Lake Success and the Western Script: How Eritrea’s Autonomy Was Traded for Cold War Comfort

The Irony of “Success”

In the quiet suburb of Lake Success, New York, the post-war world was rewritten by men who claimed to be freeing it. From 1949 to 1952, inside what used to be a Sperry Gyroscope war factory, the newly formed United Nations sat in judgment over the future of Africa’s Red Sea coast. Their task: to decide the fate of Eritrea, one of Italy’s former colonies. Their result: to trade its freedom for the comfort of Cold War alliances.

The irony was rich. The UN, founded on the ashes of global war, held its early sessions inside a weapons plant — a peace factory literally built on a war machine. And in those rooms, Eritrea’s destiny was determined not by the will of its people but by the calculations of Western powers seeking to lock down the Horn of Africa.

The great powers called it a federation. Eritreans called it occupation with legal paperwork.

Resolution 390 A (V): The Blueprint of a Betrayal

By December 2, 1950, after months of debate at Lake Success, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 390 A (V) — the so-called “federation plan.” On paper, it sounded like progress:

> “Eritrea shall constitute an autonomous unit federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian Crown.”

To Western diplomats, this was a compromise. To Eritreans, it was the beginning of a long silence.

The United States and Britain, fearful of Soviet influence spreading along the Red Sea, wanted a reliable ally in the region. Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie, eager to expand his empire, promised loyalty to Washington and London. In return, he was granted Eritrea — thinly veiled as a “federated partner.”

The Americans, soon to build the massive Kagnew Station base in Asmara, needed stability — not sovereignty. The British wanted to maintain maritime routes and avoid another nationalist government on the Red Sea.

Thus, the language of liberation became the lexicon of control.

Eritrea’s supposed autonomy was written by the same hands that wrote its dependency.

The Disappearance of Autonomy

The Eritrean Federation officially began on 15 September 1952, with promises of local governance, a parliament, and a constitution. For a fleeting moment, the illusion of independence flickered: Eritrea had its own flag, its own anthem, and its own voice in government.

But the blueprint of betrayal had already been set in motion. Within just a few years:

1955 – Haile Selassie undermined the constitution and dissolved Eritrea’s parliament.

1958 – Eritrea’s blue flag was banned and replaced with Ethiopia’s tricolor.

1962 – Eritrea was fully annexed and declared Ethiopia’s 14th province.

Every clause of Resolution 390 A was violated, and the United Nations, which had engineered this federation, stood by in silence.

That silence was not incompetence — it was intentional omission. Western diplomats knew what was happening, but their “strategic partner” in Addis Ababa was too valuable to discipline. The Cold War needed Ethiopia as a fortress, and Eritrea was the wall built to protect it.

The Western Script: Stability Over Sovereignty

To understand the decision at Lake Success, one must strip away the diplomatic language and follow the geopolitical wiring.

The Western powers wanted three outcomes:

1. Access to the Red Sea — controlled by a Western-aligned state.

2. Containment of Soviet influence in Africa and the Middle East.

3. Control of newly emerging nations through “legalized” dependency.

Eritrea’s federation achieved all three. It gave the United States a base for intelligence gathering. It gave Britain continuity of maritime control through its ally Ethiopia. And it gave the United Nations the illusion of having “solved” a colonial problem without angering the colonial powers.

This wasn’t diplomacy — it was the first rehearsal of neo-colonialism. The Eritrean federation was the prototype for a new kind of empire, one that didn’t need armies to occupy land — just resolutions, partnerships, and “development assistance.”

Eritrea’s cries for justice became background noise to the Western chorus of “stability.” It was a familiar script, one that would later be copied across Africa — from Congo to Libya to Sudan.

From Lake Success to the Red Sea: The Echoes of a Design

Eritrea’s eventual independence in 1993 was not the triumph of UN diplomacy but the correction of UN betrayal. The thirty-year war that followed the annexation wasn’t born from rebellion — it was the inevitable response to a stolen promise.

Lake Success symbolizes more than a decision. It represents a philosophy:

> That Western comfort outweighs African consent.

The same mindset echoes today when Ethiopian officials speak of “sovereign sea access” as if history has forgotten the ink spilled in 1950. The same Western think tanks that once justified federation now rationalize “regional integration,” echoing the same convenient logic of access and alliance.

Lake Success didn’t free Eritrea — it institutionalized dependency. It was where the rhetoric of peace met the machinery of empire. A place where the victors of one war drafted the blueprints for the next.

So when we revisit that era, let’s remember:

Eritrea wasn’t federated — it was negotiated away.

And the lake that bore the name “Success” stands today as the most polite monument to global hypocrisy ever built.