Continuity or change: American foreign policy of human rights under the Carter and the Reagan administration with particular emphasis on Southern Africa--1977-1984

This dissertation examines the extent to which human rights became the major foreign policy goal of the Carter administration in Southern Africa and the role human rights played in the Reagan administration policy there. It examines the general principles of Carter's foreign policy and puts human rights into this context. I show that the political environment of post-Vietnam and personal preferences shaped Carter's foreign policy into a program of human rights as his first consideration and that power consideration and a revived fear of communism shaped Reagan's policy.; Traditional American foreign policy toward South and Southern Africa was concerned less with the promotion of human rights for Africans than with the establishment of strategic balance of power. And following the Second World War, the makers of American foreign policy saw the emerging African nationalist movements as threats to American interests in the region. To them, these nationalist movements were agents of communism trying to bring about communist domination in Africa. The Republic of South Africa and other white minority regimes in Southern Africa played vehemently on this misinterpretation by the United States to gain American support for their minority rule. With the exception of the Kennedy administration, successive American administrations saw South Africa as a bastion against anti-communism and bulwark of democracy. Consequently, no successful American foreign policy was instituted for South and Southern Africa until the Carter administration.