Maritime Mirage, Imperial Illusion: Ethiopia’s Foreign Policy in Crisis

By Ogbazgy A. Asmerom

Ethiopia’s foreign policy has long been marked by incoherence, opportunism, and dependency on external patrons. From the Cold War through the present day, Addis Ababa has oscillated between Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and the Gulf states, pursuing influence and access to the Red Sea without a coherent strategic doctrine. This essay traces Ethiopia’s destabilizing role in the Horn of Africa, from its forced federation with Eritrea under U.S. and British pressure to its present maritime obsession under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Ethiopia’s historical record exposes a paradox: a landlocked state attempting to dominate coastal neighbors, while never forging an internally stable or consistent vision for itself or the region.

Ethiopia’s role as “gatekeeper of the Red Sea” was not self-determined but designated by outside powers. Following Italy’s defeat in 1941, the British dismantled Eritrea’s infrastructure and blocked its independent trajectory. Washington soon followed, reducing Eritrea to a bargaining chip in its Cold War strategy.

In the 1950s, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told the United Nations:

“From the point of view of justice, the opinions of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless, the strategic interest of the United States in the Red Sea basin and the considerations of security and world peace make it necessary that the country be linked with our ally Ethiopia.”

Here, justice was openly sacrificed for strategy. The British facilitated the federation of Eritrea with Ethiopia in 1952, inaugurating what many called “a marriage of unequals.” Eritrea had functioning democratic institutions; Ethiopia was a feudal monarchy under Haile Selassie.

By 1962, Addis Ababa abrogated the federal arrangement and annexed Eritrea outright. The United Nations, the supposed guarantor, stood mute. Eritreans responded with armed struggle in 1961, launching one of the longest liberation wars in modern history. After 30 years of sacrifice, resilience, and unity, Eritrea achieved independence in 1991, denying Ethiopia permanent access to the Red Sea.

Ethiopia’s brief 39-year presence on the Red Sea was thus not earned but gifted by foreign powers and maintained by coercion. Its loss was inevitable once Eritrea reasserted sovereignty.

The incoherence of Ethiopian foreign policy is inseparable from its fractured domestic history. Ethiopia is not an ancient, unified state but a multi-ethnic empire forged by Emperor Menelik II through devastating wars of conquest. The Oromo, Afar, Sidama, Somali, Gurage, and others were subjugated, coerced into Orthodox Christianity, and assimilated under an Amhara-centered narrative.

Western scholarship, however, propagated the myth of “Greater Ethiopia”—a 3,000-year Solomonic dynasty, obscuring the reality of conquest and colonial incorporation. This false antiquity granted international legitimacy to an empire that lacked internal cohesion and relied heavily on external sponsorship.

During the Cold War, Ethiopia’s foreign policy exemplified opportunism. Haile Selassie was a staunch U.S. ally, hosting the massive Kagnew Station communications base in Asmara. Yet after the 1974 revolution, the Derg regime pivoted sharply to Moscow, making Ethiopia the largest Soviet client in Africa. Billions in military aid flowed in, fueling wars against Eritrean rebels, Somali forces in the Ogaden, and internal insurgencies.

When the Soviet bloc collapsed, Ethiopia swiftly reoriented to the United States. The new TPLF-led government under Meles Zenawi became Washington’s errand boy (counter-terrorism partner) in the Horn, intervening militarily in Somalia with U.S. backing. Throughout, Ethiopia’s policies were dictated by external alignment rather than internal coherence or regional consensus.

Since Eritrea’s independence, Ethiopia had no inherent problem with being landlocked. Until 1998, it used Eritrean ports freely; Assab and Massawa handled nearly all its trade, before Addis Ababa abruptly abandoned them, declaring that boycotting Eritrean ports would hurt Asmara more than itself. From then on, it relied primarily on Djibouti’s ports, occasionally diverting cargo through Berbera on Somalia’s coast, and even explored access through Kenya’s Lamu corridor. But instead of investing in stable, long-term economic integration with its neighbors, Ethiopia has chosen a dangerous path: stoking expansionist rhetoric about acquiring “its” own Red Sea port. This is not about commerce or trade efficiency—it is about militarization, a bid to plant a navy on the Red Sea as a platform for projecting hostility, even against distant rivals like Egypt.

Ethiopia’s current foreign policy is thus consistent with its past: incoherent, contradictory, and destabilizing. It alternates between courting Gulf states, China, and the West while simultaneously threatening its coastal neighbors.

Ethiopia has never resolved its internal fractures or articulated a constructive vision for the Horn of Africa. Instead, it has: Depended on external patrons to script its regional role. Pursued expansionist fantasies to compensate for its landlocked status. Undermined stability in Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea through interventionist policies.

• The result is a paradoxical state: too fractured domestically to project coherent power, yet too emboldened by external sponsorship to restrain its ambitions.

In conclusion from Dulles’s cynical dismissal of Eritrean independence to Abiy Ahmed’s maritime futile dream, Ethiopia’s foreign policy has never been coherent; it has been opportunistic, and destabilizing. It is a state driven by external powers, recast by false histories, and repeatedly used as a proxy rather than a partner.

Unless Ethiopia exorcises its imperial ghosts, stops coveting its neighbors’ coasts, and abandons its maritime mirage, it will stay what it has always been: a dependent state in denial, feeding on foreign aid while poisoning the Horn of Africa with its chaos.