Global Change and Africa: Implications for U.S. Policy. Report of the Strategy for Peace, U.S. Foreign Policy Conference (30th, Warrenton, Virginia, October 19-21, 1989).

The Stanley Foundation annually assembles a panel of experts from the public and private sectors to assess specific foreign policy issues and to recommend future directions. The round-table discussion summarized in this report focused on the future of Africa and the changing global context of U.S. policy toward Africa. While the Cold War has ended, in Africa there is little understanding of what that change in policy means for Africa, for the United States, and for policies toward Africa. The group generally agreed that the United States and the Soviet Union must play a greater role in providing assistance and support for reconstruction in the Sudan, Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. It was also agreed, however, that in economic terms the superpowers have never been the dominant force in Africa, that Europe as a whole has always contributed more in development assistance to Africa than has the United States, and that as a result of trends over that past decade, the U.S. is becoming an even less influential force in Africa. The report also includes the keynote address by Richard H. Stanley, in which the conferees were asked to consider two underlying issues in their deliberations: (1) the changing national power relationships, including the relative erosion of U.S. power; and (2) the profound global systemic changes that are rendering old policy assumptions obsolete. (NL)