Timothy Scarnecchia’s Race and Diplomacy is a meticulous archival reconstruction of the diplomatic maneuvers that transformed Southern Rhodesia into Zimbabwe. The book reveals that the Cold War and decolonization were closely tied. Scarnecchia successfully provides a provocative re-examination of how global Cold War priorities and racialized logics, particularly by US and UK diplomats, shaped the birth of a nation and, ultimately, facilitated its descent into state-sponsored terror. Scarnecchia utilizes rich archival sources and recently declassified materials from the US State Department records, the British Foreign and commonwealth documentary record, private American notes of conversations from the same period and South African files to tell a story of decolonization in Zimbabwe in a new way.
The book’s primary contribution to the field and one of its strengths is the concept of “Cold War race states.” Scarnecchia argues that race was a central category of action in international diplomacy. What it meant for Zimbabwe to be a “white state” under Ian Smith, a hybrid state under Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in 1979, or a “black state” under Robert Mugabe after 1980 carried different implications at different moments in the Cold War competition. Scarnecchia contends that Western powers developed racially coded assumptions about what kind of governance a majority-rule African state could be expected to sustain, assumptions that had direct consequences for how they interpreted and responded to violence after independence. This racialized logic created a diplomatic environment where Robert Mugabe’s later state crimes were rationalized as the unfortunate but expected behavior of a “black” African state, provided he remained a loyal Cold War ally against Soviet influence. The Cold War race state concept allows Scarnecchia to reveal a form of ideological bias that most diplomatic histories treat only in passing.
Scarnecchia details several critical phases where diplomacy served as a tool for Cold War containment. In 1976, following the Cuban-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) victory in Angola, the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger became obsessed with preventing a similar Soviet success in Rhodesia. He shifted US policy toward supporting majority rule not out of a sudden moral epiphany, but to ensure that the eventual “black state” would be pro-Western. Kissinger privately told President Ford, “Basically I am with the whites in Southern Africa, I think it is no better for the majority to oppress the minority than vice versa. But in my ‘public’ comments I will support majority rule in Rhodesia … and say the same about South Africa,” indicating how Rhodesia was just a pawn in Cold War politics. Scarnecchia shows how the British and Americans used a combination of financial face-saving promises and ultimatums to force the Patriotic Front (PF) to accept a constitution that protected white land rights for ten years. This period highlights the “walking a tightrope” act of British diplomats who were more concerned with a peaceful white transition than the potential for a Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) civil war.
Central to the book’s narrative is the long-standing rivalry between Joshua Nkomo of ZAPU and Robert Mugabe of ZANU. Scarnecchia moves beyond simple “tribal” explanations, showing how both nationalists were sophisticated diplomats who leveraged Cold War anxieties to their advantage. He traces the 1963 split between their parties, a division that was allowed to fester for decades due to separate Cold War funding for their respective militaries. Scarnecchia explores how Western and African diplomats variously favored, sidelined, and ultimately helped determine the outcome of this rivalry. Western diplomats viewed Nkomo as the moderate choice, yet he was perpetually hampered by his Soviet ties. Mugabe, often viewed as the intransigent radical, skillfully used the 1976 Geneva talks to establish himself as the de facto leader of the “boys with guns,” the guerilla forces whose battlefield successes made them the primary power brokers. The Front-Line States also competed over who would be best to assist their preferred candidate to become the new leader of independent Zimbabwe. Nonetheless, Mugabe and Nkomo, despite their mutual mistrust, maintained a double act as the PF to prevent Western powers from splitting the nationalist movement.
The most chilling section of the book is the Gukurahundi from 1983 to 1984, the campaign of state violence carried out by the Fifth Brigade against civilians in Matabeleland. Scarnecchia does not attempt to reconstruct the massacres themselves, for which a substantial literature already exists. Instead, he asks how Western diplomats read, interpreted, and rationalized the violence at the time, illustrating how Cold War loyalty largely overrode moral concern. British officials like High Commissioner Robin Byatt noted that the Fifth Brigade was under control because they treated white commercial farmers courteously, even as they killed Ndebele civilians. The West prioritized Zimbabwe’s status as a pro-Western ally and a model of reconciliation over the lives of those being tortured and killed. The Cold War race state logic did not simply precede independence; it shaped the impunity that followed.
In conclusion, Race and Diplomacy is an essential and compelling read for understanding the complexities of decolonization. It exposes a tragic irony, the international efforts to prevent a “race war” between whites and blacks, directly facilitating a “political war” between Mugabe and his rivals. Scarnecchia forces a reckoning with the enduring impact of racialized diplomacy in Africa by showing how tribalism was used as a convenient shorthand to excuse state-sponsored violence. This book concludes that the racialization of states did not end in 1980. It remains an underlying rhetorical device that continues to influence global perceptions of African political violence today.
