The Fall of American Soft Diplomacy in Ethiopia: A Victim of its own Success
Journal: ScholarWorks - WMU (Western Michigan University)
Year: 2014

Ethiopia’s soft diplomatic history with the United States goes back to the dawn of the twentieth century when King Menelik in 1905 responded favorably to the overtures by the United States for official relations between the two countries when Ethiopia was the only independent country in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the benchmarks of a successful engagement that had lasted for over seventy years only to suffer reversals from critical events both internal and external. A brief