BY MULUGETA GUDETA
(Part II)
It has always been a typical behavior of American strategist to fill the vacuum left by other powers in Africa and elsewhere. In the Horn of Africa the Soviet withdrawal in 1991 seemed to offer them a good opportunity to return to Somali politics has been and turn events in their favor. Yet this expectation created setbacks for US and gave birth to the monster of Islamic terrorism against which Washington has been waging a losing war. the Americans sowed the wind and gathered the whirlwind as the saying has it.
When they failed in Somalia, they turned for help to the ruling TPLF in Ethiopia that was freshly settled into power thanks to the assistance of Herman Cohen and his group of foreign policy strategists in Washington. The TPLF saw in the American move an opportunity to settle itself in power and execute its own program of ethnic-based dictatorship on the people of Ethiopia or execute its hegemonic ambitions in Ethiopian politics.
The TPLF needed money and all round assistance from the US while the latter wanted the former to share America’s strategy of fighting terrorism in Somalia which was a disguise for its hegemonic objective in the Horn of Africa in general. In plain terms, the name of the game was called, “Scratch my back and I will scratch yours!” The Americans may or may not understand that the TPLF was out to do anything to turn themselves into permanent rulers of Ethiopia in return for American largesse.
The TPLF did not care about anything other than making money by hook or by crook and buying the loyalty of the ruling elites and making them subservient to its narrow interests. The Americans too did not care about whether the TPLF was planning to impose an ethnic dictatorship on Ethiopia as long as it was willing to promote their regional strategic interests. Consequently, the TPLF sent troops to Somalia to fight America’s war there and collected the money for the benefit of its ruling elites. And the
TPLF is now, strange as it may look, ready to fight the US war in Ethiopia. It is acting according to its tradition and there is nothing strange about it. The TPLF’s forefathers too had the habit of collaborating with foreign aggressors and big powers in exchange for power and privilege. Therefore, the TPLF is now only acting according to its DNA. Like fathers, like sons.
The United States has always been paying lip service to the ideas of democracy and clean government in order to mask its corrupt dealings by using popular catchwords like “democracy” or “free elections” as smokescreens for its behind the scenes maneuvers with the TPLF. Democracy is an empty rhetoric whenever the US deals with African countries. For 27 years, the TPLF conducted sham elections and the US did not move its small finger to criticize the process let alone call on the regime to leave office to the legitimate leaders of Ethiopia.
In the past the US devised a number of strategies to impact the course of political developments on the continent. In the 1960s, it created what is known as the Peace Corps volunteer movement in order to spread its influence in a number of African countries considered important allies of the US, including Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia, in many African countries, Peace Corps volunteers served as teachers in rural schools because education and English was regarded as a tool of imparting American culture on unsuspecting rural students. of course the program had some benefits in the sense that it promoted English education in the country that had adopted it as one of its working languages.
However, as it later on transpired, the main objective of the peace Corps and a military cooperation agreement known as Point Four, was not to teach Africa the ABC of democracy but brainwash African youth to love the American way of life while despising their own heritages and traditions. The Peace Corps volunteers did not help Ethiopian youth rediscover their proud ancestral traditions but dream of going to America immigrants and become hyphenated Ethiopians. Maybe this is one way of promoting democracy in Africa by American authorities.
In the past, the United States was blessed with visionary presidents who had deep and genuine religious and political commitments. These were presidents who cared not only about the US bout also about the wider world. There were presidents who worked for the reduction of world hunger, the narrowing of the gaps between poor
and rich countries and for equal economic opportunities for all peoples irrespective of race, language, ethnicity and economic standards. There were presidents who worked hard for international peace, respect to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. These were presidents who made America great and the world a better place to live in.
The United States is the biggest economic power in the world, for now at least, but it is not the biggest functional democracy. For instance, Indian democracy is more functional than the one exercised in the US for the sheer fact that it is effective in managing properly and balancing the interests of 1.3 billion people with diverse ethnic, religious, class and other backgrounds. On the contrary, the US has a population of a little more than 300 million people but its democracy stands on the shaking grounds predicated as it has always been on a deeply unequal, racist, white supremacist, hegemonic and corrupt politico-economic system.
So, America’s current pretensions as guardian of democratic values sounds hollow at best and the height of pedantry at worst. If US president Joe Biden is serious with democracy, he should first respect Africans as equal people to their Western counterparts. He has to admit that Africans have a lot of wisdom to manage their own affairs in the way that best serves their interests and without foreign diktat. He should also recognize the bitter fact that the era of American model of democracy, if at all there was one, is only good for America and Africans have the right to search their own road to democracy, justice and fairness.
After all, every country has the right and the capacity to generate its own specific democratic variants. American democracy is not the only model that can be imposed on Africans against their wills. Next time Washington thinks about holding a conference on democracy, let them invite their friends in the Western world and sit down with them to find out what went wrong with their democracy in whose name so much havoc is created in so many countries, contrary to the vision of the very first founding fathers.
The Ethiopian Herald December 18/2021
