Tar Baby option

"Tar Baby" was the name given by the State Department to Nixon's policy of strengthening contacts with Pretoria. The allusion was to the famous Uncle Remus story in which Brer Fox tries to capture Brer Rabbit by making a tar baby. Brer Rabbit hits the tar baby with his hands, feet, and head and becomes totally stuck to it. The policy option, described as a partial relaxation of penalties against the white supremacist governments and derived from NSSM: 39, was based on the judgement that white supremacy was enduring and that Washington should accommodate itself to that reality. If Washington was to be an influence for enlightened change, so the President's reasoning went, it must do so by offering the "carrot" and eschewing the "stick". This policy would have to be pursued ad infinitum to get it to work.

References

Anthony Lake, a foreign policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter, treats the subject in depth in his book "The Tar Baby Option": US Policy in Southern Rhodesia