The EU Just Scored An Own Goal While Trying to Demean Russian-Ethiopian Relations

The EU has it all wrong after having expected that bilateral trade would have influenced Ethiopia to turn against Russia. This just goes to show that the bloc still adheres to a neocolonial vision whereby it believes that it has the right to control other countries across the Global South through economic and financial means.

The official Twitter account of the EU delegation in Ethiopia shared some economic statistics on the occasion of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s visit to the country on Wednesday that were intended to demean his government’s relations with his hosts. The implied intent was to make it seem like the Russian-Ethiopian Strategic Partnership is bereft of any meaningful substance compared to the bloc’s ties with that civilization-state. What actually ended up happening, however, is that the EU just scored a so-called “own goal” by showing just how diverse those two’s relations really are.

To explain, trade is but a fraction of their strategic partnership, which concerns all dimensions of bilateral relations from agriculture, cultural events, educational cooperation, health, industry, politics, religion, technology, and tourism, among other aspects. The very fact that Lavrov was so graciously hosted by his counterpart in spite of trade being far below its potential speaks to the importance of his visit in the context of the recently accelerated global systemic transition to multipolarity brought about by the Ukrainian Conflict.

By contrast, EU-Ethiopian relations are worse than at any time in modern memory after the bloc jumped on the American bandwagon to castigate this Horn of Africa country for defending itself from the Western-backed TPLF-driven Hybrid War of Terror that’s been waged against it since November 2020 as punishment for its principled neutrality in the New Cold War. No amount of trade can repair their ties that were unilaterally worsened by the EU in solidarity with their American overlord. The bloc can’t buy off Ethiopia nor its people, who learned who their true friends are over the past two and a half years.

The EU’s enraged that Ethiopia won’t cut ties with its historical Russian ally under Western pressure, especially after its Ambassador to Russia told his host’s media earlier this summer that it also won’t allow America to legislate its relations with that Great Power through the so-called “Countering Malign Russian Activities In Africa Act”. By continuing to mistreat Ethiopia as a neocolonial vassal, Europe is remaining ignorant to the fact that this country is a truly sovereign civilization-state that’s rapidly rising to take its place in the emerging Multipolar World Order as one of Africa’s leaders.

Mutually beneficial trade between the EU and Ethiopia is sincerely appreciated by the latter’s people, yet they won’t ever let it be leveraged to meddle in their domestic or foreign policies. The EU has it all wrong after having expected that bilateral trade would have influenced Ethiopia to turn against Russia. This just goes to show that the bloc still adheres to a neocolonial vision whereby it believes that it has the right to control other countries across the Global South through economic and financial means. While that might have worked to an extent in the past, this policy is nowadays completely outdated.

Ethiopia will continue cultivating strategic relations with Russia and all other multipolar countries while still conducting trade with the US-led Golden Billion whenever it believes that such is profitable. It will never, however, allow any country to dictate its relations towards any other. The EU delegation in Ethiopia needs to learn that it’s only tasked with improving bilateral relations and not with meddling in its host’s foreign affairs. It can brag about how much more it trades with Ethiopia than Russia does, but that just reinforces the point that Russian-Ethiopian relations are about much more than trade.


By Andrew Korybko
Source: OneWorld

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