This book charts the evolution of US foreign policy towards South Africa, beginning in 1948 when the architects of apartheid, the Nationalist Party, came to power. Thomson highlights three sets of conflicting Western interests: strategic, economic and human rights.

By tracing U.S. involvement in South African political and economic development since the late 1800s, this book analyzes U.S. corporate and government motives for maintaining the political status quo in South Africa. In recent decades, according to the author, U.S. policy toward South Africa has grown more contradictory: Endeavoring to protect the United States's reputation on the question of race, government officials denounce apartheid, yet Washington remains the main force blocking an international response to South African policies. As the situation in South Africa continues to polarize, the U.S. is increasingly isolated in its position of verbally condemning yet materially supporting South Africa's white minority regime--a regime confronting the distinct possibility of civil war.

Relations between the United States and South Africa - or the parts of the world these nations now occupy - go nearly as far back as the very beginning of their inception as permanent European colonial intrusions. This book is a critical overview of these relations from the late seventeenth century to the present. Unprecedented in its scope - and s