ABSTRACT
Increases in Soviet power, as evidenced by its newly dominant presence in the Horn, and the deteriorating economic situation in the US together led to the resumption of the old debate between geoeconomics and geopolitics. Reagan’s ideological posturing had led observers to expect a radical departure from Carter’s policy toward Ethiopia when the Reagan Administration was installed. Jeane Kirkpatrick inchoate definitions rested on whether a regime was pro-capitalist and pro-Western or pro-Socialist and pro-Soviet irrespective of the absence of political democracy and the prevalence of gross human rights violations. Soviet-Cuban forces had not been evacuated, and the presupposed Ethiopian nationalism did not force Mengistu to break ties with the Soviet Union. Thus, Washington devoted its energies to winning Ethiopia back by recultivating old relations and by supporting its revolutionary and territorial aims. The decline in Soviet-Ethiopian relations was contextualized by the rapid deterioration in the fighting capacity of the Ethiopian troops in Eritrea and Tigray.
