Moral Anguish: Richard Nixon and the Challenge of Biafra
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Description
Before there was genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia, or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Darfur, there was Biafra. Some two million people died in the Nigeria-Biafra War of July 1967 to January 1970. It was the first war in African history to receive extensive international attention and media coverage.
Until May 1967, the territory that came to be known as Biafra was the Eastern Region of Nigeria. When British colonial rule ended in Nigeria in October 1960, the country was widely considered the most promising in Africa, but a series of serious political crises exposed Nigeria's deep fault lines within a few years of independence.
In 1966, the façade of great promise was shredded by two military coups, as well as two rounds of pogroms in which some 50,000 civilians from the Nigeria's Eastern Region were killed. Convinced that security or a sense of belonging was no longer possible for them in Nigeria, the deeply traumatized easterners tried to secede as a new nation, the Republic of Biafra. However, the rest of Nigeria wanted to keep the Eastern Region in the federation, by force if necessary.
Nigeria invaded Biafra in July 1967. By mid-1968, massive starvation had taken hold in Biafra, the result of Nigeria's total blockade of the area. The large-scale suffering stirred great concern among millions of people around the world, especially because many of the victims of the starvation were very young children.
The writer of this book was one of those young children.
Based on a treasure trove of declassified documents from the Nixon White House, the National Security Council, and the State Department, "Moral Anguish: Richard Nixon and the Challenge of Biafra" reveals how close President Nixon came to recognizing Biafra, in the face of adamant opposition from the State Department. It details how the Nixon Administration struggled with Biafra as a major foreign policy challenge while also grappling with the deeply divisive Vietnam War. (For Nixon, who was elected a few months after the suffering in Biafra started receiving serious attention in the United States, Biafra was a much bigger problem than it was for his predecessor Lyndon Johnson.)
This painstakingly researched book delves into the personal moral anguish that President Nixon experienced in confronting the Biafra crisis. It presents a fresh and intriguing account of the inner workings of the Nixon Administration during a time of great turmoil in the history of the United States, and confronts head-on the wrenching struggles of a war that upended millions of lives.
Before there was genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia, or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Darfur, there was Biafra. Some two million people died in the Nigeria-Biafra War of July 1967 to January 1970. It was the first war in African history to receive extensive international attention and media coverage.
Until May 1967, the territory that came to be known as Biafra was the Eastern Region of Nigeria. When British colonial rule ended in Nigeria in October 1960, the country was widely considered the most promising in Africa, but a series of serious political crises exposed Nigeria's deep fault lines within a few years of independence.
In 1966, the façade of great promise was shredded by two military coups, as well as two rounds of pogroms in which some 50,000 civilians from the Nigeria's Eastern Region were killed. Convinced that security or a sense of belonging was no longer possible for them in Nigeria, the deeply traumatized easterners tried to secede as a new nation, the Republic of Biafra. However, the rest of Nigeria wanted to keep the Eastern Region in the federation, by force if necessary.
Nigeria invaded Biafra in July 1967. By mid-1968, massive starvation had taken hold in Biafra, the result of Nigeria's total blockade of the area. The large-scale suffering stirred great concern among millions of people around the world, especially because many of the victims of the starvation were very young children.
The writer of this book was one of those young children.
Based on a treasure trove of declassified documents from the Nixon White House, the National Security Council, and the State Department, "Moral Anguish: Richard Nixon and the Challenge of Biafra" reveals how close President Nixon came to recognizing Biafra, in the face of adamant opposition from the State Department. It details how the Nixon Administration struggled with Biafra as a major foreign policy challenge while also grappling with the deeply divisive Vietnam War. (For Nixon, who was elected a few months after the suffering in Biafra started receiving serious attention in the United States, Biafra was a much bigger problem than it was for his predecessor Lyndon Johnson.)
This painstakingly researched book delves into the personal moral anguish that President Nixon experienced in confronting the Biafra crisis. It presents a fresh and intriguing account of the inner workings of the Nixon Administration during a time of great turmoil in the history of the United States, and confronts head-on the wrenching struggles of a war that upended millions of lives.
The day before the exhibition was to open to the public, vice-president Nixon and Premier Khrushchev toured the US site. There, the two leaders argued the