Patrick Link

“Under President Richard Nixon, U.S. policy developed an even more pronounced pro-Portuguese bent, consistent with the administration’s support for white-ruled Africa. The most notorious manifestation was the December 1971 executive agreement that gave Portugal $436 million in credits for the use of the Azores base until February 1974. It was, noted the New York Times, “one of the largest economic assistance packages negotiated in many years in exchange for foreign base rights,” and it would “prop up the Lisbon Government’s floundering economy,” exhausted by a decade of colonial wars.56 As Amílcar Cabral told the UN Security Council in Addis Ababa the following February, “Portugal would not be in a position to carry out three wars against Africans without the aid of her allies.”57 CUBAN”
― Piero Gleijeses, Piero Gleijeses' International History of the Cold War in Southern Africa, Omnibus E-Book: Includes Conflicting Missions and Visions of Freedom

“I stressed to Neto that the way we treat the population is key to gaining their support. . . . I stressed how the thuggish behavior of the FNLA (robberies, assaults, murders, rapes, unbelievable savagery) engenders widespread hatred even among people who are not politicized. Later, there will be [time for] propaganda, political education, . . . but simply treating people well . . . can garner the massive support of the population.50”
― Piero Gleijeses, Piero Gleijeses' International History of the Cold War in Southern Africa, Omnibus E-Book: Includes Conflicting Missions and Visions of Freedom

“pressure that the water would strip bark off the trees, at whom the police have deliberately set snarling dogs, are our own kith and kin.”5”
― Piero Gleijeses, Piero Gleijeses' International History of the Cold War in Southern Africa, Omnibus E-Book: Includes Conflicting Missions and Visions of Freedom

“Stevenson had written Kennedy in June 1963 that the Africans wanted to know whether the United States stood “for self-determination and human rights” or whether “we will give our Azores base . . . priority.” Despite Kennedy’s uneasiness and the strong opposition of a few U.S. officials, the administration’s policy was clear: the base in the Azores was more important than self-determination in Africa. In the final analysis, as a German scholar concludes, “What worried the [Kennedy] administration was not Portugal’s use of the arms in Africa, but the danger that it might become public. In fact the administration . . . continued to deliver weapons to Portugal.”54”
― Piero Gleijeses, Piero Gleijeses' International History of the Cold War in Southern Africa, Omnibus E-Book: Includes Conflicting Missions and Visions of Freedom