Podur Justin. America's Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the DR Congo

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. — 404 p.This book examines US interventions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda -- two countries whose post-independence histories are inseparable. It analyzes the US campaigns to prevent Patrice Lumumba from turning the DR Congo into a sovereign, democratic, prosperous republic on a continent where America’s ally apartheid South Africa was hegemonic; America’s installation of and support for Mobutu to keep the region under neo-colonial control; and America’s pre-emption of the Africa-wide movement for multiparty democracy in Rwanda and Zaire in the 1990s by supporting Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In addition, the book discusses the concepts of African development, democracy, genocide, foreign policy, and international politics.Introduction: I am not an AfricanistThe politician's words against the empire's weaponsSow doubt, aestheticize, essentialize: How to write about African leadersKilling hope in the CongoThe agency's kingmakerThe revolutionary and the white supremacistThe tyrant subcontractors: America's chosen African dictators, 1965-1985Economic poison: Western economic medicine before the Rwanda genocide and Congo wars of the 1990sThe peacekeeper and the warlordGood and evil: How Africanists present Hutus as deserving of deathThe infrastructure of judgment and denialThe state Kagame builtStories from the African MindThe front men and the refugees: The Congo War 1996-1997The nuance to protect an empireThe warlord's aide and the broken alliance: The 1998-2003 Congo WarConclusion: The empire's system for Central Africa