Bragging About Jets While a Nation Bleeds

by @Dahlakib

As Ethiopia continues to face internal wars, economic decline, and a deep humanitarian crisis, recent public statements by the Prime Minister boasting about advanced fighter jets expose a troubling disconnect between leadership rhetoric and national reality. In times of confidence, leaders speak about peace, reconstruction, education, and prosperity. In times of insecurity, they often turn to military symbolism.

Publicly circulating economic indicators paint a grim picture. A large share of federally registered businesses have reportedly become inactive, hundreds of thousands have disappeared from official registries, and thousands of jobs have been lost, affecting tens of millions of people. The National Bank of Ethiopia itself has acknowledged massive losses, including severe foreign-exchange shortages and operating deficits. These are not abstract figures; they are signs of institutional and economic distress.

Behind the numbers lies widespread human suffering. Families have lost income, millions have been displaced, and countless children remain out of school due to insecurity and conflict. By internationally recognized standards, Ethiopia today exhibits multiple indicators of advanced state fragility: fractured control over violence, erosion of public trust, weakened institutions, and an inability to consistently provide basic services.

Rather than addressing these urgent crises, the government has increasingly relied on military rhetoric and confrontation with neighbors, particularly through the repeated invocation of “access to the sea.” This narrative deliberately blurs a critical distinction. Ethiopia has never been denied commercial access to ports. What neighboring states have rejected, legitimately and consistently, is ownership or coercive control over their sovereign coastline. By conflating access with ownership, a negotiable economic issue is transformed into a nationalist grievance designed to divert attention from internal failure.

Military boasting, when paired with such rhetoric, does not signal strength. It signals insecurity. History shows that leaders presiding over internal instability and economic decline often externalize blame and manufacture threats abroad. This approach may rally short-term attention, but it carries serious risks for a fragile Horn of Africa already burdened by conflict and mistrust.

It is also important to state a simple truth: any country can acquire military hardware if manufacturers are willing to sell it. Owning weapons is not an achievement; it is a transaction. What matters is purpose. Using hardware and threats to distract from domestic crises only accelerates economic destruction and deepens misery. Bragging about jets does not rebuild an economy, put children back in school, or heal a fractured society.

Nor does such posturing offer strategic advantage. The neighbors being undermined are neither incapable nor defenseless; they too have the potential to acquire similar hardware if they choose. Escalation therefore promises no winners, only drained economies, prolonged suffering, and regional instability.

True national strength is not measured by the type of aircraft a country owns, but by its ability to protect civilians, educate its children, sustain its economy, and coexist peacefully with its neighbors. Peace and prosperity are built through restraint, cooperation, and responsible leaderships, not through weapons, threats, or manufactured grievances.