|
Ethiopia The Foreign Policy of the Derg
The foreign policy of Ethiopia did not change immediately
upon the demise of the imperial regime. Initially, the
country's new leaders maintained the general thrust of the
foreign policy developed under Haile Selassie and
concentrated mainly on consolidating their rule.
Nonetheless, the Marxist ideology of the Derg and its
civilian allies made conflict with Ethiopia's superpower
patron, the United States, inevitable.
By the mid-1970s, Kagnew station, the communications
monitoring base in Asmera granted under terms of the 1953
Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement between Ethiopia and the
United States, had largely lost its value. Advances in
satellite technology had rendered land-based facilities like
Kagnew station less important for long-range communications
monitoring. Yet the United States felt the need to maintain
a presence in this strategically important part of Africa,
particularly because the Soviet Union was beginning to
become active in the area. The administration of President
Gerald Ford (1974-77) wanted to avoid an embarrassment
similar to that experienced by the United States in Angola
in 1975, when covert United States aid to anticommunist
combatants failed to dislodge the pro-Moscow Popular
Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Even though President
Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger indicated
uneasiness with Ethiopia's violations of human rights and
growing leftist tendencies, they did no more than cautiously
encourage the Derg to moderate its human rights policies.
The United States began to express concern over the Derg's
human rights violations when on November 23, 1974, a day
that came to be known as "Bloody Saturday," fifty-nine
officials who had served in the old regime were executed.
Official United States concern intensified two months later
when the Derg mobilized a force consisting of regular
military units and the hastily assembled People's Militia in
an effort to resolve the Eritrean question through military
means (see
People's Militia, ch. 5). But Eritrean forces
attacked first, surprising the Ethiopian forces in their
base camps and scoring an impressive victory.
Whereas the administration of President Ford had been
reluctant to impose sanctions on Ethiopia because of its
human rights record, President Jimmy Carter made human
rights a central concern of his administration (1977-81). On
February 25, 1977, Carter announced that because of
continued human rights violations, certain governments that
were receiving Washington's military aid (including
Ethiopia) would receive reduced assistance in the following
fiscal year. Consequently, the Derg began to cast about for
alternative sources of military assistance. Among the
countries Ethiopia turned to were China and the Soviet
Union. At first, the actual assistance provided by these
superpowers was minimal, and the United States maintained
its presence in the country. However, relations between the
United States and Ethiopia deteriorated rapidly. By April
1977, Mengistu had demanded that Washington close down
Kagnew station and most other installations; only a small
staff was allowed to remain at the United States embassy. By
then, the first supplies of Soviet military hardware had
begun to arrive.
Having its military presence in Ethiopia ended, and with
tensions mounting in the Middle East and Iran, the United
States began to cultivate alliances in northeast Africa that
could facilitate the development of a long-range military
strike capability. These developments coincided with an
escalation of tensions in the Horn region in general. The
United States eventually began the systematic pursuit of a
strategy that amounted to encircling the Arabian Peninsula.
The United States asked Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, and
Oman to allow their territories to be used as staging
grounds for the fledgling Rapid Deployment Force (RDF),
which later became the United States Central Command. The
Soviet Union's clients in the region--Ethiopia, Libya, and
the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen)--
perceiving Washington's action as a threat, signed a
tripartite agreement in 1981 and pledged to repulse any
effort to intervene in their respective countries. However,
this alliance never played a significant role in the region.
Data as of 1991
|
