The Horn of Africa countries cannot afford multimillion dollar arms build up.  They are the least developed countries in the world.  It will be financially exhausting to try to assure each country's security through building military capability alone.  This paper has presented alternative means of maintaining peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.  These include regional collective security arrangements, arms control, democratization, economic development, economic integration and non-provocative defense. 

The most important requirement for all the above undertakings is mutual

Sympathy and wider definition of national interests to include the benefits of others.  A country can be secure if only its neighbors too feel secure. Therefore, the countries of the Horn of Africa must endeavor to promote the security of their neighbors.  They must assure each other that they have no aggressive intentions and refrain from intervention in one another's internal affairs beyond promoting democracy and respect for human rights.  They must assure their neighbors that they are willing to settle their disputes through negotiation and other non-coercive means.  As the saying goes, "We can choose our friends but we cannot choose our neighbors."  The wise thing to do, therefore, is to make our neighbors our friends.

ANNEX

Approaches to Peace and Stability in The Horn of Africa 

The six approaches to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa are:  

1. Regional collective Security Arrangements
2. Arms control
3. Democratization
4. Non-provocative defense
5. Economic development
6. Economic integration

1.     The Imperative of Collective Security 

The Horn of Africa countries must play a leading role in establishing a regional collective security mechanism for the African continent.  This requires agreement on three objectives:  

1. First they must renounce the use of military force to alter the status quo and agree instead to settle all their disputes peacefully.  Change will be possible in international relations, but ought to be achieved by negotiation rather than force.  The most important consideration in this regard is national boundary.  The states must abide by the OAU principle of keeping boundaries inherited at independence as sacrosanct.  They must not resort to arms to change the territorial status quo.  When they are in doubt about the extent of their boundaries, they can settle the issues through negotiation.

2.  Second, they must broaden their concept of national interest to take the interest of their neighbors, the region and the international community as a whole.  This means that when a trouble occurs in a given area, responsible states must automatically and collectively confront it.  Such a collective security arrangement will institutionalize the balance of power.  The institutionalized balance of power in turn will make it possible for the states to identify aggressors in advance.  As a result, collective security arrangement will be successful in deterring potential aggressions.  This will also deny aggressors their expansionist designs.

3. Third, the states must overcome the fear which dominates world politics and learn to trust one another.  This also depends on states entrusting their destinies to collective security.  However, for states to build confidence, they must avoid hate propaganda, refrain from interfering in another's internal affairs except for promoting democracy and respect for human rights, promote cultural exchange and tourism and educate their populations about the benefits of economic and political integration and the shared destiny of all African states.

The Role of Collective Security

The collective security scheme should also include dispute settlement mechanism through which states can resolve their conflicts.  They must also have a crisis management capability so that conflicts can be resolved before they escalate to wars. In addition, the collective security scheme must have peacekeeping capability. The member states must be willing to contribute armed forces for peacekeeping operations. The peacekeepers may then be deployed in areas of conflict as deterrents before armed conflicts erupt.  They can be deployed in mediation efforts where parties are already at war.

Moreover, the collective security arrangement should give attention to the resolution of civil wars and insurgencies in member states.  It must find impartial solution to the problems faced within states.  

The presence of collective security arrangement will help the Horn of African countries as well as other states in Africa to reduce their armaments and to concentrate on achieving their development objectives.  They should not be discouraged by past experience, because the fact that collective security arrangements had failed in the past, does not mean it will always fail to prevent wars.  It failed in the past because there were revisionist powers on the one hand and isolationist powers on the other.  But if the above mentioned three conditions are met, there is no reason why a collective security scheme will not succeed in preventing wars in the future.

The Role of Major Powers 

The major powers should help African countries financially to establish collective security institutions as well as to meet peacekeeping expenses.  They already spend a great deal of money in maintaining regional balance of power.  It is in their interest to do so.  In a world that is economically interdependent, instability in one region will affect stability in other regions.  The major powers should also divert the huge amount of financial resources spent on maintaining regional balance of power to peace building efforts.  

2.  Arms Control 

Once collective security arrangement is in place, the Horn of Africa countries can reduce the level of their armaments.  The collective security scheme can give them guarantee that they will not be victim of aggression.  They will know that other members of the collective security arrangement will come be on their side in the events of aggression. 

In order to reduce their armaments, it is advisable that the Horn of Africa countries register their arms imports with the United Nations. this will lend transparency to arms acquisition.  When the countries of the horn of Africa know the extent of armaments their neighbour have, they will stop accumulating weapons because they will know their the level of their armaments relative to those of their neighbors.  Also by limiting their weapon imports, they will be able to send signals to their neighbors to do likewise because their neighbors will know how much arms they have imported. 

The leading arms suppliers should also be made to assist arms control agreements by registering with the United Nations their arms exports as well as by putting limits on their exports.  The United States has tried to reach agreements with other permanent members of the UN Security Council to limit weapon exports.  This is a commendable undertaking.  It will induce the industrialized countries to force LDCs not to use economic assistance for the purchase of arms.  They may also be encouraged to tie their economic aid to arms reduction.  Likewise they can also institute a debt-for-arms agreement in which the creditor countries agree to link their debt reduction to the value of armaments destroyed.  Ethiopian can play a leading role in encouraging other Horn of Africa countries to reduce their armaments by taking the initiative in reducing its armaments or putting limit on its armament imports.  It will signal to other neighboring countries that Ethiopia has no hegemonic ambition over its neighbors.  But it also needs to make sure that others will follow its example.  

3.  Democratization 

A connection is made between democracy and peace.  History has shown that democracies do not often fight one another.  Even when they fight other non-democracies, they first exhaust peaceful remedies.  This is because democratic governments are controlled by the people who bear the human and material costs of wars.  Unless their survival is threatened, the people do not want to engage in warfare.  Therefore, the leaders in democracies will find themselves hard pressed to justify wars that do not affect the vital interest of their nations.  Besides, they will find it exceedingly difficult to justify wars against other democracies by claiming that the leaders of the other democracies are war-like and callous because they cannot separate the leaders from the general population that elected them.  

Furthermore, democratic norms are conducive for resolving conflicts through negotiation.  Just as democracies resolve internal disputes through negotiation and give and take, they also resolve international disputes via similar means. 

Democracy not only reduces the likelihood of external wars, but also minimizes internal armed conflicts.  By assuring the civil rights and civil liberties of the population, democracies succeed in defusing conflicts at home. 

Federalism and power-sharing are also prone to reduce ethnic conflicts by giving regional autonomy to various ethnic groups. In authoritarian regimes, the elite accumulate political and economic power for themselves. They appropriate the national resources of the countries for themselves.  They amass armaments to suppress the dispossessed masses from revolting.  However, the dispossessed masses need only disgruntled leaders to revolt against the authoritarian government leaders.  The result is often civil wars and insurgency.

Therefore, because it leads to international peace and domestic stability, democracy is a political arrangement that needs to be cultivated by the Horn of Africa countries.  

éUP

4.  Non-Provocative Defense 

The above approaches to peace and stability are capable of preventing most wars but they may fail to prevent a determined aggressor from invading the territory of another state.  For such a situation the remedy is non-provocative defense (NPD).  NPD helps to avoid the security dilemma whereby the attempt of one state to increase its security by accumulating armaments increases the insecurity of its neighbors and potential adversaries.  The latter countries increase their armaments in response, making the first country more insecure.  

Then the first country again increases its armaments, making the other countries more insecure.  The vicious circle goes on and on until either all countries are exhausted by arms race or war erupts among them.  NPD, however, recommends that states accumulate only defensive weapons-anti-tank weapons instead of tanks; anti-aircraft missiles instead of bombers and fighter planes; tank traps; short-range artillery; etc.  

It is not necessary here to specify defensive weapons as distinct from offensive weapons.  Each state can decide which weapons can be seen as defensive and which one as offensive.  Each country must send a signal to its neighbors and potential adversaries through acquisition of defensive weapons and defensive deployment that it is not intent on invading them.  At the same time its strong defense will discourage potential aggressors.  If an aggression occurs, the country that employs NPD will be able to defend itself.  When NPD is backed by collective security, potential aggressors will be completely deterred.  

The advantages of NPD are that it will not lead to arms races, it is cost

effective, and it leads to peace and stability.  Employment NPD will help to reduce the cost of armaments.  For example a $4,000 precision-guided unit of munitions can destroy a $1 million tank, and a $50,000 anti-air craft missile can bring down a plane that costs $10 million.  To make aggression by enemy ground forces more difficult, a defender should place ditches, walls, mines, boulders, tank obstacles, and even dense forests along vulnerable borders.  Such activities do not cost much.  They do not lead to arms races since they reveal no aggressive intent.  Instead they send a reassuring signal that the state employing them has no aggressive intent since they form obstacles to forward movement both for the aggressor and the defender.  Hence NPD force structure and deployment leads to peace.  

5.  Economic Development 

A connection is again made between economic insufficiency and the incidence of conflicts.  This is why governments are judged by their populations on the basis of the economic development they promote.  When they fail to promote economic development, they are often overthrown.  

Due to the above, governments faced by economic stagnation and the attendant public discontent engage in aggressive wars to divert the attention of the population toward an external enemy.  They seek scapegoats to blame their failings on.  Therefore, the countries of the Horn of Africa should help one another to develop economically.  This will minimize conflicts among themselves.  

In addition, lack of economic development leads to internal repression.  In such a situation governments accumulate arms to fight their own discontented populations.  Therefore, lack of economic development is a recipe for internal instability.  It also leads to the emergence of authoritarian regimes, which justify their emergence on the need to maintain law and order.  

To avoid domestic discontent, it is not enough to have a growing economy.  The benefits of economic growth must be evenly distributed.  Otherwise the rich will grow richer while the poor, who constitute the majority, will grow impoverished.  Therefore, it is necessary to redistribute the means of production such as land and to promote labor-intensive production so that the benefits of growth may reach the majority of the population.  It may also be necessary to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation.  Promoting economic development in this way will reduce internal conflict.  It will promote democracy which in turn may lead to arms reduction as governments will not need huge arms to suppress internal dissent.  

The developed countries can do much to promote economic development in the Horn of Africa and in other developing regions.  They can do so by granting aid and debt relief.  The countries of the Horn of Africa cannot develop if they keep on spending a substantial part of their export earnings on servicing debt.  It is not morally acceptable for developed countries to see developing countries stagnate economically and millions of people impoverished because of debt burden.  Besides, if developing countries are impoverished, they will not be able to import the industrial outputs of developing countries.  The industrial countries will see their exports to developing countries decline, and this will lead to the closure of many exporting firms in developed countries.  As a result, millions of jobs will be lost in the developed countries.  Therefore, it is in the interest of developed countries to reduce the debt burden of developing countries and to give them financial and technical assistance so that the weak state can be able to develop economically.  

In addition to debt relief, the developed countries should open their markets to the exports of developing countries including those countries of the Horn of Africa.  The industrial countries need to reduce or eliminate their tariffs and quotas on exports from developing countries.  This will be a positive approach for reducing internal and external conflicts rather than the provision of military aid for containment purposes.  

6.  Economic Integration 

Economic integration has led to the creation of a security community in Western Europe.  This started with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community which integrated the economies of the former enemies which fought World War I and II, especially France and Germany.  Decades of cooperation in the economic field has now come close to the creation of a United States of Europe.  The countries of the European Union do not consider the use of force against one another as legitimate instrument of state policy.  Their economies are so integrated that war would be disruptive of mutually beneficial economic relations.  The cost of war will be too great to justify its employment against member states.

Similarly, promoting economic integration in the Horn of Africa will reduce the likelihood of armed conflicts between the countries of the sub-region.  For example, it may be possible to construct super-ordinate goals between traditional adversaries.  That is, the leaders of the countries of the Horn of Africa come to believe that they have goals that can be best achieved by cooperative effort.  Such beliefs can arise from generation of common projects that promise mutual gain, as, for example, in the development of joint river projects that would provide all parties with electricity.  Most of the countries of the Horn of Africa are found on the Nile Basin.  As joint management of coal and steel production has led to cooperation in other economic fields in Europe, cooperation to harness the waters of the Nile by the countries of the Horn of Africa can serve the same purpose in promoting similar cooperation in water utilization and other economic fields.  

Most of the countries of the Horn of Africa are members of the Inter-

Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).  They can use this organization to promote economic integration. Other countries of the Horn of Africa that are not members of IGAD should make an effort to join it.  The Nile Basin countries can also establish an organization dedicated to economic integration.  But, the various organizations to which the Horn countries belong must harmonize their activities to avoid duplication of responsibilities.  The Horn countries must try to avoid duplication of projects.  To create a large market, the Horn countries must specialize on the basis of their comparative advantage in the production of goods and services that are not duplicated by other Horn countries.  

If the countries of the Horn of Africa   succeeded to integrate their economies and see to it that the benefits of integration are distributed equitability among member states, they will take war as an unnecessary disruption of mutually beneficial economic relations. They will succeed in creating a security community whereby war is seen as a remote means of settling disputes. Bibliography

Abraham, Kinfe Ethiopia: From Empire to Federation, 2000 

Abraham, Kinfe Ethiopia: From Bullets to the Ballot Box, New Jersy: Africa World, 1994  

ITCO AFRICA, Federal Ethiopia at Cross Roads, 1995 

THE EYE ON ETHIOPIA AND THE HORN OF AFRICA , Year Books, The State of the Horn 1997/2000