by Miguel Miranda*

A glaring problem of our insulated consumer-driven society—the kind found wherever a solid middle class has taken hold—is it leaves people aloof and rather ignorant of how modern states are built.

Indeed, they need to be built. Whether erected from the ruins of war or assembled from disparate territories and then organized along lines that benefit its rulers.

Simply put, the rise of states and their armies are simultaneous phenomena essential to civilization as we know it. This led to the modern state that brought industrialized warfare to its peak. Today’s anxious global peace, where no world wars are taking place but so-called “low intensity conflicts” are common, is an achievement of hegemonic modern states.

Warfare as the ultimate tool for creating a state is practiced universally. This bloody effort applies to the United States of America, the whole of Latin America, my own country (the Philippines in 1897 and 1946), certainly to Israel, the up-and-coming world power China, as well as much of the developing world from Bosnia to Bangladesh.

Let’s not forget Eritrea. Aside from its picturesque geography it’s the Horn of Africa’s leading miscreant prone to North Korean fits of belligerence.

In the 1890s Italy conquered Eritrea and fashioned it into a colonial jewel along the Red Sea. Its hardy people, a patchwork of ethnicities, were organized into an administration and army.

The land called Eritrea was never supposed to be its own country, independent and sovereign. The United Nations made sure of this in 1952 when it ceded the territory to Ethiopia, one of Africa’s oldest insular countries with a long imperial tradition.

From the very beginning Ethiopia’s conduct along its northern frontier was fraught with oppression much worse than the Italians, who at least gave the Eritreans a composite national identity.

First under the aging Haile Selassie and then the socialist Derg the Eritreans were forced to abandon their local languages and customs. Open rebellion erupted soon after.

The long struggle to emancipate Eritrea was a strange one. It was completely out of touch with the Cold War and had few proxies, if none at all. Remarkably, the only evidence that the Eritreans received outside support was when the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson visited Eritrean Marxists in 1977 for paramilitary training. He was a young man then and soon left because of health issues.

After four decades of classic guerilla warfare against a ruthless adversary Eritrean forces seized Asmara and made it their capital when independence was declared on April 27, 1993. As for Ethiopia…it collapsed into civil war and remained a one-party third world basket case until Chinese foreign investment triggered its ongoing economic boom.

It was at that exact moment of triumph in 1993, however, that things began to unravel for the Eritreans. The former guerilla leader Isaias Afewerki, now a conquering warlord, assumed the role of dictator. His administration was the left-leaning People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), which began as a coalition of rebel groups in the bad old independence war days.

Given the benefit of hindsight, the nation building the PFDJ undertook in the 1990s was idiotic. Eritrea is a coastal nation at the mouth of the Red Sea that’s also a major international shipping route. It has large and wealthy commodity-rich neighbors such as Sudan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Instead of opening to the world, Eritrea hunkered down and settled on a command economy focused on ambiguous national “self-reliance” at a time when this approach was a recipe for disaster.

Following a bloody war against Ethiopia, which lasted from 1999 to 2000 and which killed 100,000 on both sides, Eritrea kept its armed forces fully mobilized. Worse still, the iron hand of authoritarianism blighted its citizens. How the Eritrean state actually functioned from this point onward is difficult to explain. However, with a growing population (now several million strong) and no significant industries or agricultural sector it began to languish.

Here’s the CIA World Factbook putting it nicely: “…Eritrea has faced many economic problems, including lack of resources and chronic drought, which have been exacerbated by restrictive economic policies.”

The Afewerki regime and its paranoia maintained Africa’s second-largest armed forces, allegedly 250,000-strong, equipped with leftover Eastern Bloc armaments, as well as a domestic security apparatus. What for? By 2014 the UN reported that 4,000 Eritreans were fleeing the country each month for Europe and the Middle East.

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At a time when globalization is allowing vast streams of capital to reach the developing world, the so-called “emerging markets,” Eritrea has missed the boat. The only semblance of a functional economy is a thriving black market and government-sponsored arms smuggling.

Instead of erecting attractive infrastructure (the Dubai approach) or creating business parks for outsourced factories (the Vietnam approach) Eritrea is feuding with its immediate neighbors Ethiopia (the arch-enemy), Djibouti, and Somalia. The Afewerki regime doesn’t seem to have any plans for the long-term other than perpetuate itself—not surprising, really.

Not even NGOs are spared and these groups have been outlawed since 2006.

Poor and isolated, Eritrea is now allowing Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to run military facilities in exchange for unspecified aid. It’s also using the 18^th century Hesse-Kassel model of exporting its soldiers—unconfirmed reports claim they’re being hired as mercenaries by the Saudis to fight in Yemen.

In 2015 the country was ravaged by drought.

Where did Eritrea go wrong?

Judging by the trajectories of failed states in the 20^th century there are five outcomes for Eritrea in the near future.

1. Regime change and democratic reformation.
2. Whither away and collapse like East Germany.
3. Become an aid-dependent hermit kingdom like North Korea that’s targeted for regime change.
4. Break apart amid civil strife like Syria.
5. Eventually be defeated and occupied by Ethiopia in a future war.

Students and scholars of the modern state have much to learn from the Eritrean experience. The simple lesson here is the military institution alone, while vital, doesn’t complete a country.

*Miguel Miranda is a writer based in the Philippines. He’s the founder of 21^st Century Asian Arms Race (21AAR). It’s a website that follows commerce in modern weapon systems and their impact on ongoing wars and crises across the Eurasian landmass.