The Horn of Africa Cannot Afford Ethiopia’s Imperial Nostalgia

By ALULA FREZGHI

For months now, Ethiopia’s leaders have insisted that the country must secure access to the sea “through negotiation or by force.” The statement was dismissed by some as political theater, a distraction from Ethiopia’s economic collapse and internal conflicts. But the alarm across the Horn of Africa tells a different story. Somalia, Djibouti, and other coastal states hear echoes of a much older pattern: the return of Ethiopia’s imperial ambitions.

The truth is uncomfortable but essential for understanding the current crisis. Ethiopia’s threats are not a sudden deviation or the product of one leader’s recklessness. They are the latest expression of a long, unresolved imperial legacy that continues to shape the Ethiopian state’s worldview. Until this legacy is confronted, the Horn of Africa will remain vulnerable to cycles of aggression and instability.

Modern Ethiopia was not formed through organic state-building but through conquest. In the late 19th century, Emperor Menelik II expanded Ethiopia southward, eastward, and westward, doubling its size by absorbing diverse peoples through violence, forced assimilation, and feudal subjugation. This expansion was made possible by European weapons and tactics the same tools European empires used to carve up Africa. While Italy, Britain, and France seized the region’s coastlines, Ethiopia seized the interior. The result was a landlocked empire with a lingering grievance: it had conquered vast territories but lost the race to the sea.

That grievance has shaped Ethiopian strategic thinking for more than a century. Haile Selassie repeatedly sought access to Massawa, Assab, Djibouti, Zella, and Berbera. Mengistu Hailemariam, who overthrew him in 1974, escalated the war in Eritrea rather than accept decolonization. Meles Zenawi, who came to power with Eritrean support, later attempted to seize Assab during the 1998–2000 border war. And now, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has revived the same ambition, wrapped in the language of national destiny.

The empire may have fallen in 1974, but its logic never did. Ethiopia underwent regime change, monarchy to military socialism, socialism to ethnic federalism, federalism to prosperity gospel nationalism without ever undergoing decolonization. Each government inherited the imperial worldview and reproduced it in new forms. The result is a state that still sees itself as a regional hegemon entitled to reshape borders and dictate the political futures of its neighbors.

This imperial continuity is reinforced by powerful national myths. Ethiopian elites have long invoked the idea of “3,000 years of continuous statehood,” the Solomonic lineage linking emperors to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and the notion of Ethiopia as an “Island of Christianity” surrounded by Muslim nations. These myths serve political purposes: they legitimize territorial claims, dismiss the sovereignty of neighbors, and frame Ethiopia as a civilizational exception in Africa.

During the Ethio-Somali conflicts of the 1960s, Ethiopian officials used these narratives to reject Somali claims outright, insisting that Ethiopia’s borders were ancient and immutable while Somalia had “no history.” During the Eritrean independence struggle, Ethiopian leaders cast Eritrean nationalism as a Muslim threat to a Christian bastion, seeking Western support by invoking Cold War anxieties. Today, similar rhetoric resurfaces in subtle and overt ways, shaping public opinion and foreign policy alike.

The danger is not abstract. A conflict triggered by Ethiopia’s maritime ambitions would destabilize the Red Sea Gulf of Aden corridor, one of the world’s most vital trade routes. It would displace millions, deepen humanitarian crises, and invite external powers into an already fragile region. Ethiopia’s internal instability, economic collapse, ethnic fragmentation, and ongoing conflicts makes external aggression even more perilous. Somalia, still recovering from decades of war, cannot absorb another regional confrontation. Djibouti, a linchpin of global shipping, cannot risk becoming a battleground.

The Horn of Africa is too fragile for imperial nostalgia. Ethiopia’s leaders must abandon the myths that have long distorted the country’s self-perception and fueled its expansionist impulses. A stable future requires a decisive break from the worldview inherited from Menelik and Haile Selassie a worldview that sees neighbors as extensions of Ethiopia’s unfinished empire.

Peace in the Horn will not come from coercion, threats, or historical fantasies. It will come from a new political imagination: one that respects the sovereignty of all states, acknowledges the region’s diverse histories, and rejects the ghosts of empire that continue to haunt Ethiopia’s politics.

Until Ethiopia confronts its imperial past, the region will remain trapped in its shadow.