Dole Builds a Boomerang to Get Cubans Out of Angola

The Reagan Administration has placed the removal of Cuban troops from Angola high on its East-West agenda. It has attempted to achieve this by linking the withdrawal of the Cubans with a parallel pullout of South Africans from Namibia. But Pretoria has shown no interest in this; in fact, its continued posture of aggression toward Angola virtually guarantees that the government in Luanda will not feel secure enough to send the Cuban troops home.

Rather than blame South Africa, however, Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole wants to punish Angola with sanctions--even though he opposed the use of that mechanism to fight apartheid. True to the “do something, anything” school of foreign policy, Dole and Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) are co-sponsoring a bill in the Senate this week that would bar American firms from operating in, or doing business with, Angola.

The senior senator from Kansas admits that he harbors “no illusions” that the legislation will lead directly or imminently to the Cubans’ departure from Angola. His stated purpose is to send a strong signal to Moscow, Havana and Luanda. In fact, Dole and DeConcini are signaling both allies and adversaries that the United States is floundering and is unable to recognize, let alone protect, its own best interests.

If American corporations are forced to withdraw from Angola, their places would be taken practically overnight by other firms among our North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners, which are desperately eager to increase their economic stakes in that country. So the main effect of Dole’s and DeConcini’s initiative would be to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars of assets, trade, profits and sources of oil to Western Europe, without hurting Luanda.

Washington has been supporting the South African-backed UNITA opposition to the Popular Movement government, which has Soviet support. Even so, U.S.-Angolan trade has remained strong, exceeding $1 billion annually in recent years. The United States has become Angola’s leading trading partner, taking more than half the value of all Angolan exports; in turn, Angola is among the top four importers of American goods in Africa. A ban on this trade would not only deny American firms the profits from hundreds of millions of dollars worth of exports; it would also make us further dependent on oil from the volatile Persian Gulf region.

Dole’s role is particularly invidious given his strong support for subsidies of American wheat exports to the Soviet Union during the past two years. On the one hand, he advocates subsidies of roughly $100 million for sales to Moscow that would allow American grain to be bought cheaper in the Soviet Union than it can be purchased in the United States. On the other hand, he would ban all trade with a Soviet-supported regime in Africa, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in trade and benefits. Perhaps only a Farm Belt Republican could get away with this contradictory position.

Dole and DeConcini are not alone in leaning on American corporations in Angola, to our own country’s financial and strategic detriment. Last fall Rep. James A. Courter (R-N.J.) introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill to prohibit the Pentagon from contracting for petroleum products with any company that produces or buys, directly or indirectly, any petroleum products from Angola.

The Pentagon estimated that the effect of Courter’s measure would be to increase fuel costs by $72 million while carrier fleets “would be reduced to an unacceptable level” of their fuel requirements. Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that “if the Angola sanction becomes law, we will concede far more to the Soviets in reduced operational readiness than they could ever gain through a Marxist regime in Angola . . . . While Congressman Courter’s motives are laudable, the consequences of his proposal will seriously hurt our national-security posture.”

Clearly, more than laudable motives are needed to fashion a prudent and workable policy in Southern Africa. Dole’s motives, however, may be less than laudable. As part of his presidential campaign effort to attract support from ultra-conservatives, he has taken positions on Southern Africa that are so far to the right that they are more supportive of the Pretoria regime than the Reagan Administration. Dole has not only sought to punish Angola for South Africa’s intransigence on Namibia; he has also joined Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) in supporting South African-backed terrorists who are trying to overthrow the government in Mozambique.

Dole’s self-serving approach to Southern Africa raises serious questions about his qualifications for the presidency--especially about his ability to manage simple, let alone complex, foreign-policy matters. He has demonstrated a dangerous amateurism that would weaken American strategic and economic interests and tie the United States more closely to the repressive and militaristic policies of South Africa.

Dole’s call for sanctions (which the Administration strongly opposes) may appeal to the far right in Washington and Pretoria, but it will surely repulse middle-of-the-road Americans--Republicans and Democrats alike.