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In 1984, harrowing images of the Ethiopian famine shocked the world. A drought compounded by civil war and authoritarian policies had created what one BBC report called “the closest thing to hell on earth,” as hundreds of thousands faced starvation. The crisis was “officially ascribed to drought” but in truth was deeply political: Ethiopia’s Marxist government, locked in a Cold War-era insurgency, implemented brutal resettlement programs and withheld aid from rebel regions, greatly magnifying the disaster. An estimated 400,000 to 1 million people died in the 1983–85 famine, a tragedy rooted not only in nature but in global inequality and…