American Foreign Policy since World War II (9th Edition) by John Spanier
Published by CBS College Publishing (1983)
ISBN 0-03-061902-5

THE white community for a long time has taken advantage of the saying ‘if you want to hide something from a black man, put it in a book’ to distort and misrepresent facts about Africa.
Literature has been published giving a biased account of the history of Africa, painting whites as saviours while portraying blacks as a clueless people that require the guidance of the white man.
The Zimbabwean history has fallen prey to publishers and writers who are bent on distorting facts about the liberation struggle and key programmes such as the Land Reform.
Through this Book Review section, The Patriot has exposed the machinations of the country’s detractors to distort facts about Zimbabwe’s past and current status.
Books from Rhodesian writers, black writers sympathising with Rhodesians and publishers such as Weaver Press and ’amabooks, who have the hidden agenda of mass producing books that de-campaign the black Government have been reviewed.
The reviews have done a lot to conscentise the man on the street about the strategies of the West to tell a biased story on the country through books.
The West uses literature, which it still believes the black man, if ever he reads will take it as the truth, to push the agenda that it is a super race and has to lead the world.
In the book American Foreign Policy since World War II by John Spanier, the author takes the reader through the country’s foreign policy during the President Ronald Reagan era.
Reagan was America’s 40th president who came into office on January 20 1981 and left on January 20 1989.
Spanier also took it upon himself to serialise the book to try and keep the readers abreast of the US foreign policy since 1960.
The first edition was published in 1960 and the latest edition which is the 13th having been published this year.
The serialised books are said to have become a ‘key’ source of reference for the younger generations in America.
Spanier says the book was written at a time when Reagan was reasserting American power and prestige and the US foreign policy was focusing its attention on the Soviet Union’s growing military power.
“The Soviet Union in the 1970s was no longer considered a revolutionary power. Nationalism in the Third World, the determination of the ex-colonial countries to assert their identity and interests would insure that they would not become Soviet colonies,” he writes.
“The upshot of this unwillingness to face fully the ‘real world’ to explain away continued superpower competition, to minimise concern for the results of this competition while it remained largely one-sided, and the reluctance to assert American power was predictable.”
Spanier shows how for long America has tried to de-campaign and dis-empower any country that proves to be a threat to its selfish agenda.
He also focuses on efforts by America to expand its influence in the Third World.
The writer through the book highlights how America has never and will never do anything to benefit another nation as long as it does not benefit from it.
Americans, as Spanier puts it, do not sympathise with the poverty and other challenges that affect Third World countries and are not ready to offer a genuine helping hand.
“ It took a rather similar point of view of the world’s poor as it did not work hard enough; namely that they were undeserving because they did not work hard enough; thus the less developed countries should not look for Western ‘charity’ to do for them what they should do for themselves,” writes Spanier.
“From the beginning, the administration emphasised that the less developed countries were responsible for their own welfare, just as it held individuals responsible for their own personal welfare at home.”
It is disturbing that years after Spanier highlights such important facts that expose the Americans, some Africans are still being duped by the West into believing that they are the solution to their problems.
During his failed campaign trail MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai went overboard on how after he is elected into power the West would pour in millions of dollars to solve the challenges facing the country.
No wonder the white community will continue to ‘hide’ the facts in books because they know there are others like Tsvangirai who will not read and will fall in the same trap as others who have been duped.
Africa should indeed open her eyes and read behind the agendas of the West otherwise Africa’s resources would continue to be plundered by the West.