This book is about the what, the how, and the why of the U.S. foreign policy towards Ethiopia, from the vantage point of promotion and protection of human rights. It studies factors that shaped it, and, it draws how it impacted political dynamism of the nation with diverse cultural and religious landscape. It unravels its deficiency in promotion and protection of human rights in the ages of imperialism, Cold War antagonisms and fighting terrorism. It argues that the U.S had-and-has wrong diagnoses of human rights problems in Ethiopia and hence applied wrong prescriptions. Based on the wrong prescriptions and myopia in the foreign policy, the U.S. offered carte blanche for the discrimination of the ruling class of Ethiopia instead of playing positive roles on promoting the rights of diverse linguistic and ethnic groups in Ethiopia. The wrong prescriptions perpetuate and exacerbate human rights violations and damage the reputation of the U.S. as the champion of freedom around the world.
REVIEW:
This very readable book deals with the U.S. Foreign Policy towards Ethiopia going back to the beginning of the last century. The author ably demonstrates that it was based on myths, ignorance and racism. Anyone who wants to understand how successive Ethiopian leaders used the mythical image of their country for enhancing their own tyrannical power while hiding their atrocities against their own “subjects,” who were and still are exposed to abject poverty, must read this book. The book makes a very useful contribution to the growing literature on the gulf of inequality between Abyssinian ruling elites and their subjects, who have been exploited economically, dominated politically, dehumanized socially, with tacit approval and military and financial support of successive U.S. administrations, all of which strengthened the strangle hold of the minority over the Ethiopian political landscape to this day.
Mohammed Hassen (Ph.D.)
REVIEW:
This very readable book deals with the U.S. Foreign Policy towards Ethiopia going back to the beginning of the last century. The author ably demonstrates that it was based on myths, ignorance and racism. Anyone who wants to understand how successive Ethiopian leaders used the mythical image of their country for enhancing their own tyrannical power while hiding their atrocities against their own “subjects,” who were and still are exposed to abject poverty, must read this book. The book makes a very useful contribution to the growing literature on the gulf of inequality between Abyssinian ruling elites and their subjects, who have been exploited economically, dominated politically, dehumanized socially, with tacit approval and military and financial support of successive U.S. administrations, all of which strengthened the strangle hold of the minority over the Ethiopian political landscape to this day.
Mohammed Hassen (Ph.D.)