By Independent News Roundup
Andrew Korybko
Russia and Ethiopia expanded 2017’s bilateral agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy by signing a roadmap in late September during the meeting between their leaders at the Kremlin, which followed the latest World Atomic Week in Moscow. Their Foreign Ministers then just met in Moscow last week. These developments represent the latest strengthening of their ties, which readers can learn more about here and here, which hyperlink to reports from two prestigious Russian research institutions.
Russian Ambassador to Ethiopia Evgeny Terekhin praised their ties in an interview late last year that preceded spring’s naval cooperation agreement, which left no doubt about Putin’s sincere belief that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s peaceful quest for sea access will be achieved. The signing of their nuclear power roadmap came shortly after Abiy inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and complements his policy of achieving energy self-sufficiency.
This sequence of events confirms Putin’s support of Abiy’s grand strategic vision for Ethiopia. The Russian school of multipolarism teaches that regional leaders, which are generally understood as the largest countries in their part of the world and oftentimes have an historical experience of leadership there too, are the core of multipolar processes nowadays. Those that are also civilization-states like Ethiopia is, which refers countries that left indelible socio-political impacts on others, play an even greater role.
Abiy envisages Ethiopia achieving energy self-sufficiency in parallel with restoring its historical access to the sea in order to fully unleash Ethiopia’s economic potential that’ll then turbocharge development in its comparatively smaller neighbors. The end goal isn’t “hegemony” like some have fearmongered but creating complex mutual interdependences that’ll reduce the chances of its neighbors colluding with others to divide-and-rule the region. This perfectly aligns with the Russian school of multipolarism.
His grand strategic vision in the Greater Horn Region is thus similar to Putin’s in parts of the former USSR, and the success of each will accelerate multipolar processes in their continents, thus facilitating the emerging Multipolar World Order. Their aligned worldviews further cement the already rock-solid Russian-Ethiopian Strategic Partnership and guarantee that neither will ever side with the other’s adversaries against them like what the usual suspects have hinted in an attempt to sow discord.
About that, while each has ties with some of their partner’s adversaries, they aren’t at the expense of their strategic partnership, nor in any way directed against them. This observation speaks to another similarity between Russia and Ethiopia, namely their pragmatic balancing acts and respect for their partners’ relations with third countries so long as they aren’t harmful to bilateral ties. These shared approaches importantly ensure predictability and strengthen mutual trust amidst these chaotic times.
The insight shared in this analysis proves that the Russian-Ethiopian Strategic Partnership is actually a partnership between two civilization-states which aims to speed up the global systemic transition to complex multipolarity. It’s not an ordinary arrangement between average states but something special. More flagship agreements like their nuclear power roadmap are accordingly expected in the future as are more countries emulate their mutually beneficial model of cooperation given its success thus far.
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