This talk examines a defining paradox: Ethiopia’s pursuit of sovereign autonomy through new global alliances coincides with a dramatic intensification of internal violence. Is this a contradiction, or does it reveal limits in our analysis? Ernst Gombrich’s rabbit-duck: one image can be seen as either animal, but not both. Our perception is conditioned by what we expect to see. Similarly, the dominant frameworks for understanding Ethiopia—the rabbit of ‘proxy competition’ or the duck of ‘ethnic strife’—force a singular, closed interpretation. The paradox appears because we use inadequate tools. Our task is to hold both images together and to trace how a sovereign foreign policy reconfigures internal capacities and incentives, often with violent consequences. This requires a structural analysis that bridges international relations with anthropology, examining how global systems interact with local social structures to produce outcomes on the ground.

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Ethiopia,Conflict,International relations,Anthropology