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In this insightful blend of African social history and US foreign policy, John V. Clune explores the individual experiences of ordinary people at the heart of Cold War diplomacy. The book provides a detailed account of military-sponsored international travel, focusing on military training abroad, and United Nations peacekeeping deployments in the Sinai and Lebanon. These experiences significantly transformed Ghanaian service members and their families in the three decades following Ghana’s independence in 1957.
American military assistance to Ghana was not limited to training; it also sponsored education within the United States, with American policymakers envisioning national modernization emerging from the personal relationships developed by Ghanaian service members and their families. Despite the lack of substantial evidence proving the effectiveness of this policy, the faith in its potential kept American military assistance to Ghana remarkably consistent.
With a deep dive into recently discovered documents from Ghana’s armed forces and declassified data on American military assistance to Africa, this research argues that military-sponsored travel indeed internationalized the worldviews of individual Ghanaians. This was precisely what military assistance planners had hoped for, however, Ghana faced challenges in translating this newfound global perspective into tangible political or economic progress.