Zero-Sum Myths, Shared-Sum Futures: Rethinking the Horn of Africa

By ALULA FREZGHI

Introduction

In the Horn of Africa, wars do not usually begin with bullets; they begin with ideas. Long before borders are crossed or armies mobilized, a quieter conflict takes root in how states imagine power, security, and survival. For decades, the region has been haunted by a zero-sum worldview that treats geography as a contest and neighbors as obstacles to be overcome. In this logic, one state’s strength must be purchased through another’s weakness, and stability is secured not through law or cooperation but through dominance, coercion, or fragmentation. Nowhere has this mindset been more consequential than in Ethiopia’s relations with Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt.

Yet the Horn of Africa is not condemned to perpetual rivalry. Alongside this zero-sum tradition exists a different political imagination—one that understands peace, sovereignty, and development as shared goods rather than finite prizes. Eritrea’s insistence on law-based coexistence, respect for borders, and cooperative engagement offers a counter-model rooted not in idealism but in historical experience and hard sacrifice. The contrast between these two logics—zero-sum myths and shared-sum futures—lies at the heart of the Horn’s unresolved tensions and its unrealized potential. Understanding this divergence is essential not only to explaining past conflicts, but to charting a path toward durable stability in one of the world’s most interdependent regions.

Understanding Zero-Sum Thinking in the Horn of Africa

Zero-sum thinking rests on a corrosive assumption: one side’s gain must be secured through another’s suffering. In the Horn of Africa, this mentality has repeatedly shaped Ethiopia’s relations with its neighbors, with devastating consequences. Nowhere was this more brutally demonstrated than in Eritrea between 1952 and 1991, when the Ethiopian state prosecuted a war that treated civilian suffering as strategic leverage. Villages were razed, civilians were killed in cold blood, churches and mosques were attacked, markets were bombed with napalm and cluster munitions, and entire communities were crushed under the logic that pain inflicted on civilians would translate into political gain. The same logic resurfaced in the lead-up to and during the Eritrean–Ethiopian War of 1998–2000, where escalation was again justified through the belief that harming the other would strengthen the self.

This zero-sum mentality has not been confined to Eritrea. It has shaped Ethiopia’s posture in the GERD standoff with Sudan and Egypt, informed its destabilizing involvement in South Sudan and Sudan, including the arming and training of militias, and underpinned the invasion, occupation, and fragmentation of Somalia. A weak, divided Somalia was treated not as a regional tragedy but as a strategic asset. The same thinking now animates Ethiopia’s confrontations over sovereign access to the sea, where entitlement is asserted through grievance rather than negotiated through law. Even senior advisors have advanced falsehoods, such as the claim that Eritrea was created as a colonial project to deny Ethiopia maritime access. In this worldview, borders are not frameworks for coexistence but frontlines where identity, power, and resources are contested. The result has been a persistent cycle of militarization, mistrust, and regional instability.

Within this environment, coexistence has been eclipsed by militarized nationalism and manufactured grievance. Security is framed not as something built through mutual recognition, binding agreements, and lawful relations, but as something achieved by weakening, destabilizing, or coercing others. This outlook has repeatedly sabotaged peace initiatives, obstructed the implementation of internationally binding decisions, and entrenched confrontation as policy. It has also imposed severe costs: stalled regional integration, lost economic opportunity, and the systematic erosion of cooperative governance across the Horn of Africa.

This pattern is not only political; it is reinforced by deeper cultural narratives. As early as 1971, David C. Korten’s analysis of 129 Ethiopian folktales identified a dominant worldview in which life itself is perceived as a zero-sum game, yielding at best limited payoffs. Within this framework, survival strategies emphasize self-protection, deception, and revenge, while advancement is imagined as coming at another’s expense. Opportunities for cooperation and collective initiative are viewed as marginal, and trust in impersonal systems is weak. Agency is located in interpersonal struggle rather than in building shared institutions or environments. When such a worldview migrates from folklore into statecraft, it does not produce security or strength; it institutionalizes conflict, normalizes coercion, and guarantees perpetual instability.

When such a worldview is elevated from folklore to statecraft, it becomes profoundly destabilizing. Zero-sum logic transforms neighbors into threats, law into inconvenience, and cooperation into surrender. In a region as interdependent as the Horn of Africa, this mindset does not produce security; it guarantees perpetual friction, squandered potential, and recurring conflict.

Eritrea’s Legal Framework and Sovereignty

Eritrea’s approach to its sovereignty is anchored in international law, particularly the principles established by the United Nations. Following its independence from Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea has consistently advocated for a region defined by legal agreements and mutual respect for boundaries. This insistence on law-based coexistence reflects a deep historical consciousness, shaped by a struggle for liberation that involved significant sacrifice. The bloody conflict left an indelible mark on Eritrean identity, fostering a profound commitment to maintaining territorial integrity.

Eritrea’s leadership emphasizes that borders, once legally recognized, should not be subject to arbitrary changes or encroachments. This is particularly relevant given the region’s history of territorial disputes and ethnic tensions, which have often fueled conflict. Eritrea argues that stability in the Horn of Africa can only be achieved through adherence to the rule of law, where grievances are addressed through dialogue rather than military action.

Eritrea’s Shared-Sum Vision of Foreign Policy

Eritrea’s foreign policy, as set out in its 1994 National Charter, is grounded in a shared-sum view of international relations: the understanding that peace, security, and development are not finite goods to be won at another’s expense, but collective conditions that grow through cooperation, restraint, and respect for law. Foreign policy is treated as an extension of internal policy, reflecting the same ethical commitments that guide national cohesion, self-reliance, and social justice at home.

At the heart of this vision is the rejection of the idea that one nation’s security requires another’s insecurity. Eritrea defines its national interest in terms inseparable from regional peace and global stability. Having emerged from a long liberation struggle, it recognizes that peace cannot be confined within borders; instability spreads, while stability reinforces itself. For this reason, Eritrea commits itself to promoting peace and harmony at both regional and international levels, despite its limited material means.

Good-neighborly relations are central to this shared-sum approach. Neighbors are not viewed as rivals in a zero-sum contest, but as partners whose security and prosperity are mutually reinforcing. Respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national dignity is not a concession but the foundation of durable cooperation. Economic and cultural development, likewise, are understood as relational processes. Eritrea rejects both isolation and domination, emphasizing active cooperation with surrounding countries and the wider world as essential to sustainable development.

This outlook extends beyond governments to peoples. Eritrea’s foreign policy seeks to build relationships of brotherhood, equality, and understanding among societies, recognizing that lasting peace depends not only on treaties but on human connections that reduce fear and normalize cooperation. Cultural diversity and historical differences are treated not as obstacles, but as realities to be engaged through mutual respect.

As a sovereign member of the international community, Eritrea places strong emphasis on upholding international law and honoring treaties. This commitment reflects a shared-sum logic: when rules apply equally, all states benefit from predictability, legitimacy, and restraint. Eritrea’s policy of peace and non-alignment is rooted in the belief that alignment politics often fuel conflict, while non-alignment preserves autonomy and reduces confrontation.

In sum, Eritrea’s Charter articulates a foreign policy that treats peace as cumulative rather than competitive, sovereignty as mutually reinforcing rather than zero-sum, and development as a cooperative endeavor. It offers a model of international engagement based not on grievance or entitlement, but on the conviction that stability, dignity, and progress are strengthened when they are shared.

Moving Towards Cooperative Governance

To move beyond zero-sum thinking, Ethiopia must embrace a paradigm of cooperative existence. This involves respecting territorial integrity and sovereignity and building trust by implementing peace deals that you gave promise to honor it by putting your signature, creating frameworks where countries can collaboratively address issues such as security, and trade. Eritrea’s model presents an opportunity for neighboring countries to rethink their relationships, encouraging them to view each other not as adversaries but as potential partners.

Eritrea’s insistence on law-based coexistence could serve as a foundation for regional agreements that prioritize shared interests. For instance, collaborative efforts in managing resources like water and trade routes could significantly enhance economic development. Moreover, shared security arrangements could mitigate militia activity and piracy, allowing for stability that benefits all.

Conclusion: A Path Forward

The Horn of Africa’s crisis is not a lack of resources, access, or opportunity; it is a failure of political imagination. Ethiopia’s zero-sum thinking has repeatedly promised strength through coercion and security through domination, yet it has delivered only cycles of war, fragmentation, and squandered potential. When grievance becomes doctrine and borders are treated as frontlines rather than legal foundations, instability ceases to be accidental and becomes structural. History across the region has made this lesson painfully clear.

The Horn of Africa stands at a crossroads, with the potential to transcend its history of conflict through a commitment to law-based coexistence and cooperative governance. Eritrea’s insistence on this principle underscores the importance of respecting sovereignty and legal boundaries as a catalyst for peace. By moving away from zero-sum thinking, nations in the Horn of Africa can forge alliances that embrace mutual benefit, shared security, and economic collaboration, ultimately transforming the region into one characterized by stability and prosperity for all its people.

Eritrea’s shared-sum approach does not deny competition or hardship; it rejects the illusion that one nation’s advancement requires another’s decline. By anchoring sovereignty in law, security in mutual recognition, and development in cooperation, it advances a vision of regional order suited to an interdependent Horn. This is not a moral abstraction but a practical necessity. Water, trade, migration, and security cannot be managed unilaterally without producing collective loss.

The choice facing the Horn of Africa is therefore stark. It can continue to rehearse Ethiopia’s zero-sum myths that turn neighbors into threats and law into inconvenience, or it can embrace Eritrea’s shared-sum future in which stability is cumulative and dignity indivisible. Peace will not emerge from erasing borders, manufacturing grievances, or elevating entitlement into destiny. It will come from honoring agreements, respecting sovereignty, and recognizing that cooperation is not surrender but strategy.

The region stands at a crossroads. Whether it moves toward enduring stability or deeper fragmentation will depend less on power balances than on which worldview prevails. Zero-sum thinking has already written its record. The future belongs to those willing to imagine, and build, something shared.

This shift demands leaders who can govern reality rather than perform ego. The Horn of Africa does not need narcissists mistaking self-adoration for vision, nor rulers who substitute myth, grievance, and theatrical bravado for strategy. It requires leaders with the discipline to abandon entitlement fantasies, the humility to respect law, and the intelligence to recognize that domination is not strength. What passes today as “visionary leadership” in parts of the region is little more than insecurity armed with slogans. The cost of indulging it is permanent instability. The reward for rejecting it—a peaceful, prosperous Horn of Africa—is not idealism. It is the only alternative to endless, self-inflicted ruin.