Ethiopia

Americans are used to exercising influence through international entities such as NATO, the World Trade Organization or the World Bank. Each of these groups was set up with American leadership or at its instigation; all have been used to advance Washington’s vision of global liberal-democratic capitalism. No comparable international organization or collection of nations has been influential since the Soviet Union’s collapse. That may be changing. The so-called BRICS alliance (its founding countries were Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) recently added new members Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Earlier this year, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a provocative piece making the case that there are two kinds of people in the world: “Those who believe the defining challenge of the twenty-first century will be climate change, and those who know it will be the birth dearth, the population bust, the old age of the world.” Douthat made this bold claim not just because he believes the population bust is the more important of the two challenges, but because, in his view, it is being comparatively neglected due to all the attention paid to irrepressible climate doomsayers.

Maryam Dengelat is a church cut into the mountainside near Adigrat in Tigray, Ethiopia. Tigrayans are largely Orthodox Christians and according to local legend the church was built in the sixth century. In 2019, priests, aided by Italian mountaineers, ascended the mountain and held Mass in the church for the first time in 400 years. Elsewhere in 2019, the Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending the long conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' said Ahmed, quoting scripture, 'For they shall be called the children of God.' Sadly, peace was short-lived. Instead of fighting one another the Ethiopians and Eritreans have been focused on someone else: the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).