That touches on why TCO/TCE is desirable, but it doesn't address why the Rust devs chose to use a keyword for guaranteed TCE.
One of the things I forget to give thanks to the Rust designers for is the default of immutability. I remember my days in a Java environment where policy was "everything needs to be declared final" (so "final" got spattered all over the place) with zero nostalgia. Requiring TCE callees to explicitly represent themselves as TCE-friendly would be the same sort of abomination.
Having a way to guarantee TCO/TCE is essential for some cases, yes. GP's question, though, was why a keyword specifically and not a hypothetical attribute that effectively does the same thing.