Response to MFA post in Aiga Forum, November 1, 2008:

 "The US Presidential election and anti-Ethiopian lobbying"

Donald N. Levine

University of Chicago

 

The statement posted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in your November 1 issue affords me a welcome occasion to clarify not only the message of my most recent piece on Obama and Ethiopia but, even more important, to revisit an issue that has engaged me in studies of Ethiopia over the past fifty years.

 

Although comments on my work in that article seem unexceptionable, I beg to differ on one crucial claim: "an Obama administration should play a significant role in promoting good governance and human rights in 'a more aggressive manner' than its predecessor.  No matter how phrased, this is a clear call for a confrontational foreign policy." The fact that I do not and never did call for a "confrontational" U.S. policy toward Ethiopia is obscured by that assertion.

 

Indeed, I consistently opposed HR 2003, a position which has disappointed many of my Ethiopian friends.  In fact, there is some evidence that those who organized the one-sided hearings which launched that bill deliberately excluded me from participating, knowing that my reputation is that of searching always for an objective and balanced account.  For example, just as I criticized the EPRDF regime for its destructive overreaction to the June 2005 protests–and have encouraged them to make some public apology–I criticized the failure of the CUD leadership to take up their elected offices.

 

The MFA's description of me as espousing confrontation turns on an interpretation of the term "aggressive." The fact is that in ordinary English usage, "aggressive" has multiple meanings.  As used, for example, in a New York Times front-page headline on November 5, which notes that Democrats will pursue their economic agenda in an aggressive manner, the term means "with energy and focus."  The Webster dictionary states that "aggressive" can mean "marked by driving forceful energy or initiative; enterprising." In other words, aggressive may but need not mean combative.  My longstanding interpretation of the warrior ethos in Ethiopian culture holds that Ethiopians, at least Amhara-Tigrayan, if not Oromo and Southern peoples, have tended to think that the only way to be aggressive politically is to be combative.

 

As everyone who followed president-elect Obama's discourse realizes, what he stands for is precisely open dialogue, not combativeness.  The latter was the approach of retiring president Bush who declared in January 2000, well before he won the Republican nomination: "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world. . . It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."

 

Ethiopians are right to reject a Bushian doctrine of intrusive intervention.  Part of the grandeur of Ethiopia's legacy lies in its age-old determination to protect its independence.  Recall the jibes of Emperor Tewodros II regarding the encroachments of British imperialists, or the scorn with which Emperor Yohannes IV commented on Italy's pretense that they had any rights to take over the Eritrean coast, inasmuch as it belonged to Ethiopia for millennia.  In that spirit, friends of Ethiopia can only admire the steadfastness with which the present Ethiopian government, just like the government of Emperor Haile Selassie, has upheld the need for Ethiopia to chart its own course.

 

In so doing, Ethiopia naturally wants to keep abreast of developments elsewhere in the world, as when she abolished slavery in 1923 as a condition of entrance into the League of Nations.  So now, in a global era of growing respect for universal human rights, Ethiopian leaders have done well to say they want to fortify democratic process and civil liberties.  One golden word for such efforts is "capacity-building."  My hope is that the incoming Obama administration will be aggressive in making available capacity-building resources to the Ethiopian people and government that advance this important objective.