Ethiopia’s Current Narrative as a Cover for a Much Older Ambition

By Alula Frezghi

The most revealing aspect of Ethiopia’s Ruling Party pundits is not what they say about Iran or the Houthis, but what they reveal about Ethiopia and a recurring strand of Ethiopian geopolitical thinking. On the surface, their articles present themselves as a warning about Houthi expansion and Iranian influence in the Red Sea. Beneath that framing, however, lies a much older argument: the belief that Ethiopia’s size, population, economic needs, or strategic aspirations confer upon it exceptional rights over the territory, resources, and geopolitical choices of its neighbors.

This idea is hardly new. It has appeared in different forms throughout modern history—at times as imperial destiny, at others as historical entitlement, regional integration, economic necessity, or strategic imperative. Today, it increasingly appears in the language of maritime access and Red Sea security. The vocabulary changes, but the underlying premise remains remarkably consistent: Eritrea’s coastline cannot simply be Eritrean. Somehow, it must also accommodate a larger Ethiopian strategic purpose. That assumption, not Eritrean sovereignty, Eritrean independence, or Eritrea’s refusal to join someone else’s military alignment, is what risks destabilizing the region. The danger begins when the sovereign territory of an independent state is treated not as a settled fact, but as a geopolitical problem requiring correction.

That distinction is essential because it shifts the discussion away from the immediate accusations surrounding Iran and the Houthis and toward the more fundamental question beneath them: who is actually seeking to alter the established political and territorial order in the Horn of Africa? If Eritrea’s position is that its internationally recognized borders and sovereign authority should remain intact, while voices in Ethiopia increasingly question whether those arrangements adequately serve Ethiopian strategic interests, then the charge of revisionism deserves much closer examination.

The Real Revisionists Are Not in Asmara

For more than three decades, Eritrea’s position has been straightforward: its sovereignty is non-negotiable, its internationally recognized territory is its own, and its coastline falls under Eritrean sovereignty. There is nothing inherently radical about these propositions. They reflect basic principles of the modern international system.

What deserves closer scrutiny is the increasingly open discussion in some Ethiopian political and intellectual circles of “historical rights,” “natural access,” “strategic necessity,” “divine right”, or supposedly inevitable claims involving Red Sea territories belonging to neighboring sovereign states. Whatever terminology is employed, the underlying question remains the same: whether Ethiopia’s strategic needs can create rights over territory beyond its internationally recognized borders.

No amount of diplomatic packaging resolves that contradiction. A state cannot fully recognize the sovereignty of its neighbor while simultaneously suggesting that the neighbor’s most strategically valuable assets must ultimately be subordinated to its own national interests.

Sovereignty has meaning precisely because it does not depend upon whether a neighboring state finds the existing geography convenient. It means that a country retains ultimate authority over its territory, coastline, ports, islands, and territorial waters regardless of the strategic ambitions of others.

The issue, therefore, cannot be resolved by repeatedly invoking history, geography, population, or strategic necessity. If Ethiopia believes that its landlocked status creates rights extending beyond its internationally recognized borders, those claims must ultimately be measured against something more authoritative than political rhetoric or historical grievance. They must be measured against the principles governing sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the rights of landlocked states under international law. It is at precisely this point that the distinction between legitimate maritime access and territorial entitlement becomes unavoidable.

Ethiopia’s Maritime Argument Begins Where International Law Ends

Landlockedness is neither unusual nor, by itself, a basis for territorial claims against neighboring states. There are 44 landlocked countries in the world: 16 in Africa, 14 in Europe, 12 in Asia, and two in South America. Some are among the world’s largest states. Kazakhstan, at approximately 2.7 million square kilometers, is the largest landlocked country, followed by Mongolia, Chad, Niger, and Mali. Three of these five: Chad, Niger, and Mali, are in Africa. Yet neither their geographic size nor their economic needs, population, or proximity to the sea gives them sovereign rights over the territory or coastline of their neighbors.

International law recognizes the particular challenges faced by landlocked states and provides mechanisms through which they can secure access to and from the sea. Transit arrangements, port agreements, infrastructure partnerships, and other forms of bilateral and regional cooperation can provide reliable maritime access without altering international borders or transferring sovereignty over another state’s territory.

What international law does not provide is a doctrine of geopolitical inheritance under which a landlocked state acquires territorial rights because it once had occupied by force a coastline, considers maritime access strategically necessary, has a large and growing population, faces recurring economic or humanitarian pressures, or regards its present geography as inconvenient. Whatever historical arguments may be advanced about previous possession, territorial sovereignty does not arise from nostalgia, demographic weight, strategic impatience, or economic necessity.

This is why the distinction between access and ownership is so important. Ethiopia’s desire for reliable, affordable, and diversified access to international shipping routes is understandable for a landlocked country small or large. But the need for maritime access does not create a sovereign claim to another country’s coastline. The more constructive question is not whether Ethiopia needs access to the sea, but how Ethiopia can obtain that access while respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors.

That, in turn, raises the question Ethiopia should be asking: How can it build sufficient trust with Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan to secure reliable, affordable, and diversified access to global maritime trade? Geography has placed Ethiopia among these neighbors, and geography cannot be changed by political rhetoric. Long-term maritime security therefore depends upon making cooperation with them mutually beneficial.

Ethiopia’s current posture and political grandstanding are unlikely to advance that objective. A confrontational approach risks alienating precisely the coastal states whose cooperation Ethiopia requires. This applies not only to Eritrea, Somalia, and Kenya but potentially to Djibouti, the country through which the overwhelming majority of Ethiopia’s maritime trade currently passes. A country seeking to diversify and strengthen its access to the sea has little to gain from creating insecurity among the neighbors upon whom that access ultimately depends.

The problem becomes more serious when maritime access is discussed not as something to be negotiated but as an entitlement. Some Ethiopian political commentary increasingly frames the issue as though the sovereignty of neighboring coastal states, particularly Eritrea, must ultimately accommodate Ethiopia’s strategic requirements. Once the argument shifts from obtaining the right to use a port to asserting a right over the territory in which that port is located, the discussion has moved beyond commerce, transit, and economic integration. It has become a question of territorial power.

The implications extend well beyond Ethiopia and Eritrea. If population size, economic necessity, historical possession, or strategic importance were sufficient to establish territorial rights, the borders of many of the world’s 44 landlocked states, and those of their coastal neighbors, could be called into question. The international system operates on a different principle: the disadvantages imposed by geography are addressed through diplomacy, treaties, transit rights, commercial arrangements, infrastructure, and regional cooperation, not through unilateral territorial entitlement.

History offers ample warning about what happens when larger states convince themselves that their security or economic requirements supersede the sovereignty of smaller neighbors. Such thinking rarely produces lasting security. Instead, it tends to generate mistrust, resistance, militarization, and conflict, the very instability that reliable maritime access requires states to avoid.

For Ethiopia, as for every other landlocked country, the sustainable path to the sea therefore lies in transforming geography into cooperation rather than transforming economic necessity into territorial entitlement. Ethiopia can negotiate access, diversify its trade corridors, invest in ports and transportation infrastructure, and build mutually beneficial economic relationships with its neighbors. Indeed, doing so could provide Ethiopia with more secure and diversified maritime access than territorial confrontation ever could.

Yet the dispute is not solely about ports, coastlines, or the legal distinction between access and sovereignty. Beneath the maritime argument lies another, equally important disagreement: whether Eritrea is entitled not only to control its territory but also to determine its own foreign policy. Once Eritrean sovereignty over its coastline is accepted, the question shifts naturally from geography to political agency. Why, then, is Eritrea’s refusal to align itself with the strategic preferences of Ethiopia or other powers so often interpreted as evidence of obstructionism, isolation, or foreign manipulation?

Eritrea’s Strategic Offense Is Its Independence

This is where the central irony in the argument advanced by some of Abiy Ahmed’s supporters becomes apparent. The case against Eritrea does not appear to rest on publicly demonstrated evidence that Asmara has entered into an operational alliance with the Houthis. Instead, Eritrea’s refusal to organize its foreign policy around the strategic preferences of others becomes the basis for speculation, with conjecture filling the space where evidence should be.

When Eritrea declines to participate in externally designed military arrangements, some Ethiopian commentators portray its position as obstructionism. When it emphasizes sovereignty, they characterize it as isolationism. When it pursues an independent diplomatic course, they search for hidden motives. And when Eritrea refuses to fit neatly into one geopolitical camp or another, a foreign power is often invoked to explain its behavior.

This pattern points to a deeper disagreement over how Eritrean agency itself is understood. Some Ethiopian commentators appear reluctant to accept that Eritrea can act as an autonomous political actor pursuing what its government considers its own national interests. One possible explanation is projection: Ethiopian foreign policy has long been shaped by relationships with major external powers and international partners, and critics of Addis Ababa have frequently characterized those relationships as forms of dependency. Viewed through that lens, independent action by Asmara is interpreted in the same way—as something that must have an external sponsor.

Hence the recurring search for another capital supposedly standing behind Eritrea: Tehran, Washington, Abu Dhabi, Moscow, or whichever external power best fits the narrative of the moment. The possibility that Eritrean policy might originate in Asmara itself is too readily discounted.

Yet Eritrea’s insistence on political autonomy did not begin with the present Red Sea crisis. The Eritrean movement that emerged during the independence struggle developed a strong tradition of self-reliance and resistance to external political tutelage. Whatever one thinks of the policies pursued by successive Eritrean organizations and, later, the Eritrean state, the determination to chart an independent course has been a recurring feature of Eritrean political thought for decades. The principle has been remarkably consistent: alliances may change, circumstances may change, and partnerships may change, but Eritrea reserves the right to determine its own course rather than subordinate its sovereignty to a larger power.

That history makes the reflexive search for a foreign hand behind every Eritrean decision particularly revealing. It risks mistaking independence for proxy politics and autonomy for conspiracy. More fundamentally, it reveals more about the framework through which some Ethiopian commentators interpret Eritrean agency than it does about Eritrea’s actual foreign policy.

This tendency to deny Eritrean agency becomes particularly consequential when it is projected onto the wider Red Sea crisis. A narrative that begins by questioning Eritrea’s independent foreign policy can easily evolve into one that portrays Eritrean sovereignty itself as a regional security problem. At that point, allegations about Iran and the Houthis are no longer merely accusations about foreign alignment; they become part of a broader argument about who should control strategic space in the Red Sea. That is why the discussion must return to the larger question of what kind of regional order can actually produce lasting security.

The Red Sea Does Not Need Another Imperial Imagination

The current crisis in the Red Sea deserves serious and evidence-based analysis. Commercial shipping has faced significant threats, regional rivalries have intensified, and the need for an effective maritime-security framework has become increasingly urgent. Addressing these challenges requires cooperation among the Red Sea littoral states, international maritime powers, and relevant regional and international institutions.

What the region does not need is the revival of old territorial ambitions repackaged in the language of maritime security.

Claims that Eritrea is becoming an Iranian or Houthi proxy should therefore be judged by the evidence presented to support them, rather than by speculation or geopolitical convenience. From an Eritrean perspective, the rhetoric has an unmistakably familiar quality. Successive Ethiopian governments have previously portrayed Eritrean policies and movements through the prism of alleged foreign sponsorship rather than Eritrean political agency.

During the armed struggle for independence, the Derg routinely depicted the Eritrean liberation movement as an instrument of foreign—particularly Arab—forces rather than acknowledging the indigenous political and historical roots of the conflict. Decades later, during the TPLF-led government, allegations of Eritrean involvement with armed groups in Somalia again became central to the political narrative surrounding Eritrea. The evidence advanced through the Somalia monitoring process, claiming weapons whose serial numbers were doctored, phantom flights to Somalia, and fabricated logistical support for Somali insurgents had their roots in Addis Ababa.

The historical parallel is important because the political function of the narrative remains similar: when Eritrean actions cannot easily be explained within an Ethiopian strategic framework, they are attributed to an external sponsor. Yesterday it was “Arab reactionary forces” supposedly directing Eritrea’s liberation struggle; later it was alleged Eritrean sponsorship of Somali insurgents; today it is Iran and the Houthis. The actors change. The accusation changes. The underlying logic and Ethiopian regimes fabrications remain strikingly familiar.

Falshoods of an Eritrean-Iranian or Eritrean-Houthi alignment is not a serious security analysis but a political narrative that portrays Eritrea’s independent control of its strategic geography as inherently suspicious. That distinction matters, particularly when such allegations become intertwined with arguments concerning Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea.

The fundamental question, therefore, extends well beyond Iran or the Houthis. It is whether Eritrea is entitled to exercise the same sovereign authority over its territory, coastline, ports, territorial waters, and foreign policy that international law recognizes for other sovereign states.

From the Eritrean perspective, the answer is straightforward. Eritrea’s sovereign rights were not granted by Ethiopia. They do not depend upon Ethiopia’s strategic requirements, and they cannot be redefined whenever regional circumstances or Ethiopian priorities change. 

The Red Sea has room for cooperation, commerce, transit, and mutually beneficial economic integration. What it cannot safely accommodate is the revival of an older political doctrine in which the sovereignty of smaller states becomes negotiable whenever the strategic ambitions of larger neighbors demand it. That is not a formula for maritime security. It is a prescription for precisely the instability that regional security arrangements are supposed to prevent.