The Foreign Service Journal, May 2004

explain the instability of the big states. Angola became the theater of a proxy war between the United States, allied with South Africa, and the Soviet Union, relying on Cuban personnel, only because the dissen- sion between its leadership provid- ed outsiders with an entry point. When the outsiders withdrew fol- lowing a 1988 agreement, the war continued as a domestic phenome- non. Nor can the conflicts in these states be attributed solely to the ambitions of specific leaders. Although all the countries have had their share of ruth- less strongmen, conflicts have extended past the political life span of any individual. Angola may be the exception here. UNITA, the armed opposition group in Angola, was so dependent on its leader Jonas Savimbi that his death spelled the end of the fighting. It is too early to tell, however, whether Angola will be able to develop a system of government that can turn the cessation of hostilities following Savimbi’s death into a real peace and economic and social development. Even in countries where wars have ended, the development of a political system that can address the underlying problems has been elu- sive. Indeed, all the civil wars in big African states have been ended by a military victory, not a political agree- ment. In the aftermath of war, both Nigeria and Ethiopia have experimented with federal formulas in an attempt to prevent the conflict from recurring. Neither Nigeria’s territorial federalism nor Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism has solved the problem, however. In Angola, a government F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29 It is the internal failures, rather than the interventions by outsiders pursuing their own agenda, that explains the instability of the big states.