The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

duce, An American Dilemma (1944), which provided the blueprint for the next two decades of the civil rights struggle. He also understood the full implications of the Atlantic Charter, the 1941 U.S.-U.K. document that proclaimed the freedom of all peo- ples as a central objective of the Allied war cause. After Pearl Harbor, Bunche briefly worked for the Office of Stra- tegic Services — precursor to the CIA — as an Africa specialist. He then joined State’s Bureau of Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs as the resident Africanist, before moving to the newly established United Nations in 1945. There he focused on decolo- nization when he wasn’t inventing international peace- keeping or serving as the U.N.’s premier troubleshooter, winning the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the 1948 Israeli-Arab cease-fire. In 1949, President Harry Truman offered Bunche a job as assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs, but Bunche turned it down. After having taught at Howard University and served in the U.S. government in World War II, he refused ever again to live in a Washington, D.C., ruled by Jim Crow, or to work in a department where Africa was, at best, a pro- fessional afterthought. As he explained at the time, “It is well known that there is Jim Crow in Washington. It is equally well known that no Negro finds Jim Crow conge- nial. I am a Negro.” He spent the rest of his career and life at the United Nations, where he deserves considerable credit for the organization’s leadership in pushing ahead with an early timetable for decolonization in Africa. As the organiza- tion’s ranking American, he provided crucial behind-the- scenes encouragement to Washington to pressure Europeans to accelerate the independence of their Afri- can colonies. And it is here that Bunche’s career inter- sected with that of Nixon. … And a Hard-Nosed Realist A decade younger than Bunche, Richard Nixon was a member of the Greatest Generation, a Navy veteran from World War II. As a member of the House Un- American Activities Committee, he built a reputation as a Cold War attack dog. His most famous target was Alger Hiss, who had worked at State from 1936 to 1946 in a variety of jobs focusing on post-World War II plan- ning. Showing a genius for publici- ty, Nixon pressed a HUAC investi- gation of Hiss’s links to the Ameri- can Communist Party, which led to a conviction for perjury and 44 months in prison. His anticommu- nist credentials burnished, Nixon went on to the Senate, and then won a place alongside Eisenhower on the 1952 ticket. Africa did not rank high on the White House’s list of favored parts of the world in the 1950s. As for the State Department, it treated Africa functionally as an adjunct of Europe — which, politically, it was. The Bureau of Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs encom- passed not only the African continent but the whole colo- nial world. Until Ghana gained its independence in 1957, there were only three sovereign countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: Liberia, Ethiopia and South Africa. The rest of the continent consisted of colonies pos- sessed by our Western European allies. There were some U.S. consulates scattered around what would even- tually become national capitals but, as such, they report- ed to and took instructions from our embassies in London, Paris, Brussels and Lisbon. These colonial pow- ers were the heart of NATO, and it was the security and reconstruction of Western Europe that mattered most to them and to Washington. No ambassador to a NATO member-state was going to advocate placing support for African decolonization ahead of completing reconstruc- tion and containing communism. Ever the realist, Nixon saw the stakes differently, par- ticularly after a 1957 trip to Africa awoke his strategic imagination. There he witnessed firsthand the dynamic changes under way and recognized Africa’s potential: Support for decolonization meant cultivating potential allies against communism, or at least deterring commu- nist expansion. It was during that trip that he and Bunche literally crossed paths for the first time. Nixon was representing the U.S., and Bunche the U.N., at the ceremonies mark- ing the independence of Ghana, the first British colony in Sub-Saharan Africa to win full independence. However, there is no record of any conversation between the two high-ranking Americans. A charismatic third American, F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 Nixon and Bunche crossed paths for the first time in 1957 at the ceremonies marking the independence of Ghana.