Effects of US Cold War Policy on the Modern State of Yemen: 1978 Through Unification and Civil War

Abstract

The foes of the Cold War extended the boundaries of their respective conflict throughout the emerging developing world in a race for strategic placement and domination. Through vast and lucrative aid programs, young and poor nations alike traded access to infrastructure, energy stores and security for weapons and funding. Yemen, the impoverished state beholden to the policies and insecurities of its more powerful neighboring states, would also become a battleground for influence between the US and Soviet Union. But unlike other conflict points, the Cold War and the hegemons at the helm of the ideological struggle had little effect on Yemeni domestic policies and future unification. Throughout this Thesis, I examined the amounts of aid provided to North Yemen by the US from the mid-1970s through the end of the Cold War. This specific period accounts for the majority of US involvement with Yemen during the Cold War. I analyzed the approaches taken by the US to ensure that Yemen, which has significant control to a critically strategic maritime thoroughfare remains outside of the Soviet sphere of influence. Furthermore, the research highlights what effects the aid, both material and monetary have on the emerging nation state and its stability after the Cold War ended and funding dramatically decreased. Through research of diplomatic communications, government publications and interviews of former US diplomats assigned to Yemen, I will identify the precursors that led to increases in US aid to Yemen and how US policy towards Yemen would form and evolve up through unification.