rights in West Africa. Such
heavy stakes and special interests make Africa the frontier in the new geo-strategic
re-alignments that the scramble for oil is creating among the major global powers.

CONCLUSION
Some time ago, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency James
Woolsey stated that the basic problem the United States has had in the Middle East
relates to its treatment of the countries in the region as its personal gas station and
the people like gas station attendants: “…we convinced many people there that we
did not give a damn about the people in the region and that we cared principally
about its oil; that it was a filling station for our large sport utility vehicles.”33 It would
seem that the only lessons that we have learned in the past fifty years of dealing with
the Middle East is that we need a new gas station because the old one is now in a
bad neighborhood. While the Pentagon, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies see
West Africa as removed from the political violence that has rocked the Middle East,
it should be a sober reminder that Africa’s post-colonial history is wracked with
unrest and instability.
Africa, already plagued by civil unrest, military coups, endemic corruption,
ethnic conflict, and even genocide, is a bubbling caldron of political problems. Oil
and the promises of oil are not going to make the region any more stable; in fact, it
will only serve to further destabilize the region. In the long term, as oil becomes the
trump card in Africa, the United States will increasingly be looked upon as a source
of instability and chaos on a continent that is already wracked with monumental
problems. If the chickens have come home to roost in the Middle East, new chickens
are being hatched in West Africa. A few years, or decades, will tell if the search for
alternative sources of oil was a better choice than the search for alternative sources
of energy.
Ultimately, the failure of American foreign policy is rooted in the imagining of
the national interest in only short-term stretches; nothing represents this more clearly
than the petroleum problem each administration since World War II has faced. The
United States, at this pivotal point in its history, is faced with the choice of either
maintaining its failed policy of continually seeking and securing new petroleum
supplies, or turning to a longer-term foreign policy conception that would favor
extricating itself from this cycle. In the end, the transition from a Middle Eastern oil
supply to either one that is diversified across countries or focused primarily in
Western Africa is still nothing more than a reflection of decades of failed energy

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54 OSTERGARD, JR.

policy, driven by short-term gains, and passed from one administration to the next.
West Africa may indeed turn out to be nothing more than a distant manifestation of
today’s Middle East.
The United States should not take that chance. A foreign policy centered on
securing supplies of petroleum is unsustainable, costly, and deadly for all involved.
The United States should do what it has done best for over two centuries: innovate
and develop new technologies, which will ultimately decrease its overall dependence
on petroleum. While pressures from lobbying groups in Washington may make this
a difficult political choice for the president and members of Congress, the greater
challenge could become justifying American soldiers coming home in body bags—
this time from West Africa.

Notes
1 For a good discussion of the critical junctures issue see: G. John Ikenberry, After Victory (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000).
2 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 22–49. For
the immediate, major critiques of Huntington’s thesis, see: “Responses to Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of
Civilizations?’,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 4 (1993): 2–27.
3 As Herbert Bix noted “Kamikaze attacks on Allied warships and troop transports were an entirely different
threat, however, a real and dangerous one. They were a kind of weapon Americans, Australians, and Britons
simply could not understand, and for that reason found all the more disturbing. Hirohito, however, clearly
understood the rhetoric of sacrifice, and he may have hoped that the kamikaze tactic would prove militarily
effective.” See: Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins Publishers,
2000), 482.
4 United Stated Government, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” The White
House, 2006, Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html, (Accessed May 22, 2006).
5 Robert Andrews et al. (ed.) The Columbia World of Quotations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
6 For an account of these events see Marlise Simons, “Spain Turns on Rebels with Outrage,” The New York
Times, July 15 1997; “Million Join March Against Basque Terrorism in Spain.” 1997. New York Times, July
15, Late Edition (east Coast). http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed February 12, 2006); Peiyin Patty Li, “Will
it Hold?: The ETA Ceasefire in Spain,” Harvard International Review, Winter 1998/9, 10–11.
7 Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, “Al Qaeda- Hussein Link Dismissed,” The Washington Post, July 17, 2004.
8 Troop support has become a significant issue in the debates on why stability did not come to Iraq after the
invasion. Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki argued before the invasion that hundreds of thousands of
troops would be needed in the post-invasion operations to secure Iraq and to bring stability to the country.
That argument led to an early retirement for General Shinseki, who lost favor with Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz. Others, including L. Paul Bremer, former administrator of
the US–led occupation in Iraq, have said that the lack of troop support was a major mistake in the Iraq
campaign. See Larry Diamond, “What Went Wrong in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 2004),
34–56; Micheal O’Hanlon, “Speaking the Truth,” The Washington Post, May 3, 2005; Robin Wright and
Thomas E. Ricks, “Bremer Criticizes Troop Levels; Ex-Overseer of Iraq Says U.S. Effort Was Hampered
Early On,” The Washington Post, October, 5 2004.
9 The Presidency of the United States, State of the Union Address, Washington D.C., 2006
10 For a discussion of Iran’s historical relationship with the West, see: John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat:
Myth or Reality? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 103-17; for a discussion of the Soviet perspective of
its immediate post-World War II relationship with Iran, see: Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet
Foreign Policy 1917-73 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974), 426-30; for a discussion of US covert
operations and economic interests in Iran, see: Thomas G. Paterson, Meeting the Communist Threat (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988).
11 John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 104-5.
12 “Nixon and Shah Exchange Praise, Confer in Oval Office,” The New York Times, July 25, 1973.
13 Bruce Lawrence (ed), Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, (London: Verso, 2005), 183.
14 “Carter Lauds Shah on his Leadership,” The New York Times, November 16, 1977.
15 Marguerite Michaels, “Retreat from Africa,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 1 (1993/1994): 93–109.
16 “Oil Giants Eye African Prospects,” BBC News, May 20, 2003; Neil Ford, “Oil Money Begins to Flow

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AMERICA’S POST-COLD WAR FOREIGN POLICY 55
In,” African Business, June 2003, 40–41.
17 Pádraig Carmody, “Transforming Globalization and Security: Africa and America Post-9/11,” Africa Today,
(Fall 2005): 99.
18 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts,
2002. The US Department of Energy estimates US imports of crude oil from West Africa at roughly six
percent of US total imports; however, the discrepancy with the NIC estimates may evolve from different
accounting methods and categories. US Department of Energy data are available from the Energy
Information Administration, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/oiltrade.html (Accessed February
6, 2006).
19 “By-Passing OPEC in West Africa,” African Energy Intelligence, February 13, 2002.
20 Ibid.
21 “Republican Lobbyists in Gulf of Guinea,” African Energy Intelligence, September 22, 2004
22 “Protecting Oil Fields,” African Energy Intelligence, July 21, 2004.
23 In this regard, Sao Tome and Principe have made a remarkable transformation from a country that
exports mainly cocoa to a potential West African petro-power. For an excellent discussion on this
transformation, see: Jedrzej George Frynas, Geoffrey Wood, Ricardo M S Soares de Oliveira, “Business and
politics in Sao Tome e Principe: From cocoa monoculture to petro-state,” African Affairs (Jan. 2003): 51–80.
24 With regard to the use of Sao Tome as a military base, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political
Studies has recommended through its African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG) that the US create a new
military command in West Africa, similar to that which exists in South Korea, to protect US oil interest. See:
Stephen Ellis, “Briefing: West Africa and Its Oil,” African Affairs, Jan. 2003, 135–138.
25 Dino Mahtano, “Nigeria turns to China for Defense Aid,” Financial Times, February 27, 2006.
26 Ibid.
27 Bruce Lawrence (ed), Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, (London: Verso, 2005), 183.
The transformation of Sao Tome and Principe to an oil producer also had to overcome off shore drilling
and territorial water disputes with Nigeria. For a discussion of the potential joint development arrangements
in the area, see: Hurst Groves, “Offshore Oil and Gas Resources: Economics, Politics and the Rule of Law
in the Nigeria-Sao Tome E Principe Joint Development Zone,” Journal of International Affairs 59, no. 1 (Fall
2005).
28 For a discussion on the impact of religion on the Nigerian state, see: Toyin Falola, Violence in Nigeria :
the crisis of religious politics and secular ideologies, (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1998).
29 United States Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2004, Washington D.C.,
2005.
30 Office of the Press Secretary, Statement by the Press Secretary, Washington D.C., 2004.
31 For a discussion of this, see: Ricardo Rene Laremont and Robert L. Ostergard, Jr., “Ethnic Grievance or
Material Greed,” in Borders, Nationalism, and the African State, ed. Ricardo Rene Laremont (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 2005).
32 Geoffrey Wood, “Business and Politics in a Criminal State: The Case of Equatorial Guinea,” Aftican Affairs
103, no. 413 (2004): 547–567.
33 R James Woolsey, “At War for Freedom,” The World Today, August/September 2003, 6.

www.journalofdiplomacy.org Summer/Fall 2006