By Andrew Korybko
American political analyst
The UN has once again been weaponized for Hybrid War purposes by Western countries after its Human Rights Council voted against the will of all its African members to open up a probe into alleged abuses in Ethiopia. That targeted country’s permanent representative to the UN condemned this move as neo-colonialist while the Russian one described it as counterproductive and against the principle of “African solutions to African problems”. It’s clear that there’s an ulterior motive at play since the Ethiopian government already cooperates with a similar such probe that was created earlier this year.
The reason for redundantly establishing a new probe is to discredit the existing one. It’s also meant to signal the West’s continued influence over supposedly neutral international bodies in spite of that bloc’s gradual decline over the past decade. The message being conveyed is that the US and its allies have successfully hijacked the Human Rights Council in order to weaponize it against Ethiopia. This is being done not only to keep alive the false claims of its government allegedly carrying out ethnic cleansing and even genocide in Tigray, but to deter investment into that country’s economy after the war finally ends.
To explain, it doesn’t seem likely that this new probe will be exploited to promote another Libyan-like “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) shock-and-awe campaign against a sovereign African state. That scenario can only most realistically be accomplished through neighboring Sudan playing a crucial role in facilitating this, but that country is mired in such deep domestic problems that it wouldn’t be a reliable partner. Furthermore, the newly established probe will take time to produce results, which means that its manufactured findings won’t become a relevant variable in the conflict for quite a while.
Be that as it may, it’s precisely because of its one-year mandate that its purpose is likely to influence the post-war situation in that country. The military dynamics are such that the TPLF is definitely on the backfoot and it’s increasingly improbable that they’ll ever recover from the decisive blow that the ENDF inflicted upon them over the past month after PM Abiy went to the front lines to lead the war effort. The worst of the war appears to have passed, but it’s still not completely resolved just yet. It’s here where the Human Rights Council’s probe can play an influential role.
Whenever and however the war finally ends, the conflict itself will reverberate for years due to the damage that it caused in northern Ethiopia and the global attention that was paid to the TPLF’s allies’ false claims of a so-called genocide behind committed against the Tigrayans. Since the US-led West failed to “Bosnify” Ethiopia through their terrorist proxies, they’ll likely resort to punishing the country by trying to handicap its post-war economic recovery. This can done be falsifying the newly established probe’s findings in order to pressure other countries into not rebuilding Ethiopia.
After all, the US-influenced IMF already decided to withhold their growth forecast for Ethiopia over the next four years, which represented one of the more prominent economic dimensions of the Hybrid War on that country. It served to deter investment there by implying long-term uncertainty about its stability, all for the purpose of holding back its much-needed foreign-supported recovery. The Human Rights Council’s politicized probe can complement these efforts by falsely claiming that the government committed egregious human rights abuses, which could then be exploited to impose sanctions.
The US-led West will likely do everything in its power to ensure that companies within its “sphere of influence” won’t invest in Ethiopia after such false claims are predictably made around the time of this politicized probe’s conclusion. US-influenced international financial structures like the IMF and World Bank might also be pressured not to extend assistance to Ethiopia either. This modus operandi will be premised on the false findings that will probably accompany the probe’s final report on this topic, which would superficially align with so-called “Western values”.
Manipulating perceptions of the UN’s supposed “neutrality”, the US-led West can claim that the Human Rights Council’s probe is the “final authority” on the matter, after which they can continue transitioning their Hybrid War campaign away from its increasingly ineffective kinetic (military) form and into its non-kinetic (ex: economic) one in order to keep up the pressure on that targeted government after the war ends. Expecting this outcome or at least something very similar to it, Ethiopia should preemptively reach out to its non-Western partners in order to cushion this impending blow to its post-war recovery.
Russia, China, and India can be of immense assistance to it in this respect. They’re BRICS and SCO members whose complementary blocs have recently taken on economic and financial responsibilities. The pertinent structures that they’ve created could in theory extend emergency aid to Ethiopia in that scenario. These three Great Powers have proven themselves to be that country’s reliable partners and weren’t afraid to stand up to the US-led West at the UN in defending this victimized African nation from the former’s multidimensional Hybrid War onslaught over the past year.
Russia’s, China’s, and India’s joint interests would be served by helping Ethiopia’s post-war economic recovery. They’d be able to prove that their pertinent BRICS and SCO structures can successfully stabilize third countries. This could in turn significantly enhance their global credibility and thus turn these complementary blocs into realistic alternatives to their Western competitors. If they can succeed in replacing the role of Western structures and companies in rebuilding war-torn countries, then more partners will request their assistance, which will then make them global forces to be reckoned with.
Put another way, by politicizing the Human Rights Council’s probe into Ethiopia for the purpose of pressuring Western countries and companies into staying away from that targeted state’s post-war reconstruction efforts, the US is inadvertently creating strategic space for Russia, China, and India to experiment with employing their newly created economic and financial structures in BRICS and the SCO to replace the West’s role in rebuilding war-torn countries. With this in mind, Ethiopia might become the place where the East finally triumphs over the West and advances a more equitable world order.