On the morning of August 5, 1970, Mobutu Sese Seko stepped into Washington not just as the leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but as a man shaped—and elevated—by the Cold War. The city received him with the full dignity of a state visit, yet beneath the ceremony lay a harder truth. Africa, in that moment, was not being engaged on its own terms. For Richard Nixon and his administration, the continent was part of a wider strategic map, where every alliance, every handshake, was measur