Kalayu Abraha

Background: The absence of wisdom in US international relations

I have taken only one university course on international relations and I am not sure if I will be perfectly diplomatic in what I write here. While I fume and clench my fist about something bad happening in the world of diplomacy a seasoned diplomat would have severe stomach acidity while forcing a smile on his face. I am not sure whether or not USA is the friend of Ethiopia and/or Tigray. It has a long time ago decided that it is friendless. I quote USA: “No permanent friends, but permanent interest”. So, even the feeble minded dude can do simple syllogism that USA’s best friend is “Mr. Interest”. Here I am talking about the folks in the White House not about the kind and honest Americans in the 50+ US states.

It is unfortunate that USA does not allow good people to love it because these good people have nothing to recharge US interest with. A huge statue of Abraham Lincoln sits high enough for a passerby in Washington DC to see. Does it occur to all those people that this man fought for the freedom of the oppressed and got a bullet in his head by those who hated him for that? What has changed ever since? Why can’t Joe Bidden be an Abe Lincoln for the suffering millions in Tigray? Couldn’t Abe Lincoln have joined the Confederates, hit a jackpot, and live longer?

I have read about the Founding Fathers and I did not see anything that suggests that USA should be blindfolded by sheer interest and even risk going off the cliff following it. The US Constitution started as a moral document (it still is) not as a business contract. USA can balance interest and morality and still continue to be a superpower. Those in the white house with a vision limited to four or eight years of tenure don’t seem to realize how fast USA is sliding down in the rank of global popularity. It is obvious that popularity means market. Russia and China don’t care about neoliberalism or structural adjustment. They don’t nag states about how to do their household chores; nor do they eye with appetite the commanding heights of developing economies; but they simply invest for mutual benefit. That is why USA is losing globally and engaged in a break-neck competition with China and Russia.

USA may not have hated Meles Zenawi and his Party so bitterly for his revolutionary democracy; it did not love him either. It was unnecessarily suspicious of him and may be was praying for his death or removal. When “God” did it for her it never realized that it has lost the best leader it could ever have in Ethiopia. The greatest folly in US diplomacy is that it wants to plug a USB cable to the leaders of developing countries and expect them to function as per the software installed on the “server”. As it is in enterprise management the adage “Ruling the least is ruling the best” is also relevant in inter-state relations of a

superpower with a developing nation. Just a few years after the passing away of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia, the darling of USA, started to swing violently out of orbit into nowhere. USA miscalculated again; as it most often does, to gauge leaders for Africa in light of their readiness to privatize the commanding heights of their economies.

Does USA prefer Liaises-Fair Capitalism accompanied by war and economic collapse or state capitalism which brings about regional peace favorable for USA? As USA craved for the hands of the WB and the IMF deep in the Ethiopian economy, it was grabbed by an opportunist who used it for his own ambitions. It is no secret that USA backed the political change in 2018 hoping that it will help liberalism prevail in Ethiopia. Did that happen? Is USA satisfied with the current regime and wants to protect it against the leaders of the previous regime in Tigray? Is USA absolutely sure that any change of government in Ethiopia will be worse for USA? Does USA want to protect the current government against all the odds of a hopelessly divided Ethiopia? Is USA’s blind support for a unitary system in Ethiopia realistic and would sustain US interest in Ethiopia? Has USA become too oblivious to the balance of political forces for and against Federalism in Ethiopia? You don’t host a tiger in fear of having a lion instead. It is only a matter of perception or lack of information that the lion may possibly be more docile than the tiger.

USA still singing about Eritrean withdrawal

I am not sure USA is taken seriously for its orders, warnings, instructions, and recommendations. This is the logical consequence of its own deeds. There is little consistency in them. Sometimes USA acts without warning; at other times it warns endlessly but never acts. It is possible that people are reading the USA, from their experiences of dealing with it, that if it warns more than twice then it simply becomes “barking dogs never bite”. There is another contradiction in the configuration of its words and actions. It acts on freedom fighters harshly while it just warns dictators reluctantly if at all it sincerely does that. What is the logical outcome of this diplomatic tactlessness? USA ends up as hostess of dictators and enemy of freedom fighters. Is this the two centuries old value on which American society sits squarely? I don’t think so!

Two years ago, on the 10^th of December 2020, a spokesperson for the United States Department of State told Reuters that “…it has credible reports of Eritrean troops presently active in Tigray and called on them to withdraw.” I have not counted the number of times USA demanded that Eritrean troops withdraw from Tigray in the last two years: boringly a hundred times may be! I have no idea for how many more years USA is going to keep on repeating the call for withdrawal of Eritrea from Tigray. USA knows perfectly well and has stated it unambiguously that Eritrean troops are not nurturing the people of Tigray lovingly. Between December 2020 and December 2022 eight hundred thousand people perished in Tigray, the economy and infrastructure in shambles, largely due to the involvement of Eritrea in Tigray. USA knows this very well.

At this point, like Norman Geisler, I am obliged to ask one of the most difficult questions Christians face: How can an omnipotent and loving God preside over a world filled with evil and suffering? I apply this to USA. When the Tigray delegation shook hands with the perpetrator-in-chief of the Tigray genocide I was chilled to my bones because I am not a diplomat to smile about it. When the president of USA received Abiy Ahmed so warmly, I wondered if it is callousness to the plight of millions that keeps the planet rotating nonstop. I told myself then “this world is not for the soft-hearted”.

When Saddam invaded Kuwait USA wasted no time advising or warning Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait; it used its strong muscle to deliver its message as a superpower. Words do not make you a superpower; action does! There is no head of state in the world that defied warnings by USA as much as the Eritrean leader did. Isaias Afeworki leads an economy and society which is immune to sanctions. Why? Because it is too weak and desensitized to feel any pressure. The warnings at Isaias Afeworki imply that if unheeded sanctions will follow. Both USA and Eritrea know that even if warnings are followed by sanctions they will have little effect. So, it is meaningless for Eritrea to heed US warning because it is only a paper-tiger.

The only way warnings can be heeded is through military action. USA does not seem to be willing to take that option on Eritrea. The reaction of Eritrea to the countless warnings is either they will lull Isaias to deep sleep like classical music or pull out other cards that could force USA to blink. One of the cards is the “formal military agreement” with Ethiopia that only Abiy and Isaias know about. Eritrea is defending its involvement in Ethiopia as legalized by the agreement of joint military action in Ethiopia. This makes it is hard for USA to justify its warning or action to Eritrea to withdraw from Tigray and the rest of Ethiopia. When this does not work, direct military action by USA remains to be the only option but what are the risks?

Firstly, there is a morbid fear in USA that any military action against Eritrea may pull Russia and China to the Eritrean side. This may possibly trigger a world war in the Red Sea. If USA strikes Eritrea, it is my humble opinion that Russia and/or China will not be involved except for a release of a barrage of condemnation on USA. Eritrea is too insignificant for the former Eastern Bloc powers to risk everything for it. Even where Russian interest reigns supreme in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan Russia did not directly confront USA. Of course arming Eritrea could be an option for them but that would not help Eritrea win a war against USA. What makes this issue more complicated is not only the global alliance and counter alliance that ensues from the strike on Eritrea but more critically also the direction from which USA would strike Eritrea.

So secondly, USA attacking from the Red Sea, to avoid involving or seeking permission from Ethiopia in the operation, has little value to drive Eritrea out of Tigray. It will more deeply entrench Eritrea in Tigray and turn Tigray into a bloody battlefield. This would be

like “throwing the child with the bath-water”. After all, it is the responsibility of Ethiopia to force Eritrea to withdraw from Ethiopian territory; but did Eritrea force its entry without Ethiopia’s consent? The answer is No. Ethiopia sought the ‘effective’ hands of Eritrea to do its dirty job in Tigray. Eritrea entered Tigray as a double edged sword: 1. Doing favor for Ethiopia destroying Tigray will help Eritrea gain a firm foothold in the Ethiopian national economy and security with the long dreamt intent of colonizing Ethiopia; 2. Eritrea has its own axe to grind in Tigray where in it wants to severely punish Woyane leaders and their supporters (People of Tigray that means) for allegedly impoverishing Eritrea and rendering it a pariah state internationally.

When compared to the greater plan Eritrea has for Tigray the aforementioned two are just a miniscule. Even if the two reasons rationalizing the presence of Eritrea in Tigray/Ethiopia were absent the Eritrean political elite led and facilitated by the Eritrean government have a gruesome agenda up their sleeves to work hard for the destruction of Tigray. A leaked document from the Eritrean political elite considers Tigray as a curse to the “Eritrean National Identity” which must be wiped out from the map. Eritreans are deep in identity crisis. The whole world, except Eritreans themselves, knows that the origin of the state of Eritrea can be traced to the notorious Wuchale Treaty in which Menilik II ceded the former coastal territory of the ancient Axumite kingdom and the northern portion of the later “Tigray Lordship” to the Italians. This was how the Eritrean state, a former Italian colony, was born.

Colonial rule is not a virtue; but many Eritreans served it, as many also opposed it. This has happened in all former colonies around the world and there is not much ado about it. Unfortunately, unlike other formerly colonized people worldwide Eritreans uniquely desired to merge colonial rule with the development of national identity. The Arab world is a single nation of Arabs but divided into different states. Libya and Egypt are a single Arab nation but two separate states. At least for the Arab world a single nation-state was not realized due to colonial rule. However, Arabs are trying to make up for this by establishing the: “Arab-League” embodying Arab nationalism. Somalis in Ethiopia and the Somalis in the former Italian Somalia consider themselves as a single nation although they are citizens of different states. The Ethio-Somalia war was nothing but Somali nationalism asserting itself. There are plenty of such examples in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Eritreans have become an exception to the rule to the manner by which nationhood is carved. It is hard to understand the logic on which this is based. Eritreans prefer to consider themselves as a piece of Italy on the Red Sea Coast. By so doing they consider the Roman Empire as the Empire of their ancestors. The conundrum is the ancestors of present Eritreans were a significant part of the core of the Axumite Empire that prevailed around the time of the Roman Empire. The heir to the Axumite kingdom is Tigray and ‘Tigrawaynet’. So the Tigray nation, which evolved from the Axumite civilization, is

currently in two independent states; Ethiopia and Eritrea. Some refer to it as ‘South Tigray’ (Tigray/Ethiopia) and ‘North Tigray’ (Eritrea). There are countless Eritreans who subscribe to this designation of Tigray nationhood. However, the ‘lost sheep’ Eritreans, mainly government backed, are denying that they belong to the Tigray nation and want to promote Eritrean nationalism as opposed to Tigray nationalism.

The worst aspect of the baseless Eritrean nationalism is not in the claim but in the way it is planned to be realized. Eritreans are entitled to their fake nationalism as long as it does not harm the safety and security of others. However, they want to grow Eritrean nationalism on the graveyard of Tigray nationalism. It is sadly analogous to the destruction of the seed for the seedling to sprout. What does this imply? How is Tigray nationalism to be destroyed? Tigray nationalism is not just a building or some monument to be brought down with a TNT explosion. Tigray nationalism means Tegaru. Destroying Tigray nationalism means destroying Tegaru. Can anyone believe this madness? Yes! Because it happened, it is happening, and will continue to happen by Eritrean forces in Tigray and elsewhere in Ethiopia. How can this be stopped?

The only way to end this insanity of an insane nation of Eritrea rising at the cost of Tigray is firstly, to remove the dictatorial rule in Eritrea, secondly Eritrean troops must be out of Tigray, thirdly, Tigray must be allowed to retain a well-equipped army for its own protection; and fourthly the government in Ethiopia must be replaced by a genuine federal government which does not do personal business with the sovereignty of Ethiopia in general and that of Tigray in particular. I propose the latter because the most effective way to remove Eritrea from Tigray and Ethiopia is to make the agreement between Abiy and Isaias null and void. This cannot be done effectively and quickly enough for Tigray because the agreement has brought Abiy under the full control of Isaias. Isaias is intimidating Abiy to the extent of excluding the reference to Eritrea in the Pretoria agreement. Isaias operatives are so deeply entrenched in the security apparatus and have got powerful friends among the Amhara that Abiy is not sure about his own safety. As the people of Tigray die and starve Abiy is talking about the estimated 2 billion US dollars in compensation for “Eritrean lives lost killing Tigrayans!” This is a sick joke; and Tigray has no time for it. With regime change in Addis Ababa TDF can effectively remove and punish Eritrean dictatorship and Tigray can live with a more peaceful neighbor.