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The Geopolitical Dilemma of the Horn
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11639 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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9 / 1986 |
2,280 Words |
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Edmond J. Keller
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The Horn of Africa lies beneath an "arc of crisis" which stretches from Libya in the west all the way to Afghanistan in the east.
As long as regional or domestic conflicts in this zone persist, they have the potential to expand into global conflict involving the superpowers. Nowhere is this more true than in the Horn where over the past decade the United States and the Soviet Union have been actively engaged in supporting client states with military aid. Consequently, what had historically been mere tensions and low-grade conflicts between and within countries in the region have become serious threats to international peace and security.
In large measure this turn of events can be attributed to the fact that the Soviet Union and the United States have each pursued foreign policies in the Horn that are guided exclusively by their own national interests, rather than by a clear reading of regional concerns and their global implications.
Who's Leading Whom?
The African countries in the region are far from being the mere pawns of their superpower patrons. They have domestic and regional policy objectives of their own and often manipulate their relations with their patrons, as well as the tensions between the superpowers, according to their own policy objectives.
Ethiopia's military regime, for example, places a premium on its own survival as a ruling class and, in 1977, severed relations with the United States when U.S. military aid became uncertain, establishing instead new military and political ties with the Soviet Union.
Since then, with Soviet aid, the Ethiopian government has expanded the ranks of its military almost fivefold to about 300,000 troops. Its defense budget has grown more than tenfold to over $380 million annually. In this same period, the Soviets provided over $2 billion in military aid, in comparison to less than $300 million provided by the United States over a 22-year period beginning in the early 1950s.
Somalia and Sudan, the other major African actors in the region, with the aid of the United States, have recently experienced similar patterns of growth in military establishments and defense budgets.
Superpower competition in Africa entered a new phase in the mid-1970s, following Portugal's decision to surrender its hold over its African colonies, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau.
This coincided with the embarrassing withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam and the controversy in the U.S. Congress over covert aid provided by President Gerald ford's administration to the pro-West FNLA (Front for the Liberation of Angola) and UNITA (National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola). The Soviet-supported MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) was ultimately victorious, however, in the civil war that followed the Portuguese pull-out.
Apparently determined to halt Soviet expansionism throughout the world, the Ford administration tolerated an increasingly radical military regime in Ethiopia after the
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