American foreign policy tradition is such that it does not really matter whether governments in Africa and other developing countries come to power through the ballot or the bullet. What matters most for the US administration is whether individuals, groups or parties that come to power in these countries are implementing policies that serve US foreign policy interests.
By the same token, Western sensibilities towards democracy are skin deep. African leaders may be democratically elected but as long as they do not prove subservient to American foreign policy interests, they are automatically damped and replaced with others who to the US line in regional or global politics.
In a book entitled, Democratic Humility: Reinhold Niebuh, Neuroscience and America’s Political Crisis, Christopher Beem wrote that, ‘American politics is in a state of crisis but it is not clear why. Nor do we know what to do about it. Reinhold Niebuhr helps us understand what is wrong with our politics and research into the workings of the brain confirms his analysis. Call it sin or motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, the bottom line is that all of us are what Niebuhr calls “Children of Light.”
The writer further noted that American political tradition is too much focused on its presumed virtues and emphasizes the role played by American media in perpetuating this myth. He says, “We are all vain and self-righteous about our beliefs and values, and far too quick to reject any information that goes against them. The unprecedented rise of talk radio and cable news helps to account for why things are so bad.
The writer further notes that America needs more humility than arrogance in order to see the truth of its nature. He says: “We all want to hear that our group is smarter and more moral than others. To restore a democracy that functions, we need to understand ourselves better and develop the humility that such knowledge should engender.”
This is of course a stark and unprecedentedly frank analysis or portrait of American politics in general. When it comes to US foreign policy behavior, the situation may even be worse than what the author has said regarding US attitude towards the fate of democracy in foreign countries. American democratic pretensions are nowhere more evident than in recent developments in Africa and in Egypt in particular as an example.
The most notable recent example is the election of Mohamed Morsi a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood party who was by any standard the first democratically elected president of Egypt. The American authorities’ cold reception of Morsi’s victory was a prelude to his downfall in a military coup d’état which the Americans welcomed, not officially of course, as a good riddance of an Islamist president that might have threatened American interests in the Middle East or could destabilize the entire region.
The Obama administration neither expressed support to Morsi’s election nor denounced the coup. Deep down, Obama knew Morsi was the legitimate president of the most important US ally in the region. Yet, his presidential political common sense told him that Morsi might turn out to be the wrong president not for Egypt but for America. The military coup that sealed his fate was thus welcomed with a deafening silence by the American administration. This could be compared with former president Obama’s surprise visit to Ethiopia in July 2015 and his speech at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa where he said that the then EPRDF-led administration in Ethiopia was a democratic one and was doing the American job in Somalia fighting Al Shaba as it was. However, any man in the Ethiopian streets knew that the election of the ruling party in Ethiopia was shrouded in a big political fraud that was exposed a few years later.
American foreign duplicity was most evident even before the EPRDF came to power and then was pushed out of power through popular uprisings. During the 1977 Somali invasion of Ethiopia, the US administration refused to sell weapons mainly aircrafts despite the fact that the money for the purchase was paid beforehand. Ethiopia had no option other than turning to whoever was willing to help stop the Somali invasion and Russia stepped in to provide the defensive weapons the country needed.
America did not move a finger to stop Siad Barree’s invading hordes that were defeated thanks to Russian arms and Cuban military assistance under whatever terms they came in. A country facing foreign invasion cannot be blamed if it borrows from the devil to repel the threat to its very survival.
American diplomats always remain silent or blame the victim of the invasion ‘for being invaded’ directly or by proxy. There is an Amharic proverb that best illustrates the absurdity of such a situation. It is called ahiawun ferto dawulawen. Fearing the donkey, you beat the load it is carrying on its back. Fearing to lose the friendship or agency of the invaders, American diplomats often accuse the invaded as they are doing it at present.
The US administration has committed more than one mistake in the past. Former President Obama and his NATO allies engineered and implemented the bloody ouster of former Libyan President Gaddafi following false allegations about Libya building nuclear weapons that later on proved a hoax. Obama later on regretted that decision as one of the most ‘unfortunate’ events of his presidency. Former US Secretary General Hillary Clinton at one time ridiculed Gaddafi’s humiliated end but she did and could not foresee how US foreign policy could lead a once proud, prosperous and stable country to the presently unending chaos and tragedy.
Although America sometimes offers humanitarian assistance in times of drought and hunger in Ethiopia, that was largely meant to refurbish the damage the US image suffered as a result of its silence or indifference in the face of Somalia’s invasion of Ethiopia back in 1977. Americans often send food aid in order to appear compassionate and kind in the court of international public opinion while deep down they resent the sense of freedom and independence Ethiopians display whenever her honor and pride was at stake. They wait for better opportunities to execute their plan of infiltration and destabilization of African countries. Republicans as well as Democrats push similar policies when it comes to protecting American national interests.
Ethio-American relations saw better days in the past and are now deteriorating simply because America right after the Second World War was a new emerging global power that had not yet shed its political innocence and its idealism. Nowadays, America has now entered mature old age and has lost the innocence of its youth. During the time of the early US presidents Dwight Eisenhower all through Carter, Reagan, Nixon and so on, Bush, Clinton and so on, Ethio-American relations were generally described as normal or friendly but they were not normal or friendly as some pro-American domestic pundits often maintain.
US presently hostile policy towards Ethiopia in its current struggle to become more assertive in the face of domestic and Western threats is not something that emerged overnight. It is rather the continuation of a well-entrenched and institutionalized neocolonial patronizing behavior in Africa in general. America always considered Ethiopia a poor country and a junior partner that deserves American assistance in order to survivor as a country.
The US state department looked at Ethiopia with realism as a place that needs to be pampered for its strategic assets alone. America has never been a colonial power but it suddenly found itself on top of the world and in order to play its role as ‘policeman of the world’ it needed to indirectly control small countries like Ethiopia in its fight against hegemonic giants like the former Soviet Union that had replaced Nazi Germany as a global enemy. Since then various American presidents came and went by reshuffling the diplomatic deck of cards in order to accommodate its hegemonic ambitions and its neocolonial posturing.
Personally, American presidents may people with high personal integrity, compassionate or friendly ones. But as presidents, they are all following the same foreign policy script written when America emerged as a superpower back in the 1940s or in the post-war years. That is why we say the present American hostility towards Ethiopia should not come as a surprise because we have never been real or genuine friends from the beginning.
As they often tell us, in politics, there is no permanent friend or permanent enemy but permanent interests. Ethiopia should not therefore feel betrayed by American behavior in the present conflict. it has never been a genuine friend and it is behaving in accordance with the above principle. In the past, the US considered the TPLF a terrorist group but it shifted position and built close relations with the leaders as the latter were ready to serve their mutual interests. At present, the US looks and behaves in a manner of a former lover who feels nostalgic of their lost romance. Both feel nostalgic of their old romantic years and it is natural that they behave in the same way after they had invested so much in that romantic relationship and after their fall from political grace.
As far as American foreign policy instruments, they have not changed and had never changed. Subversion of African governments, assassination of their leaders, organizing coups and counter-coups, disinformation and conducing spy operations still remain the tested most favored tool s of US foreign policy in Africa. Recent events provide ample examples of this kind of behavior In Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and other countries far and near.
American officials are acting according to the written script and he American media is joining them in symbiotic relations of interests. This too is not new. The US media is preparing the psychological environment for a possible American military invasion. The administration and Pentagon recently suffered a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan after spending so much money, firepower, technology and troops. Its primary objective was to be preset wherever its interests are threatened by its rivals, Russia and China.
Nowadays, they see its interests jeopardized in Africa by these countries and the Horn of Africa is an absolute priority in American plan of intervention and subversion. Ethiopia is the target at present. It is paying an unnecessary price due to America’s unrealistic and reckless policies where US traditional political pretensions are put to the test. America has never been interested in democracy in Africa. It is interested only in subversion and domination to defend its global or strategic interests.
From a country formerly considered the embodiment of democratic values, America has now turned into a bastion of subversion, exporter of war and disaster to Africa. As Christopher Beem said, “We all want to hear that our group is smarter and more moral than others.”But this may not be always true. What a tragic destiny for the end of American supremacy and world domination. The world is no doubt waiting and watching the finale.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
ETHIOPIAN HERALD NOVEMBER 25/2021
