PART I
US President Joe Biden last week hosted a democracy preaching event where leaders of some selected African countries were invited to attend a reading from the “Bible of democracy according to the president of the United States”. This move by the US president may be considered a sign that America is in disarray as to how to promote its national interests abroad and particularly in Africa where it is feeling increasingly marginalized, criticized, and sometimes hated by ordinary Africans.
The foreign policy of the US towards Africa is undergoing a strange metamorphosis at this time. From a self-proclaimed advocate of democracy, the US is increasingly acting like a gambler who has lost a lot of money at the casino. It is breaching its own rules of civilized behavior and picking fights with many countries in Africa and elsewhere. The Washington hawks are executing their plans of destabilization of African countries that oppose American foreign policy diktat. They are subverted through local and mercenary military forces that take orders and money from those policy hawks with the active participation of the special department in the Pentagon and the CIA that oversee the operations.
Ethiopia is one more target of this operation that is carried out by the TPLF that is taking this opportunity to come back to power while the hawks are working to put Ethiopia and the Horn under its exclusive control. The TPLF knows that it has no chance to reclaim the power it has lost because it is totally rejected by the entire people of Ethiopia. The Washington hawks too know that the TPLF is totally discredited and rejected by the very people who started the 1918 revolution against it.
The Washington hawks know that TPLF cannot retake power or that they cannot put it back in power. Their interest is not to replace one government by another but only to create a Libyan-style chaos and anarchy in Ethiopia. Their long term strategy is to deprive other external contenders in the race for the control of the Horn and emerge the dominant power in the region. Since they cannot execute their neocolonialist strategy without raising the ire of other African countries, they prefer the TPLF to do the job for them. They know through experience that the TPLF is a willing collaborator in such operations as long as the CIA is willing to foot the huge bill that will go into the foreign bank account of the TPLF leaders who are now plotting a coup right in Washington under the very eyes of the Biden administration hawks.
In fact, the US has never been a true friend of Africa. It has a long history of direct or indirect subversion of many African countries. It supported Apartheid in South Africa, the CIA tried and failed to promote the likes of Jonas Savimbi in Angola to promote its mineral interests. The CIA was allegedly involved in the assassination of African patriots like Patrice Lumumba in the former Congo, Samora Machel in Mozambique, Tomas Sankara in former Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso…etc. Was the CIA doing all these dirty works in order to promote democracy in Africa? Maybe engineering coups d’états and regime changes and political chaos at the cost of the lives of millions of Africans is the American way of promoting democracy in Africa.
America is angered by recent developments in the Horn. It has lost the TPLF in Ethiopia, its most loyal servant and a strange bedfellow. It has not won its much orchestrated war against terrorism in Somalia. It has lost the global respect it had been enjoying in the past. It is frustrated by the prospect of losing its number one position in global economic ranking to China. To make matters worse, it is waking up at the wrong moment like a drunk after a night of heavy drinking spree and seeking an unholy alliance with the wrong friends, like the TPLF, to reclaim its lost empire.
As indicated above, the TPLF and the Washington hawks have a temporary convergence of interests. They both know that the TPLF will not be restored to the throne. What unites them at present is their hatred towards Ethiopia and the prospect of creating chaos in the country so that they would fish together in troubled water. The US engineered the Libyan fiasco not for the sake of democracy but to reduce the once proud, prosperous and defiant country to ashes by killing Khadafy who had dismantled his nuclear program as the Washington hawks requested. As America is not a trustworthy partner for peace, it betrayed the promise to leave Libya alone once it had dismantled its nuclear program and executed their devilish plan in full view of the world.
As far as Ethiopia is concerned, the other temporary convergence point between the US and TPLF is their common interest in seeing the GERD project fail. The TPLF secretly believes that it is the creator of the idea of the GERD which is not true. Both Haile Selassie and Derg had the same idea a long time ago although conditions were not ripe for its implementation. The TPLF had apparently a secret plan to turn the GERD as a cow milk to make fortunes that would be channeled to its foreign bank accounts. Now that the TPLF is no more in control of the GERD project, it is actively working with its partners to sabotage it.
Former President Donald Trump had reaffirmed that the US on its part wants to see the GERD fail as it is acting on behalf of Egypt what is secretly supporting the TPLF while it has handed over the task of sabotaging the GERD to its master. Remember the former US president’s “fabulous” idea of “bombing the GERD” which he kept in his subconscious? Maybe that was part of the US democratic plan for Africa and Ethiopia!
The US has not won new friends in the region as it has lost its old image of a superpower and become a paper tiger. It is sometimes acting like a village bully who has been beaten and bleeding by one of his friends and turns his anger against smaller opponents. Otherwise, why is the US so eager to punish the Ethiopian people by using the TPLF, its old surrogate, to create chaos, tragedy and misery in the country? Maybe this is also the American way of teaching democracy to Africans!
Why is US foreign policy taking a sharp turn to the extreme right at this particular time? It is no secret that America is angry with a number of countries and is working to create chaos in China, Russia, Iran and many others and would like to effect regime changes in Africa in general and Ethiopia inparticular.
The US wants its foreign policy interests served anywhere in the world; if not, it will leave no stone unturned to remove its perceived opponents from its path. That is apparently why it has chosen the TPLF over Ethiopia whose only sin is to try to rise from poverty and backwardness.
In the last few years, it has become increasingly evident that the US is awakening to the threat of foreign presence in Africa in general and in the strategic Horn of Africa in particular. From official pronouncements issued by the state department and pro-establishment academics, it seems that China’s growing influence is forcing US officials to rethink their priorities and counter these influences. However, the Chinese authorities have always been keen to emphasize on economic priorities to justify their presence in Africa.
Like any normal country in the world, the Chinese want to do business with African countries. They have repeatedly made it clear that China has no strategic or hegemonic ambitions in the region. They are here generally in search of raw materials needed by their growing economy in exchange to Chinese loans, assistance and markets. The Chinese have always stressed on the fact that they have no interested interfering in the internal affairs of African countries. They have practically demonstrated this stance by staying clear of the civil war in the South Sudan where they have an oil extraction operation. They have also called for an end to foreign interference or pressure in Ethiopia’s domestic affairs in the context of the current conflict.
Russia has abandoned its strategic or hegemonic ambitions in Africa that was key to its foreign policy moves under the former Soviet Union. Russia too wants to do business with African countries, including Ethiopia, on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefits. It has helped Ethiopia with the cancellation of the heavy debts the latter owed to the former Soviet Union and running into billions of dollars. There is nothing threatening in Russia seeking a share of the African market in this increasingly globalized world where big countries seek markets for their products outside their own national borders. India, as we know it, is a purely economic partner of Africa although it has a long history of presence in East Africa in particular. It has no ideology to promote or no strategic military bases.
America might be fearing these countries’ growing influence in the continent but what it has to fear is in fact its own hegemonic pincer movements in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere in the continent. For most of the Cold War period the US was aggressively seeking to dominate the Horn of Arica and meddle in the internal affairs of Horn countries and in Somalia in particular where it had a foothold after it broke relations with Ethiopia over the Derg regime. It is to be recalled during the Ethio-Somali conflict in 1977, it sided Somalia and tried to weaken Ethiopia by refusing to sell the weapons for which the regime had paid for. This is only one among the many stories of US betrayal of African countries. In 1977, Washington hawks forced Mengistu into the arms of the Soviets by refusing to send him the weapons for which it had collected payments. The Washington hawks hardly learn from history. They are now repeating the same mistake.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD DECEMBER 17/2021
