Foes, Friends, and Fighting for Freedom: The United States, Soviet Union, and Cuba in the Southern African Regional Conflict, 1975-1988

The Cold War was a superpower standoff that lasted nearly half a century. Tensions between the US and the USSR manifested themselves all over the globe. In southern Africa, a region that is seldom thought of as critical in the genesis of the Cold War, the events on the ground, heightening and modulation of tensions in the 1980’s, and the relationship amongst the world’s leaders was on full display.

This paper chronicles this regional conflict and the dynamics between internal actors – namely South Africa, Angola, and Namibia – as well as external actors – Cuba, the US, and the Soviet Union – as the struggle for freedom in the region and hegemony in geopolitics shaped decades of conflict.