Ethiopia’s Stubborn Choice: War Over Peace

by Yemane Abselom

Peace Was Always an Option. Ethiopia Never Chose I

For more than seven decades, Eritreans have waited—patiently, often painfully—for an Ethiopian leadership willing to replace coercion with coexistence. Across successive regimes, Eritrea extended a consistent hope: that its neighbor would finally accept equality, sovereignty, and mutual benefit as the basis for peace. Each time, that hope was met not with dialogue but with domination—an enduring belief that size and military power could substitute for legitimacy. The result has been a tragic continuity of violence, broken promises, and devastated lives.

Empire and Betrayal: The Federal Compact Destroyed

The postwar settlement brokered by the United Nations federated Eritrea with Ethiopia under imperial rule. Rather than nurture a genuine federation that respected Eritrean autonomy, the imperial state dismantled it unilaterally—abolishing Eritrea’s institutions, suppressing political rights, and extinguishing lawful self-rule. When resistance emerged, the response was scorched earth: collective punishment, village burnings, mass arrests, and terror campaigns aimed at breaking a people’s will. Peace was never attempted; force was presumed sufficient.

Militarized Socialism and Total War

By the time the imperial regime fell, Eritrean liberation forces had freed nearly the entire territory. The door to negotiation stood open. Instead, the military junta doubled down on annihilation—air raids on civilians, mass executions, and systematic destruction of infrastructure painstakingly built over decades. Even foreign allies who recognized the war’s futility urged talks. They were refused. Eritrea would be subdued—or destroyed trying.

Comrades Turned Combatants

Independence in 1991 created a historic chance to reset relations. Many believed a new leadership in Addis Ababa would choose cooperation. Instead, a manageable border issue was escalated into a catastrophic interstate war. The objective was not compromise but coercion—talk of overthrowing Eritrea’s government and installing a compliant regime. Tens of thousands perished. Once again, war was chosen where peace was possible.

Rhetoric Without Restraint

The rise of a new prime minister rekindled cautious optimism. Peace was promised; cooperation invoked. But words soon yielded to threats. Public declarations about acquiring Eritrea’s sovereign port of Aseb — “peacefully if possible, by force if necessary” — and vows to pass expansionist claims to future generations marked a return to the old creed: might makes right. The language of inevitability replaced the discipline of diplomacy.

The Pattern That Will Not Break

Some Eritreans once believed the problem lay with particular elites—imperial courtiers, military juntas, narrow party cadres. Others hoped that leadership drawn from historically marginalized communities would chart a different course. Each hope collapsed against the same reality: regardless of who governs in Addis Ababa, the temptation to impose rather than negotiate has prevailed.

The Real Cost of Choosing War: Lives, Time, and a Stolen Future

Beyond the battlefield, Ethiopia’s repeated choice of war over peace has exacted a devastating and irreversible price—not only on Eritrea, but on Ethiopia itself. Generations were pulled from schools and farms into trenches. Families were shattered; productive lives were consumed by wars that delivered neither security nor dignity.

The economic toll is equally stark. Resources that could have transformed both societies—land, labor, water, ports, trade routes—were diverted into weapons, mobilization, and rebuilding after self-inflicted destruction. Each conflict reset development clocks. Budgets that should have built roads, schools, irrigation, and industry were burned sustaining wars that solved nothing.

Ethiopia bears the long shadow of this failure. Chronic conflict entrenched poverty, weakened institutions, normalized emergency rule, and fueled dependency. This was not inevitable. It was the consequence of choices. Decades that could have created a shared economic space—integrated markets, complementary infrastructure, and regional trade—were wasted on cycles of destruction.

Most irreparable of all was time. Entire decades vanished—years that could never be recovered. Future generations of Ethiopians cannot be asked to relive this cycle: to choose poverty and permanent mobilization to satisfy expansionist dreams that history has already discredited, when peace and development offer a far more powerful path.

A Closing Choice

Eritrea did not seek enmity. It sought a neighbor willing to live by the same rules it demands of others: sovereignty, reciprocity, and restraint. Each successive Ethiopian regime rejected that bargain, wagering—again and again—that force would succeed where respect might have worked.

History’s verdict is unambiguous. War has been tried—repeatedly. It has failed—consistently. It failed to subjugate Eritrea, failed to bring prosperity to Ethiopia, and failed to deliver stability to the region. The remaining choice is stark: persist in a doctrine that guarantees stagnation and suffering, or finally accept that peace, equality, and cooperation are not concessions, but the only foundations on which both peoples can build a future.

Eritrea’s position is clear. Peace remains possible. But it cannot be built on threats, nostalgia, or force. It can only be built when war is no longer treated as an option—and when power finally yields to principle.