Unexpectedly Related 

Take a quick look at your cell phone. You probably have an iPhone, or an Android, that  you can hardly live without. You frequently use this device to communicate with family and  friends, entertain yourself, keep yourself organized, and maybe even for your job. Even if you  were a tech novice, you would know that your cell phone is comprised of many materials and  electronic components. However, what if someone were to tell you that your device contains a  rare-earth metal called Cobalt (required in cellphone batteries), of which 60% of the world’s  supplyiis mined in one country? That this same country’s land has 24 trillion dollars’ worthii of  other rare-earth metals? What if I told you this country is called the Democratic Republic of the  Congo (Congo) and is one of the world’s poorest countries? Your answers to these questions  may be “How can it be so poor?” and “Why is it this way if it has so many valuable resources?” How did a forgotten, United States (US) foreign policy event play such a significant role in the  Congo’s current situation, a country that indirectly plays such a critical part in our lives? 

The Cold War ideology 

To answer some of these questions, we need to go back to the Cold War’s early days. The  US was managing a new post-World War II liberal international order and competed with the  Soviet Union to dominate the world. In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Commander of  Allied Troops in Europe, and a national hero, had just been elected President of the US.  President Eisenhower quickly ended the Korean War, our first Cold War proxy war. A war that  turned out to be a messy quagmire that ended in a virtual stalemate. Little did many Americans  know, this would not be our last far away intervention, we were an empire now, and we were in  the business of regime change for the sake of freedom and democracy for the foreseeable future. 

Ismaila Whittier Final Paper (Word Count: 2,493) IGA 125: Applied History Due: December 10th, 2020 

One of our Cold War policy’s key architects was President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State (1953 to 1959), John Foster Dulles, a Princeton graduate, former corporate lawyer, and the son  of a Presbyterian minister. Dulles’ ideology was shaped by his strict Christian upbringing and his  over thirty years working for Sullivan and Cromwell, which had many corporate clients,  ensuring their interests were protected worldwide.iii Dulles considered corporate centric  capitalism, free markets, and Christianity as the pinnacle of American righteousness. Any  doctrines that may impede or threaten this righteousness was akin to evil, in the biblical sense, and had to be stopped at all costs. Thus, Dulles focused his hostility on what he considered “The  Communist Menace” taking over the world. 

Consequently, shaped by his absolutist morality, he structured US foreign policy’s  aggressive stance on “Containment,” determined to stop Communism in its tracks wherever it  may appear in the world. There was a blatant disregard for analyzing history in each country,  many of which were current or former European colonies, or examining any other unique factors  that would result in a rejection of the western democratic capitalist model. In the eyes of US  officials, rejection of or even hesitancy towards adopting western values and siding with the US,  were seen as steps towards a partnership with the Soviets and aligning with the Communist  movement. In a 1952 CBS television interview on a show called the Longines Chronoscopeiv,  Dulles’s paranoia was apparent when a panelist, William Bradford Huie, asked Dulles: “Now sir  in your opinion are we stronger this year as against Russia than we were last year?” Dulles  responds: “My estimate would be that the tide is still running against us, everywhere I look  around the world, the question is what maybe we are going to lose next, you know? We seem to  be on the defensive and they seem to be on the offensive.” Thus, it was Dulles’ stance on the so called “global Communist insurgency” that laid the groundwork for American interventions and 

Ismaila Whittier Final Paper (Word Count: 2,493) IGA 125: Applied History Due: December 10th, 2020 

covert actions from the late 1940s until the end of the Cold War. Under Dulles’s purview, the  State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), headed by his brother Allen  Dulles, ran the overt and covert aspects of US foreign policy. During the Dulles brothers’ reign,  the US was involved in: the Iran Coup of 1953, the Guatemalan Coup of 1954, supported the  French in the First Indochina War, propped up Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, supported  dissidents in the 1959 Tibetan uprising, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion, and made numerous  attempts on the life of Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro.

 

Lumumba, Belgium, and the CIA 

Unfortunately for Patrice Lumumba, he unknowingly became a target of this policy. Born on  July 2nd, 1925 in the village of Onalua in Kasai province, Belgian Congo, Patrice Lumumba was  a beer salesman in Léopoldville, Belgian Congo, and a post office clerk in Stanleyville, Belgian  Congo.vi In 1958, after a study tour in Belgium and brief, unjustified imprisonment for  embezzlement, he started and led the Congolese Nationalist Movement (MNC), a Pan-African nationalist political party in the Belgian Congo. In June 1960, after the Congo declared  independence from Belgium, Lumumba’s MNC won most of the seats in the Congolese  parliament, making Lumumba (age 34) the first Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo.  Lumumba pushed for progressive-populist policies, called for an end to Belgian exploitation and  racial discrimination, Africanization of the country’s civil service, and neutrality in its foreign  affairs. In the West, many feared Lumumba’s fiery progressive anti-colonial, Pan-African, rhetoric would threaten Western corporate interests in the Congo and Africa.

A few months after the country’s independence, Congo's troops mutinied against their all white officer corps (a holdover from the colonial era) and started terrorizing the European  population.viii In response, Belgium sent forces to reoccupy the country and support a violent 

Ismaila Whittier Final Paper (Word Count: 2,493) IGA 125: Applied History Due: December 10th, 2020 

successionist movement (supported by western mining interests, and white-ruled Southern  African countries) that emerged from the Congo’s mineral-rich Katanga province. It was this  successionist movement that caused the long and bloody Congo Crisis that engulfed the nation  from 1960 to 1965.ix On July 14th, 1960, the United Nations (UN) Security Council voted to  adopt UN Security Council Resolution 143, calling for immediate removal of Belgian forces and  establishing the UN Operation in the Congo (ONUC). Despite the arrival of UN troops, unrest  continued. Lumumba requested UN troops suppress Katanga’s rebellion, but the UN forces were  not authorized to do so under their mandate. Lumumba began threatening to expel the UN  peacekeeping forces if they continued to demur on assistance with the Katanga rebellion.  Lumumba tried to seek help from the US to suppress Katanga’s rebellion, but the US refused to  do so. These refusals forced Lumumba to ask the Soviet Union for military assistance to end the  Katanga province’s insurgency.x This fateful move led US officials to believe that Lumumba was  a Communist and Soviet ally, which made him, virtually, a marked man. 

During a July 21st, 1960 US National Security Council (NSC) meeting, CIA Director Dulles  said: “In Lumumba we were faced with a person who was a Castro or worse. CIA had been  studying his background; we know that he has received a large payment from Egypt. We believe  that he is in the pay of the Soviets either directly or through the UAR (Egypt).”xi On August 18th,  1960, the NSC discussed Lumumba’s threats to force the UN out of the Congo and concerns  surrounding Lumumba’s political strength in the Congo. President Eisenhower made it  abundantly clear during this August 18th NSC meeting that Prime Minister Lumumba had to be  stopped at all costs.xii However, I must note here President Eisenhower never said the exact  words “We must assassinate Lumumba.”, but Allen Dulles translated the President’s language  into authorization for an assassination attempt on Lumumba.xiii Eisenhower, Dulles, and the 

Ismaila Whittier Final Paper (Word Count: 2,493) IGA 125: Applied History Due: December 10th, 2020 

others at the NSC meeting that day did not think about Belgian colonialism’s brutal history in the  Congo and the Congo’s subsequent rebellion. They did not see Belgium’s blatant attempts and  its partners to establish neo-colonial control of the country. They either did not see or refused to  acknowledge the trend of decolonization in Africa. Instead, they made a very shallow historical  analysis. They saw a leader and a nation, like Mao and China and like Castro and Cuba,  antagonistic towards the US and one of its established institutions. To them, much like Cuba and  China, the Congo was making steps towards Communism.  

In an August 27th, 1960 telegramxiv from the CIA Headquarters to the CIA station in the  Congo, CIA Director Dulles writes: “In high quarters here it is the clear-cut conclusion that if  Lumumba continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will at best be chaos and at worst  

pave the way to Communist takeover of the Congo with disastrous consequences for the prestige  of UN and for the interests of the free world generally. Consequently, we conclude that his  removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be  a high priority of our covert action.” From that day forward, the CIA formulated a plot to  assassinate Lumumba. The plot was to poison Lumumba’s food or toothpaste with a toxin that  could not be traced and would kill him. This plan never actually succeeded.

However, by the time September 1960 came around, the situation had changed in the Congo.  Lumumba was ousted from the Congolese government by the US-backed Colonel Mobutu and  had been placed under house arrest in Léopoldville under the protection of UN peacekeeping  forces.xvi However, there was still significant support for Lumumba in the Congolese Parliament.  High-level US administration officials, and the CIA, still viewed him as a threat. The CIA  contacted an unnamed high-level Congolese politician who confirmed Lumumba is just as  dangerous in opposition as he was in power and this contact implied Lumumba might be 

Ismaila Whittier Final Paper (Word Count: 2,493) IGA 125: Applied History Due: December 10th, 2020 

“physically eliminated.”xvii Subsequently, the US urged Colonel Mobutu to take over the  Congolese government, and Mobutu did so in a swift coup d’état. Mobutu promptly ousted and  replaced all the Congolese politicians and expelled the Soviet and Czechoslovak diplomats and their military advisers and equipment.

For months, American officials at the Embassy and CIA station in Léopoldville encouraged  Lumumba’s opponents to eliminate Lumumba before he turned the tables on them and invited  the Russians back to the Congo.xix These officials followed a policy set the previous summer  when Allen Dulles compared Lumumba to Fidel Castro and President Eisenhower agreed. They  were to get rid of Lumumba one way or another. In November 1960, Lumumba tried slipping  away from UN protection to go to his stronghold in the city of Stanleyville, but Mobutu’s forces  arrested him. Lumumba was eventually taken to Katanga and handed over to troops there for  imprisonment. It was in Katanga, on January 17th, 1961, that Lumumba was killed by a firing  squad of Katangan officials and Belgian officers. His corpse was chopped up by Belgian  mercenaries and placed in an acid-filled metal drum, so his body could never be recovered.xxi After the Congo Crisis, Colonel Mobutu ran the country with an iron fist for 32 years (1965 to  1997), renaming the country “Zaire,” and received political support and billions of dollars in aid  from the US.xxii For years, the Congo (Zaire) had been economically exploited, and Mobutu  remained one of the CIA’s most trusted assets in Africa.xxiii The Mobutu dictatorship was a  corrupt authoritarian regime notorious for major human rights violations, nepotism, and the  embezzlement of billions of dollars.xxiv Today, the Congo sits on some of the most valuable  resources in the world yet is the world’s most under-developed nation and the most unlikely  place for an individual to improve his or her livelihood, according to the UN.

Ismaila Whittier Final Paper (Word Count: 2,493) IGA 125: Applied History Due: December 10th, 2020 

The Burying of History and its Implications 

This disgraceful saga in US foreign policy history, like many others, have been buried as  a mere footnote in history because it reveals the blatant hypocrisy of US rhetoric regarding sovereignty, freedom, and democracy. It is obvious these noble ideals are thrown aside if they  interfere with US foreign policy goals. Unlike the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, which  are widely known and a point of problematic shame for the US, the Congo operation’s success is  not well known for various reasons. One reason is that Cuba is much closer to home than the  Congo is and is a much more familiar foe than any faraway African country could be. The  second reason is that the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis were major memorable  events in US-Cuban history. These events made an impression on every American’s mind, young  and old. The subsequent sanctions and bans on things like the famous Cuban cigars and travel to  Cuba are very well-publicized, thus on the American consciousness. The third and final reason is  that Africa continues to be an afterthought in many Americans’ minds, not only regarding  African history and US relations with Africa but also in nearly every aspect except charity.  

As Americans, we are taught a whitewashed version of our history that focuses on domestic  affairs and almost entirely ignores foreign affairs. The consequence of this whitewashing is that  we accept the gospel of American exceptionalism and trust federal officials at their word and the  institutions they run. Thus, in the average American’s mind, any unpleasant actions these  institutions or agencies take abroad are necessary, and just the burden of maintaining freedom worldwide. We can draw from the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and regime change in the  Congo, which we can draw from many of our other foreign policy transgressions. We can draw  the consistent failure of our jingoist government to see conflicts and crises abroad within their  contexts. The willingness to jump to conclusions about a leader’s or country’s motives and only 

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considering the US’s vision for the world, instead of the country’s history and situation, is a  drastic failure. US officials in the 1950s and 1960s saw the history of China’s and Cuba’s “fall to  communism” and immediately concluded that the Congo would follow the same pattern. Still,  we as a public, do not realize that this was a failure of applied historical analysis and, unfortunately for the Congo, had disastrous consequences for years after Lumumba’s  assassination, consequences of which they still live with today. We can also draw from this  forgotten tragedy, the willing complicity of a mid-20th century American public due to their blind faith in American exceptionalism and foreign policy (however this shifted due to the  Vietnam War), and the public’s sheer ignorance of American current events and history abroad. Poor understanding of history weakens American society and makes for leaders prone to  irrational decision-making in times of duress and a public who will happily ignore or accept  these actions. Like many others, this event is a critical lesson on the importance of history itself,  looking at each situation in its own context, applying history where appropriate, and making reasoned and rational policy decisions. 

i Sherman, N. (2018, July 25). The precious metal sparking a new gold rush. Retrieved November 23, 2020, from  https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44732847 

ii Nations, U. (2011, October 10). DR Congo: UN advises prudent use of abundant resources to spur development | |  UN News. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/390912-dr-congo-un-advises prudent-use-abundant-resources-spur-development 

iii Kinzer, S. (2014). Chapter 1: Unmentionable Happenings & Chapter 2: The Taint of My Environment. In The  Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (pp. 1-36). New York, NY: St. Martin's  Griffin. 

iv Cartoun, A. (Director). (1952, February 18). Longines Chronoscope: Interview with John Foster Dulles  [Television broadcast]. In Longines Chronoscope. New York, New York: CBS. 

v Kinzer, S. (2014). The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (pp. 1-36). New  York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin 

vi Wallerstein, I. (1998, July 20). Patrice Lumumba. Retrieved December 08, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patrice-Lumumba

Ismaila Whittier Final Paper (Word Count: 2,493) IGA 125: Applied History Due: December 10th, 2020 

vii Nzongola-Ntalaja, G. (2020, January 17). Why They Killed Patrice Lumumba [Interview by 1114813486  842278670 S. Husaini]. Retrieved December 5, 2020, from https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/patrice-lumumba assassination-anniversary-congo 

viii Weissman, S. R. (2014) ‘What Really Happened in Congo’, Foreign Affairs, 93(4), pp. 14–24. Available at:  http://search.ebscohost.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=96522022&site=ehost live&scope=site (Accessed: 9 December 2020). 

ix Idib 

x Young, C. (1965). Politics in Congo: Decolonization and Independence. Princeton University Press. 

xi Johnson, R. H. (2006). 126. Memorandum of Discussion at the 451st Meeting of the National Security Council.  Retrieved December 08, 2020, from https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v14/d140 

xii National Archives, Testimony of Robert H. Johnson, June 18, 1975; Folder 10-H-02, Box 44, Hearings, RG 46  Records of the United States Senate, Church Committee Records on JFK Assassination 

xiii Ibid 

xiv U.S. Senate, Church Committee. (1975). Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (pp. 15-28)  (1109841035 839063306 C. Committee, Author) [S. Rept. 94-465 from 94th Cong., 1st sess.]. Washington, DC: US  Senate. 

xv Ibid 

xvi Wallerstein, I. (1998, July 20). Patrice Lumumba. Retrieved December 08, 2020, from  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patrice-Lumumba 

xvii U.S. Senate, Church Committee. (1975). Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (pp. 15-28)  (1109841035 839063306 C. Committee, Author) [S. Rept. 94-465 from 94th Cong., 1st sess.]. Washington, DC: US  Senate. 

xviii Kalb, M. G. (1981, August 2). THE C.I.A. AND LUMUMBA. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved  December 7, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/02/magazine/the-cia-and-lumumba.html 

xix U.S. Senate, Church Committee. (1975). Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (pp. 15-28)  (1109841035 839063306 C. Committee, Author) [S. Rept. 94-465 from 94th Cong., 1st sess.]. Washington, DC: US  Senate. 

xx Kalb, M. G. (1981, August 2). THE C.I.A. AND LUMUMBA. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved  December 7, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/02/magazine/the-cia-and-lumumba.html 

xxi Wallerstein, I. (1998, July 20). Patrice Lumumba. Retrieved December 08, 2020, from  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patrice-Lumumba 

xxii Prados, J. (2009). Safe for democracy: The secret wars of the CIA. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee. xxiii Ibid 

xxiv Weissman, S. R. (2014) ‘What Really Happened in Congo’, Foreign Affairs, 93(4), pp. 14–24. Available at:  http://search.ebscohost.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=96522022&site=ehost live&scope=site (Accessed: 9 December 2020). 

xxv Kushner, J. (2014, January 10). China's Congo Plan. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from  

https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/chinas-congo-plan