Arms diplomacy, bicycle diplomacy, and flag money: the selection of an American Ally in Angola

Jellema-Butler, Julia

Arms diplomacy, bicycle diplomacy, and flag money: the selection of an American Ally in Angola

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Political Studies

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Many civil wars are fuelled by the receipt, by one or more armed groups, of material support from a foreign third-party state. Such rebel patronage injects traces of international conflict and international cooperation into civil conflicts, and it often shapes their outcomes. But understanding rebel patronage strategies requires developing models to explain how state patrons select their foreign rebel clients, and such models remain at an early stage of theoretical development. Using process-tracing and original historical research, this dissertation tests theoretical hypotheses about rebel selection by examining American support to Angolan nationalist groups during the first phase of the Angolan Civil War in 1975. In particular, it seeks to explain the transformation in the relationship between the United States and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola; UNITA), which the White House declined to support in January 1975 but included in a multimillion- dollar support package in July 1975. The most decisive factors in this transformation, it emerges, were political. UNITA's rise in American esteem was closely related to the group's newfound closeness with American allies in Angola's neighbouring countries, who shaped the American patronage strategy. It was also influenced by the White House's increasingly ambitious political objectives in Angola. The Angolan case study thus provides support to an emerging body of literature that suggests that rebel selection decisions may be closely conditioned on the objectives of the intervention and on the expected policy positions of other third-party states.

Keywords

Angola

American Ally

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Masters

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