My paper will survey Houari Boumedienne’s policy with France, which had important internal besides external consequences. From 1965 to 1978, cooperation and conflict characterized bilateral relations, with occasional “psychodramas,” e.g., the nationalization of French hydrocarbons concessions in February 1971. The paper argues that the bilateral relationship with France was of paramount importance since it also correlated to Boumedienne’s state-building enterprise, in particular, the definition and projection of a national identity. To Boumedienne and his government (and generation), the Evian Accords represented an incomplete decolonization. Although Algeria acquired political independence in 1962, France preserved its preponderate economic position. Furthermore, French culture and language continued to exercise powerful influence, which contradicted Algeria’s Arabic heritage. Boumedienne addressed the perpetuated French presence by pursuing policies of “post-colonial decolonization.” There was a paradox inherent in this praxis. While more than willing to confront France and free Algeria from France’s continuing commercial and cultural domination, Boumedienne understood that Algeria needed French cooperation (assistance programs) for his ambitious state-building plans (e.g., the Four-Year Plans). Thus, a deterioration of relations potentially risked cultural and technical cooperation (i.e., the teaching and training of Algerians), financial assistance, and also threatened the status of the growing Algerian community in France. The paper will highlight hydrocarbons relations from the Algiers Accords of 1965 to the nationalization of 1971, a salient example of post-colonial decolonization. The Cultural Revolution featuring Arabization will also be considered. The effort to revive the bilateral relationship (termed the relancement) after the hydrocarbons nationalization, namely Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s visit to Paris in 1973 and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s arrival in Algeria in 1975, will also be examined. At the time of his untimely death, bilateral relations had precipitously declined as a result of widening commercial imbalances and differences over Western Sahara. The conclusion assesses the policies of post-colonial decolonization and asserts that Boumedienne used the French relationship to shape his imagination of an Algerian nation, a project that was existential as well as political.

Since its independence in 1962, Algeria has always been considered as a leading advocate for Arab, African and Third World national causes. The young nation played a central role in anti colonialism, the Non Aligned movement, the call for restructuring of the international system, and the establishment of a new international economic order. All these factors have in many ways not only influenced Algeria’s foreign policy but also placed the country in direct confrontation with the United-States policy objectives and interests. On the political level, during the socialist year of Houari Boumediène’s presidency, Algeria’s position on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Vietnam War, Cuba, has always caused dissension between the two countries. Nonetheless, if Algeria’s relations with the United States have been marked by misunderstandings and antagonism the Algerian president was also a pragmatist interested in developing economic ties with the United States. Even when Algeria decided to break diplomatic relations with the US during the Arab Israeli war of 1967 substantial commercial interests have been maintained mainly in the hydrocarbon sector. This paper will discuss the strategy and the objectives of Boumediène’s presidency in the conduct of Algeria’s Foreign Policy towards the United-States. It is a matter of showing why the regime decided to adopt a radical foreign policy mainly due to historical reasons and to the position of leadership in the Non Aligned movement.

The proposed paper would take the same expansive perspective on decolonisation as the Boumedienne regime of the early 1970s which, even a decade after Algeria’s ‘nominal’ independence from France, pursued a global struggle to rid the Third World of economic and political ‘neo-imperialism’. At this point, the Algerian state’s socialist modernising ambitions were reaching their apex, fuelled by mounting oil and gas revenues. In the international domain, the Algerians took a leading role in the campaign to restructure the global economy to the benefit of the developing countries, and also had the confidence to abet openly a wide variety of dissident and revolutionary groups. Across the Atlantic, American foreign policy was going through a profound transformation under the stewardship of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, whose first instinct was to retreat from their liberal predecessors’ efforts to steer the modernisation of the developing world, and to focus instead on more hard-headed calculations of America’s strategic interests in the Southern Hemisphere. Indeed, the Realpolitik approach seemed appropriate for an era of flagging national confidence, beset as the United States were by domestic discontent, the war in Vietnam, and economic crisis. But no event more encapsulated the contrasting fortunes of the American dream and its radical Third Worldist counterpart than the oil embargo imposed by the Arab states in late 1973. Now the West, too, knew scarcity and impotency. Uncannily echoing the concerns of French leaders faced with the demise of empire in the 1950s, American officials bemoaned the collapse of the international economic system that they had dominated for three decades, and the arrival of this ominous new era of ‘interdependence’. The paper would rely principally on archives in Algeria and the US, including the Algerian foreign ministry archives, State Department archives and Nixon Presidential Papers, in order to ask, to what extent was America actually a reluctant empire in the early 1970s? Was the growing American economic engagement in the Third World not the result of ideological compunction and capitalist expansionism, but due instead to the combination of domestic weakness, a Marxist offensive in Africa, and misplaced confidence on the part of countries like Algeria? How flexible was the Algerian socialist development model, and to what extent were Algerian efforts to reconcile the socialist revolution with Western commerce a continuation of the negotiated conclusion to the colonial era? How valid, ultimately, was the Third Worldist concept of ‘neo-imperialism’?

Under President Houari Boumedienne (1965-1978) Algeria experienced the golden years of its diplomacy. Indeed, the country played a remarkable role on the world stage. Although Algeria’s international relations and diplomacy were shaped by the 7-year wartime experience, Boumedienne and his foreign minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika carried out the principles laid out before independence. Various constants (national sovereignty, territorial integrity, economic nationalism, and support for Third World causes and positive nonalignment) determined its regional and global policies. A close examination of those relations shows that not only Algeria’s foreign policy mirrored domestic policies but they also highlighted how the country responded to outside influence and sought to reshape the external economic and security environments. The determination to build an independent, modern state free from the prevalent rules of an international context dominated by the great, mainly Western, powers brought the country at loggerheads with France and the United States. Algeria’s effective and quite influential diplomacy attempted to reshape international political and economic relations by contesting Western dominance without however aligning itself with the USSR with which it maintained excellent political and military relations. Despite the prominent role that Algeria played in that period, very few in-depth studies have been conducted on its foreign policy. This paper seeks to fill that gap by unravelling the main factors that shaped the country’s foreign policy and how Algeria’s diplomacy operated not only in the regional and global contexts but also within various international organizations. Moreover, the paper will examine the interplay between domestic and foreign policy. The ultimate objective of the paper is to help shed light on the various changes in Algerian policy that have taken place since the end of that era. The research will rely on official documents as well as interviews with diplomats who served during that period.