 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Tar Baby option" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
"Tar Baby" was the name given by theUnited States State Department toRichard Nixon's policy during the late 1960s and 1970s of strengthening contacts with the white-minority governments inRhodesia andapartheid-eraSouth Africa. The allusion was to theUncle Remus story in whichBrer Fox tries to captureBrer Rabbit by making atar baby. Brer Rabbit strikes the tar "baby" with his hands, feet, and head and eventually becomes completely adhered to it. The policy option, described as a partial relaxation of economic action against Rhodesia and South Africa, and derived from NSSM: 39, was based on the presumption that apartheid and colonial rule were an unpleasant but undeniable reality and that Washington should accommodate itself pragmatically to thestatus quo. According to Nixon, if the United States was to be an influence for enlightened change it must do so by offering the "carrot" and eschewing the "stick". This policy would have to be pursuedad infinitum to get it to work.
There is an increasing level of controversy into the potential racial motivation behind Nixon andHenry Kissinger's support for the implementation of the 'Tar Baby' option aside from his ideological adherence torealpolitik. Mainly, "stemming from (their) demeaning attitude toward Africa and black Africans."[1]
AsSecretary of State underGerald Ford, Kissinger pivoted from the Tar Baby Option in favor of black-majority rule stating that "it would not have been predicted [...] that aRepublican administration would take the lead in bringing about the breakthrough to majority rule in Southern Africa." South African apartheid would not end until 1994, over 17 years after Kissinger left the State Department.
