September 9, 2021
Editor’s note : For better map qualities and to see all the pictures the author used in the article, see the PDF version HERE
“One always measures friendships by how they show up in bad weather” –Winston Churchill
By Mesfin Genanaw (Dr.)
The relationship between the USA and Ethiopia dates back over hundred years when the two countries concluded a Treaty of Commerce on December 27, 1903, by the representative of the Republican US President Theodore Roosevelt and Ethiopia’s emperor Menelik II after the emperor’s conclusive victory against the Italian colonial army. The friendship started with President Roosevelt gifting two guns and a writing machine to the Ethiopian Emperor. The emperor reciprocated with a gift of two lions and two elephant tusks – the African way. With the exception of Liberia, founded by freed American slaves, and apartheid South Africa, emperor Menelik was the first black African leader to have forged diplomatic relation with the United States and even became a heavy investor on American railway stocks.
The relationship blossomed during Ethiopia’s longest-reigning Emperor, His Imperial Majesty (HIM) Haile Selassie, to the extent of sending his elite Kagnew Battalion – an over 3000 strong military to join the US military during the Korean war. Hundreds of Ethiopians either died or were wounded along with Americans at the Korean war. That alliance forged by blood reached its climax in His Majesty’s six State visits to the United States from 1954 to 1973. The United States was one of the few powerful countries that refused to recognize Ethiopia’s Italian attempted conquest in 1935. His international stature gained prominence among world leaders after Bridging the divide among newly independent African countries, forming the Organization of African Unity, and becoming its first President in 1963.
HIM’s 2nd state visit and most colorful appearance at the White house and tour with the Democratic President John of Kennedy in 1963, just weeks before his unfaithful assassination in Dallas, Texas was memorable. HIM came back to the Us for his funeral. The cordial relationship b/n the two countries seemed cemented with blood until the former Soviet Union armed Somalia with superior and vast military hardware to fulfill its long-standing dream of creating the Greater Somalia by unifying all ethnic Somalis in the region.
In 1969, HIM appealed to the United States about the imminent danger to his country from the heavily armed Soviet-backed Somalia that built a naval base at Berbera, Somalia. Archives of the memo of the man who once held both the posts of National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, to President Nixon depicted the emperor’s desperate appeal for help as “an exaggerated threat” and rejected the request. Kissinger’s then “dismissiveness” of Africa’s strategic value and the lessened strategic importance of the Kagnaw Station in Asmara; the fact that the Emperor assisted, equipped, and trained many African liberation fronts against colonialism and apartheid; his active membership to the “Non Alliance” movement; his unwillingness to make internal reform, and his decision to severe Ethiopia’s relation with Israel in1973 to appease the newly independent Arab countries in Africa did not bode well with some elements in the west.
Once seen as the most towering figure in Africa and beyond, HIM Haile Selassie became so weak internally that he was deposed easily from power by the Armed Forces Coordinating Committee known as the Dergue led by one of the low-ranking Colonels, Mengistu Hailemariam, in 1974. He used the weak Ethiopian military and the excesses of the feudal system as his rallying cause to depose and kill the emperor and many high-level officials mercilessly. However, as the emperor had feared, Somalia declared war against the politically unstable and drought-plagued Ethiopia in 1977, with three to five times superiority in tanks, artillery, MiG fighter jets, and other advanced weapons. Led by Soviet military advisors, Somalia occupied almost all Eastern Ethiopia within weeks. Despite the growing rift between the USA and Ethiopia over the human rights issue and Ethiopia’s dropping off America’s most favored list, Ethiopia’s new dictator sent money to the longtime ally United States to buy weapons to defend the nation.
The newly elected Carter Administration withheld the money and rejected the request. President Carter’s decision not to supply arms to Ethiopia when the Soviet-backed aggressor occupied its sovereign territory was considered by Ethiopians not just as a snub to Mengistu but as a betrayal of the Ethiopian nation-state. Ethiopians rallied behind dictator Mengistu to defeat the invading Somalian army. Angry at the denial, Mengistu Hailemariam, who had a communistic tendency, reversed course, and tried hard to woo China for help. Still, when that did not bring significant support, he headed to the superpower that supplied arms to his enemy – Moscow. Moscow, who was happy with the fall of America’s staunch supporter, HIM, embraced the leader of the bigger fish in the Horn of Africa, gave him a crash course on Soviet communist ideology, and sent him back with more weapons and thousands of Cuba’s militaries. The Soviet Union immediately awarded Ethiopia an estimated $400 million military aid – more than the United States had bestowed Ethiopia in three decades of an alliance. It also provided an estimated 11,000 17,000 Cuban troops and hundreds of 3,000 Soviet military advisors and communist cadres.
Having let go, Ethiopia, an anchor country in the Horn with greater symbolic, geographic, and political influence in Africa, the Carter Administration made a 180 degree turn around and started new relation with Ethiopia’s enemy, Somalia, at the insistence of wealthy Saudis who were willing to give hundreds of millions of dollars to Somalia to buy weapons to deter Soviet influences in the region. It was a dramatic moment in the cold war history for Ethiopia and Somalia to switch the long-lived alliances overnight. The former Soviet ally Somalia became part of the Western bloc, and Ethiopia became part of the Soviet bloc. Many had feared the Horn becoming another cold war flashpoint for a bigger war. Nonetheless, Ethiopia defeated Somalia and quickly regained its lost territory. 17,000 Cuban troops and 3,000 Soviet military defeated Somalia, The Carter administration warned Ethiopia not to enter the proper Somalia territory to minimize its loss and prestige. The country that had long aspired to become “the Greater Somalia” ended up becoming a great failed state in the Horn for more than two decades. (loooooool, delusional azzhole, Ethiopia is the most failed state right now) The consequence of this instability eventually produced the al Shabab militia to power. The USA continues to spend billions of dollars to fight the Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia on top of American men and women in the military who lost their lives during the fight at Mogadishu in the 1990s. Had Presidents Carter and Nixon provided the requested military aid and purchase to Ethiopia, Somalia may not have dared to invade Ethiopia, destroyed herself, and the current Al-Shabaab problem would not have arisen in the first place. Incidentally, Sudan should also note this history as it has now become a hub for anti-Ethiopian elements to destabilize Ethiopia.
The Greater Tigray Project
long and boring article
https://borkena.com/2021/09/09/usa-ethi ... ray-region
