Access is Negotiable, Sovereignty is Not!

Eritrea, Ethiopia, and the Dangerous Recasting of the Red Sea Question

By Alula Frezghi

A subtle but consequential transformation is unfolding in Ethiopia’s discourse on the Red Sea.

What was once presented primarily as a question of commercial access is increasingly framed as a question of sovereign access. What began as a debate over trade corridors and logistics is now being recast by influential Ethiopian officials, policymakers, and state institutions as a matter of economic sovereignty, historical justice, strategic autonomy, and even national survival. This is not merely a change in vocabulary. It is a change in doctrine. Access is negotiable. Sovereignty is not.

Geography explains dependence; it does not create sovereignty. Landlocked states may negotiate transit agreements, lease port facilities, establish commercial corridors, and participate in regional maritime-security arrangements. What they cannot do is convert economic dependence into a territorial claim over a neighboring sovereign state.

History is not a title deed. Ethiopia’s modern relationship with the Red Sea arose through its federation with Eritrea in 1952; it did not confer historical ownership of Eritrea or its coastline. Communities and rulers in the Abyssinian highlands, including areas of present-day Amhara and Tigray, may at various times have traded through Red Sea ports, including in slaves and weapons. But access, commerce, and historical association are not the same as sovereignty, nor do they create a modern territorial claim.

Eritrea’s sovereignty developed through its own distinct historical and legal trajectory. Its modern territorial boundaries took shape under Italian colonial rule beginning in 1890, decades before the present Ethiopian state assumed its modern territorial form. Whatever commercial or political connections earlier Abyssinian rulers maintained with the Red Sea, those connections cannot simply be converted into a contemporary title to Eritrean territory or sovereign access to its coastline.

Eritrea is not required to apologize for having a coastline. Population size does not determine sovereignty. A strategic desire for maritime access may be understandable, but it is not the same as entitlement.

Defending Eritrean sovereignty does not require hostility toward Ethiopia. A prosperous and stable Ethiopia benefits the entire Horn of Africa. The real question is not whether Ethiopia needs maritime access. The question is how such access is obtained.

A cooperative framework built on commercial agreements, transit corridors, investment, and joint infrastructure development can serve the interests of both Eritrea and Ethiopia. Such a framework once existed, but it collapsed with the outbreak of war in 1998. The opportunity to rebuild it after the 2018 rapprochement was likewise squandered as relations again deteriorated amid the conflicts and political realignments that followed the war in Tigray.

The path forward should therefore rest on negotiated economic cooperation, mutual benefit, and respect for internationally recognized borders, not assertions of sovereign entitlement. Ethiopia can pursue reliable commercial access to the Red Sea through agreements with Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya just as landlocked states elsewhere secure access to ports through negotiated arrangements with their neighbors. Any framework that transforms a legitimate economic need for maritime access into a claim of sovereign right over another country’s territory risks replacing cooperation with confrontation.

Here is a sharper version that preserves the strong closing cadence:

The Red Sea is too strategically important to be governed by territorial revisionism. Massawa, Assab, the Dahlak Archipelago, and Eritrea’s coastline lie within the territory of an internationally recognized sovereign state. Their strategic importance does not diminish Eritrea’s sovereignty over them.

Ultimately, the sustainable choice is partnership rather than territorial expansion. Ethiopia’s economic interest in dependable access to maritime trade and Eritrea’s, Djibouti’s or Somali sovereignty need not be mutually exclusive. Both can be accommodated through negotiated port access, commercial agreements, infrastructure investment, regional cooperation, and respect for internationally recognized borders.

The Red Sea needs states that recognize the fundamental distinction between access to a port and sovereignty over it. One can be negotiated without surrendering the other.

Access is negotiable. Sovereignty is not.