Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980. Volume XVI

I did not anticipate that my primary emotion upon reading this volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS XVI] would be nostalgia. As I read the hundreds of documents, I found myself thinking, again and again, about how times have changed. Professionally, for the better: the field of diplomatic history has moved beyond the nationalistic and bureaucratic constraints of the FRUS enterprise. And politically, for the worse: forty years ago, the United States had a president who was curious about foreign policy, respectful of the bureaucracy, and engaged in the process. FRUS XVI gives scholars evidence of policymaking at the highest levels of the U.S. foreign policy establishment regarding Angola, Namibia, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, and South Africa. It relies primarily on documents from the Zbigniew Brzezinski Collections at the Jimmy Carter Library. It includes State Department cables digitized at the National Archives, and a smattering of CIA documents.

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