By John Green
The Horn of Africa is a key region both in terms of the history of African development and the fateful impact of its colonial past.
It is located on the easternmost part of the African mainland, and is the fourth largest peninsula in the world, also known as the Somali Peninsula, situated in north-eastern Africa. It is composed of the independent countries of Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has always been a region of geopolitical and strategic importance, since it is situated along the southern boundary of the Red Sea, extending hundreds of kilometres into the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, all vital trade routes.
Most readers will have little close knowledge of the region. From the mainstream media, if we hear anything at all, it will be reports about a large famine or when a bloody civil war suddenly flares up again, and even then only for fleeting moments before the news agenda is moved on.
John Young, the author of this book, has spent many years living and working in the region as a journalist and researcher. He has become a valued expert on the region.
His book begins with a useful background chapter on ‘The rise and fall of US democracy’. He then goes on to examine the reasons why Western (i.e. imperialist) intervention in the region has only brought about increased mayhem, strife, war and poverty, and argues that this is largely because such interventions have ignored the issues of group rights and the right of nations to self-determination.
Struggles in the HoA in attempts to realise internal national self-determination and secession have been a major cause of conflict in the region. While the rest of Africa has managed to maintain its albeit arbitrarily dictated colonial boundaries, the HoA has witnessed several territorial conflicts and the secession of two states – Eritrea and South Sudan as well as the de facto independence of Somaliland and the possible eventual secession of Tigray from Ethiopia.
“With capitalism and neoliberalism now integral to Western democracy,” Young writes, “raising abysmal living standards in the Global South is considered best left to the market, and the role of the state is relegated to that of a ‘night watchman’. This typically produces impoverishment, economic polarisation within and between societies, and uneven development which generate conflict.”
Certainly, those struggles to realise internal national self-determination and secession have been major causes of conflict in the HoA.
Young argues that the advent of neo-liberalism and the decline of Keynesianism economics during the 1980s, meant that alternatives to development models based on hypercapitalism and subject to US hegemony have withered. This in turn has also precipitated the collapse of Western social democracy which has endorsed neo-liberalism, the US international order and the US-led proxy war in Ukraine. It has also led to increased Western aggression in the form of trade wars, sanctions, destabilisation, the organising of coups and the inciting civil wars.
Apart from China it is only on the fringes of the international community that alternative forms of governance and economic organisation can be found and most of them have not proved viable or attractive. During the Cold War era, the US and its allies have largely had the capacity to either successfully ensure that non-Western approaches are made unworkable and make those pursuing such approaches, such as Nicaragua, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Eritrea, among others, pay a high price for even attempting to determine their own national paths. “Although capitalism and imperialism,” he writes, “have universalised Western democracy, it has only rarely proved viable or sustainable in the Global South.”
He provides case studies on Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan that emphasise the international dimensions of the struggles taking place in those countries; and the chapter ‘Horn of Africa Relations in the Wake of US Decline’ examines the new role being played by China and by Russia, since it overcame the chaos of robber capitalism that Yeltsin instigated. Both countries are today challenging US hegemony in the region.
Young’s detailed coverage of developments in the HoA provides the reader with much needed insights into what is actually happening on the ground, which forces, both national and international, are involved and what roles they play. His chapter on Sudan is particularly illuminating and helpful in understanding how the present horrendous fratricidal and catastrophic wars have come about. These have had terrible consequences. By the end of 2021, for instance, the war had left half of South Sudan’s estimated population of 12 million dependent on foreign food relief and 400,000 people had died. The country had proved unable to realise its enormous economic potential but the Western model of democracy that it was bequeathed failed miserably. Since then, wars in Sudan and Somalia have continued unabated, with widespread hunger and mounting death tolls, while the West ignores what is happening.
In his conclusion Young argues that the case studies of Ethiopia and South Sudan make clear how the US model of democracy has failed and says that there is a pressing need for models that better address the needs of the people of the Global South. This, he writes, can only be achieved by a fundamental break from Western subservience; in other words, democracy is unattainable without national sovereignty.
Although published in Bloomsbury’s Academic Series, Young writes in a very accessible, non-academic style and avoids convoluted theory.
An excellent and invaluable book for anyone wishing to understand what is happening in the Horn of Africa today.
The Poisoned Chalice of US Democracy: Studies in the Horn of Africa. By John Young. Pubs. Bloomsbury. Pbck. £19.79
John Green is a former trade union official, a journalist and former documentary film-maker, which in the 1970s involved clandestine filming assignments in South Africa in the 1970s aimed at helping bring the abhorrent practices of the apartheid regime to world attention. He is the author of numerous books, including Ken Sprague, People’s Artist, A Revolutionary Life: Biography of Friedrich Engels and Britain’s Communists: The Untold Story.
The views expressed in the articles published on this website do not necessarily represent those of Liberation
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