Why Does the U.S. Prop Up Dictators

By Professor Addis Birhan

10th March, 1999

The Kissinger dictum has it that 'the US has permanent interests, but not permanent allies'. This finds its loudest resonance in the Ethio-Eritrean Conflict. The point is that the U.S. interest inEthiopia was predicated on preventing the Red Sea from becoming an Arab Sea by controlling the ports of Assab and Massawa and the Red Sea Coast.

The above also explains why the U.S. was the staunchest advocate of Ethiopian unity and a vociferous opponent of Eritrean session during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie. Therefore, it seems there's no love lost between the U.S. and Ethiopia. It was simply based on the consideration of U.S. and Israeli interests in the Horn and the Middle East.

The change in US foreign policy on the issue of Eritrean secession came about for two reasons. One was the rejection of the US by the Mengistu regime on ideological grounds. A second factor was the inevitable collapse of the Mengistu regime and the emergence of the TPLF/EPRDF and the EPLF as significant power factors. The US, which had ideological misgivings about the two movements, having failed to groom a viable substitute to the Derg was presented with a fait accompli. The choice had been made for it.

Nevertheless, of the two movements (the EPRDF and EPLF, whose relation was by and large based on the common agenda of overthrowing the Derg,) the US was strangely enough more at ease with the EPLF than the EPRDF. There are several cogent and convincing reasons for this.

One reason is that the US avid affinity toward dictators, which in more ways than one, runs contrary to its land advocacy of political pluralism and economic laisez faire.

However, the US love of dictators, by no means an anomaly as it has been the guardian angel of the most despicable and hated dictatorial regimes ranging from kleptocrats like Mobutu Se Se Seko of Zaire, Ferdinad Marcos of the Philippines, to other dictators like Sukarno and Suharto of Indonesia, Sadam Hussein of Iraq to Pinochet of Chile and scores of others.

Hence, the Eritrean dictator is a new addition to a long catalogue of arrogant and ruthless autocrats who have trampled upon the basic norms of good governance, rudiments of human rights and civilised inter- and intra- State relations.

Yet, by a bizzare twist of logic, the US has waged an unrelenting campaign

against progressive and people-centered regimes. Among the popular and visionary leaders which had been targeted by the central intelligence agency were presidents Fidel Castro of Cuba, Salvador Allende of Chile, Morris Bishop of Grenada from Latin America and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekutore of Guinea from Africa, to mention but a few.

Many of these were subjected to the rigorous punitive US action ranging from assassinations and propaganda assault to economic sanctions. All these was done in the name of ideological correctness. Yet, paradoxically enough, old ideological cronies like Sadam Hussein have been reclassified as adversaries simply because they became too big to handle.

Second, even in the 1990s, when the US advocacy of the doctrines of democracy, political pluralism and economic liberalisation are voiced with more resonance and clairvoyance than ever, US foreign policy is plagued by inconsistency and double standards.

To understand the full impact of these paradoxes which loom larger than life in US foreign policy, we need to seek explanations for the following questions:

Why does the US seem to prefer the regime of Isayas Afeworki which has choked and smothered the possibilities of political pluralism and economic liberalism in Eritrea? In sharp contrast to its cavalier attitude to the autocracy in Eritrea, why has the US persistently tried to find fault with the democratisation process and the far-reaching reforms of economic liberalisation in Ethiopia by putting its expectations high as if democracies sprout and blossom overnight?

Why, indeed, has the US condoned Isayas' more than half a dozen trips to the Libya which violated the no-fly embargo imposed over Libya, unless he operates as a double agent? In contrast, why was the U.S. disturbed by the resumption of commercial flights between Addis Ababa and Khartoum by Ethiopian Airlines. The question may also be asked:Is Sudan more of a strategic adversary of the U.S than Libya?

The US has indeed been making overtures to revive its relations wit Iran while suspiciously watching Ethiopia and Sudan fearing that they might upgrade their diplomatic links. In this connection the question might also legitimately be asked: if the U.S sees Sudan as a monster, which is the biggest monster: Sudan or Iran?

One also wonders why the US Government is treating Eritrea with kid gloves. Is it because of the guilt burden of having hampered the prospects of self-determination for Eritrea during the era of Emperor Haile Selassie which the EPRDF led Government endorsed as a matter of principle? Or is it because of its perennial preoccupation of preventing the Red Sea from becoming an Arab one?

Given these paradoxes, one is also left in quandary as to whether the US with all these contradictions, inconsistencies and double standards can take the moral high ground of assuming leadership to the world? Surely not as long it remains committed to the politically immoral act of buttressing arrant dictators like Isayas!