This infamous line spoken by Zbigniew Brzezinski back in 1979 — referring to the death of détente with the USSR — following, amongst other things, another round of proxy war in the Horn of Africa, reminds us that great power conflict is a familiar feature of this critical region. Conflict appears to have worsened in Tigray. Accurate reports are very hard to come by but there is every recent sign that acts of severe barbarity, not solely at the hands of Ethiopian forces there, are widespread and may intensify. This is so because such putative proxy wars actually threaten to become something else — internationalised civil wars, which have a tendency to last as long as any one of the intervening parties is determined to prolong them. It could be a long time before stability returns to the Horn.
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