Chester A. Crocker
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Chester A. Crocker, a U.S. academic and specialist in African affairs, is credited for the introduction of the policy of "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa, by means of which the administration of former president Ronald Reagan would seek to influence events in Southern Africa. As assistant secretary of state for African affairs throughout the Reagan years, Crocker conducted a series of negotiations leading to the signing of agreements at the UN in New York on December 22, 1988 whereby South Africa granted independence to Namibia (formerly South-West Africa), and the Soviet Union agreed to the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola.
Although it took a change in Soviet foreign policy in the late 1980s to bring Cuba and Angola to the bargaining table, the final agreement was nevertheless a personal triumph for Crocker, who had been roundly criticized for complicating the question of Namibian independence by linking it to an end to the Cuban presence in Angola. "Mr. Crocker has proved a master craftsman of...complex negotiations," a writer for the Economist observed in the mid-1980s. "He negotiates informally and travels lightly. He encourages his staff to develop friendships with key personalities in each center, often just dropping by for a chat when in town. He regards personal trust and confidence as crucial to honest brokerage. It is the authentic American diplomacy, contrasting vividly with the anonymous formality of the Europeans."
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[edit] Political evolution
Chester Crocker was born on October 29, 1941 in New York City, the son of Arthur M. Crocker and Clara C. Crocker. He is distantly related to Chester A. Arthur who, from 1881 to 1885, was president of the United States. After graduating cum laude with special distinction in history from Ohio State University in 1963, Crocker completed his postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he obtained a master's degree in international studies in 1965 and a doctorate at the School of Advanced International Studies in 1969. Meanwhile, he worked on the staff of Africa Report magazine, serving as an editorial assistant during 1965 and 1966 and as news editor during 1968 and 1969.
In 1969 Crocker joined the faculty of the American University in Washington, D.C., as a lecturer in African government and politics. In the following year he was hired by Alexander M. Haig Jr., then the deputy assistant to president Richard Nixon for national-security affairs, to replace Roger Morris as the African-affairs expert on the staff of the National Security Council. In that post, Crocker conducted interagency policy studies on issues affecting Africa, as well as the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.
[edit] Rise to Prominence
In August 1972 Crocker returned to academic life as the director of the master of science in foreign service program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Concurrently, he taught African politics and international relations, advancing from assistant professor to associate professor during his nine years there. As the director of African studies at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies from January 1976 to 1981, he oversaw the research and policy analysis of teams of experts he assembled from government, academia, the private sector, the media, and various African nations. Among the works produced by the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies was Implications of Soviet and Cuban Activities in Africa for United States Policy (1979), in which Crocker, as one of its five authors, argued that Soviet intervention in Angola demonstrated clearly that Moscow was prepared to stir up trouble around the globe despite all the talk of détente. Other works he produced at that time included South Africa into the 1980s (1979), which was coedited by Richard E. Bissell, and South Africa Defense Posture (1981). Meanwhile, he also served as a consultant to the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Army War College, and the Republican National Committee as well as to the Rockefeller Foundation and other private organizations.
[edit] Constructive engagement
During the 1980 presidential campaign, Crocker was the chairman of Ronald Reagan's Africa Working Group. After the election, he attracted the attention of the Reagan transition team with an article entitled "South Africa: Strategy for Change" in the winter 1980-81 issue of Foreign Affairs, in which he lambasted the outgoing administration of president Jimmy Carter for its open hostility to the white-minority government in South Africa. Although Crocker, like Reagan, "abhorred" apartheid, he argued that Carter's confrontational approach had only made the Pretoria government dig in its heels. "Effective coercive influence is a rare commodity in foreign policy," Crocker wrote. Instead, he urged a policy of "constructive engagement," encouraging in positive ways greater freedom for black South Africans.
With his former mentor Alexander M. Haig Jr. installed as secretary of state in the new Reagan government, Crocker was named assistant secretary for African affairs. Although his nomination was approved unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1981, a floor vote was held up for nearly three months by Republican senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who questioned the authenticity of Crocker's conservative credentials. He was finally confirmed by a vote of 84 to 7 on June 9, and was sworn in later that day. Although Crocker enjoyed the complete confidence of Secretary Haig and his successor, George P. Shultz, he was never too popular on Capitol Hill. "He has kind of a Kissinger-like view of the Hill," a congressional staffer was quoted as saying by Neil A. Lewis of the New York Times (June 9, 1987). "He seems to view Congress as an obstacle to conducting foreign policy."
Summoned repeatedly to the foreign-affairs panels of the two houses to defend or explain administration policy, Crocker struck many members as unco-operative and arrogant. "He has been unwilling to take Congress into his confidence even in closed sessions," observed Democratic congressman Stephen J. Solarz of New York, according to the New York Times (August 28, 1988), "and in any parliamentary system, he would have been obliged as a matter of honor to have resigned a long time ago." Crocker was at times buffeted by criticism on the right for failing to support the anti-Communist rebels in Angola, and on the left for cosying up to South Africa. But within the State Department he was widely respected for his breadth of knowledge of African affairs, and for his refusal to be drawn into departmental politics. With powerful backing from the Reagan administration, he was able to survive calls for his resignation from such influential Republican senators as Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Jesse A. Helms, and he went on to serve longer in the African Affairs Bureau than any other assistant secretary of state in history.
Even before he was sworn in as assistant secretary, Crocker already was engineering a major shift in United States policy toward southern Africa. In 1978 the United Nations Security Council, with the support of the Carter administration, had adopted Resolution 435, which called for South Africa's withdrawal from Namibia in preparation for its eventual independence. On February 7, 1981 Crocker completed an internal document proposing that the United States link Namibian independence to the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, where they had been helping the Marxist government of Jose Eduardo dos Santos in its effort to crush the pro-Western UNITA rebels of Jonas Savimbi.
Although Crocker had reportedly been cool to the idea when it was first raised by Elliott Abrams, the new assistant secretary of state for human rights, because it might muddle the prospects of Resolution 435, he nevertheless embraced it as his own. Soon he was boasting to reporters that the administration would turn a "triple play" by ridding the region of Cuban forces, bringing an end to the cross-border clashes between South African and Angolan troops, and creating a free and independent Namibia. In the internal memo, Crocker argued that black African leaders should readily agree to such a deal once they were made to realize that they could get a Namibian settlement only through the United States and that Americans were serious about getting such a settlement. It turned out to be an overly-optimistic assumption.
[edit] Shuttle diplomacy
In April 1981 Crocker, though as yet unconfirmed as assistant secretary, was dispatched to Africa on a two-week, eleven-nation tour to lay the groundwork for the plan. Any hopes he may have had for a quick settlement, however, were dashed, since many black leaders were wary of the Reagan administration's friendly approach to the white-minority government in Pretoria, and P. W. Botha of South Africa refused even to receive him after he had tried to arrange meetings with black leaders hostile to Botha's government. Despite those setbacks, Crocker continued to insist that a comprehensive solution was the only way to allay the fears of all concerned. In his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa on February 15, 1983, he argued: "Security, of which the Cuban troop issue is an integral part, has always been a prerequisite for agreement on Namibian independence. As a practical diplomatic matter, it will not be possible to obtain a Namibian independence agreement without satisfactory regional-security assurances."
Amid widespread skepticism, Crocker embarked on another two-week tour of southern Africa in January 1984 in an attempt to restart the stalled peace process. He was able to negotiate a thirty-day cease-fire along the southern border of Angola, but fighting quickly resumed and in July 1985 Angola broke off talks altogether. The turning point came as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev consolidated his grip on power and began to withdraw Soviet support for wars of liberation in the Third World. As major beneficiaries of Soviet aid in the past, neither Angola nor the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) – the Namibian independence movement led by Sam Nujoma – could afford to ignore the Crocker plan for much longer.
At the behest of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Congo, the peace initiative was renewed at a meeting between American and Angolan representatives in Brazzaville in April 1987. Three months later, Cuba agreed to join the process. By March 1988 Crocker had persuaded the Marxist representatives to abandon their insistence that at least some Cuban troops remain in Angola, and he had achieved an agreement in principle for the removal of all such forces. South Africa, however, balked at preparing for Namibian independence until a firm timetable for the Cuban withdrawal could be established.
To break the deadlock, Crocker embarked on what turned out to be ten rounds of intensive negotiations with South Africa, Angola, Cuba, and SWAPO, which kept him flying between New York, London, Cairo, Geneva, and Brazzaville for six months following May 1988. He also met with Soviet officials during that period to make sure that Moscow would not scuttle the deal at the last minute. The tripartite agreement that was signed at UN headquarters in New York on December 22, 1988 ended twenty-two years of fighting between South Africa and Namibian rebels, and converted the "triple play", just as Crocker had predicted eight years before.
[edit] Last-minute hiccup
On December 21, 1988 – the day before the signature of the Namibia independence agreement – the transatlantic Pan Am Flight 103 crashed over Lockerbie in Scotland. A South African delegation headed by foreign minister Pik Botha had been booked on PA 103, but cancelled the booking at short notice. The UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, on the other hand, joined PA 103 at short notice in London and perished on the flight. As a result, one of the alternative theories into the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing accuses apartheid South Africa of the crime.
[edit] Disengagement
P. W. Botha resigned as president of South Africa in February 1989. With the ascendancy of President F. W. de Klerk later that year, South Africa began to turn away from its campaign of repression. However, that did not occur on Crocker's watch for in May 1989 he had returned to Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service as a research associate at its Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. He was also made a distinguished fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, a federally funded think-tank in Washington, DC. Herman Jay Cohen was appointed to succeed Crocker at the State Department.
Writing in Foreign Affairs (Fall 1989), Crocker urged the administration of President George Bush to continue a policy of constructive engagement but to do it more effectively than Reagan had done in conveying the country's "sensitivity to the outrage of apartheid." At the same time, he warned the critics of his policy to keep in mind the limits of American influence. "The United States," he wrote, "should reject at every turn the notion that South Africa is an American problem – it is not....The conflict in South Africa will not be 'solved' by crude American efforts to manipulate the distant and slippery levers of the South African power balance."
In an Op-Ed piece that was published in the New York Times (February 14, 1990), Crocker applauded the release of Nelson Mandela and urged the Bush administration to promote negotiations between the South African government and the newly legalized African National Congress but again warned of the limits of Washington's influence. "This is a time for Americans to restrain our messianic impulses," he cautioned, "and admit the possibility that the breakthroughs and tragedies occurring around the world are not necessarily the result of some American action or inaction."
[edit] Family man
Chester Crocker is a slender, soft-spoken, scholarly-looking man who guards his privacy and rarely displays emotion. He has been married to the former Saone Baron, a lawyer and native of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), since December 18, 1965. They have three children: Bathsheba, Karena, and Rebecca. Crocker is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the African Studies Association, and the Cosmos Club. He was chair of the Board of Directors of U.S. Institute of Peace from 1992-2004, and remains a member of its board.
[edit] See also
- Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (January 1999) a book co-edited by Crocker
- High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood, (December 1992) a book written by Crocker
- Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full (March 2002) gives a rigorous critique of Crocker
[edit] References
- Department of State Bulletin 81:55 Ag '81 por; "Who's Who in America," 1988-89; "Who's Who in American Politics," 1989
| Preceded by: Richard M. Moose |
United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs 1981–1989 |
Succeeded by: Herman Jay Cohen |
