Africa's participation in the international system, by whatever measures it is gauged, skyrocketed during the 1960s from a level close to zero to its present extensity, intensity, and complexity. The difficulty of analyzing the American response to Africa's participation arises from at least two intellectual — but not merely intellectual — problems: First, there have been many different — and differentiated — American responses rather than a single one. Second, much of what is often described as American responses actually may have been triggered by American initiatives to which Africans responded, setting off a kind of chain reaction of reciprocal interactions, which have neither a clearly discernible beginning nor a definable end in time.