Ethiopia’s renewed hostility toward Eritrea is being framed as a struggle for “historical access to the Red Sea.” But strip away the slogans, and a more unsettling story emerges. Ethiopia’s leadership is turning toward external confrontation not because it needs a port, but because it is running out of political space at home. The threat of conflict with Eritrea is less a strategic calculation than a desperate attempt to stabilize a country drifting toward fragmentation. This is not about the sea. This is about survival.
A State Unraveling From Within
Ethiopia today is grappling with one of the deepest governance crises in its modern history. Federal authority has eroded in Oromia, where competing insurgent groups and federal forces fight for control. The Amhara region is locked in a cycle of confrontation with Addis Ababa, with Fano militias defying repeated attempts at disarmament. Tigray, still reeling from the devastating war of 2020–2022, remains politically fragile and economically shattered. Somali, Benishangul and Gambella regions live under persistent uncertainty, struggling to trust a federal government they perceive as increasingly inconsistent.
The Ethiopian economy is suffering under inflation, currency collapse and mounting debt. The national army is visibly strained by ethnic fragmentation. Institutions designed to integrate the country have instead become arenas of competing loyalties.
Amid this profound internal dislocation, Ethiopia’s ruling class has reached for a familiar political instrument: an external enemy powerful enough to momentarily quiet domestic fractures. Eritrea has been cast in that role once again.
The “Sea Access” Narrative: A Convenient Mask
Ethiopia’s leaders insist that regaining access to the Red Sea is an existential necessity. Yet the facts tell a different story. Ethiopia has relied on Djibouti’s ports consistently for decades. Negotiations with Somalia offer additional maritime options. No commercial crisis compels Ethiopia to threaten a sovereign neighbor.
Why, then, is Addis Ababa escalating?
Because the symbolism of “historic access to the sea” offers a narrative powerful enough to redirect public anger and obscure domestic failures. It turns complex political questions into emotional slogans. And it plays on a deep, unresolved feature of Ethiopian statehood: the belief that national unity can be manufactured through territorial ambition rather than built through political inclusion. In this sense, Ethiopia’s maritime rhetoric is not a geopolitical claim. It is political sedative.
A Century-Long Pattern of Externalizing Internal Crisis
What is unfolding today fits a long historical arc. From the late nineteenth century onward, Ethiopia’s rulers have repeatedly used Eritrea to reinforce their own legitimacy.
Menelik II’s imperial expansion sought strategic depth and symbolic power. Haile Selassie’s illegal 1962 annexation of Eritrea attempted to present himself as the guardian of Ethiopian territorial destiny. The Derg launched brutal campaigns to crush Eritrean liberation wars designed as much for domestic control as military victory. The TPLF-led EPRDF used a two-track policy: diplomacy on the surface, economic and political pressure underneath.
In each chapter, Eritrea became the terrain on which Ethiopian rulers tried to resolve domestic insecurity. Abiy Ahmed’s shift from reconciliation in 2018 to expansionist rhetoric in 2023–2025 is not a break from tradition. It is the latest act in a long, familiar script.
Why Eritrea’s Stability Irritates Ethiopian Elites
Eritrea is not without its own burdens. Political space is narrow. Civic freedoms are constrained. Economic hardship has shaped daily life for years. Young people struggle with limited opportunities. These realities deserve acknowledgment. Yet Eritrea has also maintained something Ethiopia has struggled to achieve across successive governments: national coherence.
- No competing militias.
- No ethnically-defined administrations.
- No parallel power centers.
Stable borders. - Equal citizenship not divided by ethnic quotas.
- Low crime and high internal security.
- A consistent foreign policy.
- A strong, if rigid, ethos of social justice and fairness in resource distribution.
Eritrea’s cohesion achieved despite extraordinary economic and geopolitical pressure—stands in stark contrast to Ethiopia’s fragmentation. For Ethiopian elites, this comparison is painful. A smaller, poorer state has managed to avoid the ethnic implosion that now threatens Ethiopia’s survival. Resentment grows where comparison stings. And resentment easily morphs into political hostility.
The Manufactured Logic of War
The belief that conflict with Eritrea could unify Ethiopia is rooted in political fantasy. External confrontation has never delivered lasting cohesion in Ethiopia. In fact, history shows the opposite: every previous attempt to use war as a source of unity eventually deepened internal fractures.
A conflict with Eritrea would not solve the uprising in Amhara, the turmoil in Oromia or the instability in Tigray. It would not strengthen the Ethiopian economy. It would not rebuild trust in institutions. It would not resolve Ethiopia’s long-standing crisis of identity. It would simply redirect the crisis outward, for a moment—before the consequences came crashing back.
A Region at Risk
Any Ethiopian attempt to manufacture conflict places the entire Horn of Africa at risk. The Red Sea corridor is already under pressure from global power competition, shipping disruptions and the war in Sudan. A new conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea would destabilize one of the world’s most strategic maritime regions.
Djibouti’s economy could collapse.
Somalia’s fragile political gains would come under strain.
Sudan’s war could spill further east.
Gulf and global powers could be drawn into a widening confrontation.
Shipping through Bab el-Mandeb one of the world’s busiest chokepoints could be compromised. The geopolitical costs of Ethiopian adventurism would be staggering.
Eritrea’s Measured Posture
Eritrea has not threatened Ethiopia. It has not mobilized offensively. Its diplomacy has emphasized stability, sovereignty and non-interference. It knows the price of war more deeply than any nation in the region.
Eritrea’s caution is often misconstrued as aloofness. But it is better understood as statecraft: the discipline of a nation that has paid for its independence with immense human cost and is unwilling to gamble its security on political theatrics unfolding next door.
The Core Truth
Ethiopia is not seeking the sea. It is seeking a distraction powerful enough to silence the chaos within its borders. Eritrea is not the obstacle Ethiopia portrays; it is simply the nearest political canvas onto which a desperate government is projecting its insecurities.
The Horn of Africa cannot afford another conflict engineered to rescue a failing political class. Eritrea deserves security from crises it did not create. Ethiopia deserves leaders willing to confront the country’s real problems rather than exporting them across the border. War will not build Ethiopia. It will only expose its fractures. Until Ethiopia’s leaders accept that, the danger of manufactured confrontation will remain and so will the risk it poses to millions across the region.
