Kenyatta Era Foreign Relations
The direction of Kenya's foreign policy was determined in the first decade after independence by imperatives that had their origin in the colonial period. Notably, these included close political and economic ties to Britain, institutional and economic links with Tanganyika and Uganda, confrontation with Somalia over the largely Somali-populated territory in northeastern Kenya, and the need to maintain and extend export markets. As in other matters, Kenyatta's was the controlling voice in the formulation of foreign policy, which reflected his moderation, caution, and pragmatism and emphasized African solidarity and Kenya's reliance on the West for technical assistance and investment.
Kenya chose to exert its influence abroad through membership in international and regional bodies. It maintained its attachment to the Commonwealth, was admitted to the United Nations (UN) shortly after independence, and participated in the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The East African Community was viewed at its inception as a vehicle for eventual regional federation. Kenya benefited from Commonwealth trade preferences and was included in the Lome Convention, ensuring preferential treatment for its imports by member states, after Britain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1972.
Despite its Western orientation and the special nature of its relations with Britain, Kenya stressed its adherence to a policy of nonalignment in the East-West confrontation. Additionally, it sought to win guarantees of a nuclear-free zone in Africa and in 1974 joined India in appealing to Britain and the United States to withdraw plans for establishing a naval base at Diego Garcia and to acknowledge the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace. Kenya also supported programs intended to redress the existing international economic order, which it regarded as disadvantageous to countries like itself whose economies were dependent on the production of raw materials for export to the industrialized countries.
The OAU was regarded by Kenya as the primary channel for cooperation among African states. In chorus with other African leaders, Kenyatta had demanded immediate British action in 1965 to restore a legal government in Southern Rhodesia. He had refrained, however, from voicing his views on white minority rule in southern Africa as strongly as had some other OAU heads of state. Kenya's stand on southern Africa hardened after the appointment of Njoroge Mungai, the president's confidant, as foreign minister in 1969. Within the OAU, as well as in the UN and the Commonwealth, Kenya assumed an activist role in efforts to enforce the UN-decreed boycott of Southern Rhodesia and to prevent arms sales to South Africa and in 1972 threw its political support behind national liberation movements in Southern Rhodesia and Namibia (South West Africa).
Arab pressure on OAU members after the Arab-Israeli 1973 war persuaded countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that, like Kenya, had previously enjoyed cordial relations with Israel to reevaluate their foreign policy in the Middle East. Relations with Israel had been based on trade and on the investment, technical assistance, and military training that the Israelis provided under a 1965 cooperation agreement. Kenya's view of the Arab world, by contrast, was conditioned by Arab support for Somalia's irredentist claims on its territory.
Kenya severed diplomatic relations with Israel in November 1973. After the break Kenya took a leading role in African efforts to obtain Arab financial assistance for development projects. Officially, Kenya stated that it would give its diplomatic support in the UN and OAU to Arab objectives as a matter of principle and not because it expected dividends. But privately, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mungai made it plain to the governments of Arab oil-producing states that his country deserved special consideration in return for backing the Arab position against Israel. Its economy hard-hit by the rise in world oil prices, Kenya later criticized those same Arab governments for a lack of sensitivity to developing countries in Africa, but no attempt was made to restore formal diplomatic relations with Israel.
Relations with the Arab states were complicated by the apparent increase in Palestinian influence in Uganda during the tense period in relations between that country and Kenya after the Entebbe affair in 1976 and, more significantly, by Arab aid to Somalia in 1977-78. There seemed to be little linkage, however, between the Somali question and Kenya's attitude toward a Middle East settlement. Nairobi applauded Egyptian president Anwar al Sadat's peace initiative with Israel in November 1977, but the following February Kenyan military aircraft intercepted two Egyptian transports that had overflown Kenyan air-space carrying supplies to Somalia.
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