Constructive engagement

Devised by Chester Crocker, Reagan's U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, the policy was promoted as an alternative to the economic sanctions and divestment from South Africa demanded by the UN General Assembly and the international anti-apartheid movement.

The policy was in place between roughly 1981 and 1986, when, amid mounting international criticism of the South African regime, the United States Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan's veto to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act.

In 1981, Chester Crocker was appointed U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and announced that the U.S. would pursue with South Africa "a more constructive relationship... based on shared interests, persuasion, and improved communication".

[1] The constructive engagement policy originated in a piece published by Crocker in Foreign Affairs the previous year, while he was an adviser to Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign.

[2] In the piece, Crocker criticised the South Africa policy of Jimmy Carter's administration, which had involved overt and public pressure on Pretoria to move away from apartheid.

Instead, by building leverage with Pretoria and saving it "for genuine opportunities to exert influence", the U.S. could "steer between the twin dangers of abetting violence in the Republic [of South Africa] and aligning ourselves with the cause of white rule", and thereby could "underpromise and overdeliver".

[5][6] At the same time, Crocker believed that a closer relationship with the South African government could create leverage to be expended on brokering peace across the region.

[19][20] When South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited the United States in 1984, in the aftermath of President Reagan's comfortable re-election, he said in a speech on Capitol Hill that, "constructive engagement is an abomination, an unmitigated disaster...

Constructive engagement has not merely caused the United States to lose five valuable years when it might have influenced South Africa to begin negotiating a settlement of its unique and extraordinary racial problems.

Journalist Christopher Hitchens, for example, blamed constructive engagement and "the fearlessly soft attitude displayed by Chester Crocker towards apartheid" for the ten-year delay in implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 435:Independence on these terms could have been won years ago if it were not for Crocker's procrastination and Reagan's attempt to change the subject to the presence of Cuban forces in Angola.