Foreign policy of the Mobutu Sese Seko administration
Early political career Presidency Mobutu Sese Seko's foreign policy emphasized his alliance with the United States and the Western world while supposedly maintaining a non-aligned position in international affairs.
The United States was the third largest donor of aid to Zaire (after Belgium and France), and Mobutu befriended several U.S. presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.
[3] In spite of these hindrances, the chilly relationship quickly thawed during the Angolan Civil War when the U.S. government began aiding the anti-communist National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), led by Mobutu's Holden Roberto.
[5] During the first Shaba invasion, the United States played a relatively inconsequential role; its belated intervention consisted of little more than the delivery of non-lethal supplies.
But during the second Shaba invasion, the U.S. played a much more active and decisive role by providing transportation and logistical support to the French and Belgian paratroopers that were deployed to aid Mobutu against the rebels.
Carter echoed Mobutu's (unsubstantiated) charges of Soviet and Cuban aid to the rebels, until it was apparent that no hard evidence existed to verify his claims.
[11] Mobutu supported his ally, Holden Roberto, leader of the National Liberation Front of Angola, in his war for independence and his anti-communist struggle after 1975.
[12] Mobutu met with António de Spínola, the transitional President of Portugal, on 15 September 1974 on Sal island in Cape Verde, crafting a plan to empower Roberto, Jonas Savimbi of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and Daniel Chipenda of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola's (MPLA) eastern faction at MPLA leader Agostinho Neto's expense while retaining the facade of national unity.
The Angolan exclave has immense petroleum reserves estimated at around 300 million tons which Zaire, and thus the Mobutu government, depended on for economic survival.
However, Mobutu tore up the treaty in 1974 in protest of Belgium's refusal to ban an anti-Mobutu book written by left-wing lawyer Jules Chomé.
[20] Shortly after the Katangan secession was successfully crushed, Zaire (then called the Republic of the Congo), signed a treaty of technical and cultural cooperation with France.
Mobutu viewed the Soviet presence as advantageous for two reasons: it allowed him to maintain an image of non-alignment, and it provided a convenient scapegoat for problems at home.
Mobutu condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and in 1980, his was the first African nation to join the United States in boycotting the Summer Olympics in Moscow.
Throughout the 1980s, he remained consistently anti-Soviet, and found himself opposing pro-Soviet countries such as Libya and Angola (he covertly supported the UNITA rebels); in the mid-1980s, he described Zaire as being surrounded by a "red belt" of communist and socialist states allied to the Soviet Union.
Western countries began calling for him to introduce democracy and improve human rights, leaving Zaire virtually isolated from international affairs.
Memories of Chinese aid to Mulele and other Maoist rebels in Kwilu province during the ill-fated Simba rebellion remained fresh in Mobutu's mind.
The following year, Mobutu paid a visit to Beijing, where he met personally with Chairman Mao and received promises of $100 million in technical aid.
Accordingly, both Zaire and China covertly funneled aid to the FNLA (and later, UNITA) in order to prevent the MPLA, who were supported and augmented by Cuban forces, from coming to power.
China sent military aid to Zaire during both invasions, and accused the Soviet Union and Cuba (who were alleged to have supported the Shaban rebels, although this was and remains speculation) of working to de-stabilize Central Africa.
In 1983, as part of his 11 nation African tour, Premier Zhao Ziyang visited Kinshasa, and announced that he was cancelling Zaire's $100 million debt to China; the money borrowed would be reinvested in joint Chinese-Zairian projects.
Following Mobutu's abandonment by the West, China assumed a more active role in the country; an estimated 1,000 Chinese technicians reportedly were working on agricultural and forestry projects in Zaire in the early 1990s.
Mobutu's primary fear was that a pro-Gaddafi government would take hold in Chad and threaten Sudan and the Central African Republic, both countries contiguous with Zaire.
