The Lessons of Ethiopia

Speaking of rhyming, in his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead draws some important lessons from the situation in Ethiopia:

For students of world politics, the Ethiopian conflict holds two vital lessons. The first is an important reminder that much of the conventional wisdom in the West about geopolitical developments in the rest of the world is firmly embedded in a mix of ignorance, wishful thinking and projection. Mr. Ahmed, like former rock stars of the global do-gooding circuit Aung San Suu Kyi and Paul Kagame, has never been the figure his Western admirers imagined. He emerged from a career in the Ethiopian intelligence service, and his vision of his role and the future of his country has little to do with the fantasies of his foreign admirers. Myanmar’s Ms. Suu Kyi, Rwanda’s Mr. Kagame and Mr. Ahmed are complex figures in countries where the rules are weak, the stakes are existential, and scruples are necessarily few. The inane rituals of celebration and reprobation that self-described moral leaders in the West alternately inflict on these leaders are noise, not signal. Serious people need to tune it out.

The second lesson is even more important. When it comes to sub-Saharan Africa and other places undergoing rapid economic development and social change, Western thinkers need a paradigm shift. Since the end of colonial rule, many Western observers have naively assumed that ethnic and religious tensions would fade away with economic development.

That is not how things work. During the past 20 years, Ethiopia has consistently posted some of the best growth rates in Africa, but ethnic tensions have risen with gross domestic product. Illiterate peasants scratching a bare subsistence from the soil don’t care much about how their government works. As literacy, living standards and access to information rise, that changes.

European and Ottoman history followed a similar pattern. Nationalism rose with levels of development—and democracy, linked to nationalism, was more often a destabilizing force leading to conflict than a calming force leading to peace.

“Tribalism,” as ethnic nationalism in postcolonial Africa is sometimes dismissively and condescendingly called, is not a remnant of the past destined to fade as modernization progresses. It is a sleeping giant that, as it awakens, will test the stability and perhaps alter the borders of many African countries.

I don’t think that the rise of tribalism is limited to Africa. I believe it underpins what we have been seeing for the last generation in Europe both in the form of nationalist as well as separatist movements in places as far-flung as Hungary, Spain, and Scotland.

And then there’s the example of the United States. Is what we’re seeing here the emergence of tribal separatist movements based on race? I certainly see an increase in tribalism here and as long as there’s good money to be made from fomenting resentment I think it will only increase.