The Horn of Africa is moving toward another potentially devastating war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This danger did not emerge overnight. For three years, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has pursued a campaign for sovereign access to the Red Sea, transforming Ethiopia’s landlocked status into a national grievance and an economic question into a territorial demand. The collapse of diplomatic relations, renewed fighting in Tigray and escalating military accusations now threaten to turn that campaign into a wider regional war.

The immediate confrontation cannot be understood solely through competing accusations of aggression or the latest troop movements. Abiy’s government has repeatedly invoked security, geography, population size and economic development to portray Ethiopia’s lack of a coastline as an existential threat. These arguments have helped normalize the idea that Ethiopia’s future depends on acquiring sovereign maritime access, regardless of the territorial rights of its neighbors.

None of these considerations confers a right to another country’s territory.

Eritrea is an independent, internationally recognized sovereign state. Assab and Massawa are Eritrean ports. Their status is not negotiable simply because Ethiopia considers access to the sea essential to its development.

Abiy’s repeated assurances that Ethiopia seeks a peaceful solution cannot be separated from the demands accompanying them. Commercial access to a port and sovereign control over another country’s coastline are fundamentally different matters. The first is a legitimate subject of negotiation. The second challenges established principles of territorial sovereignty and the prohibition against the threat or use of force.

The events of early October 2026 have brought these contradictions into the open. On October 1, Ethiopia ordered the closure of its embassy in Asmara and expelled Eritrean diplomats. Eritrea responded by severing diplomatic relations. The rupture accompanied renewed fighting between Ethiopian federal forces and an opposition alliance that includes the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

By October 5, Ethiopian government-aligned forces had entered Mekelle following the withdrawal of TPLF forces. Reports subsequently emerged of Eritrean troops entering northern Tigray and suspected Ethiopian drone strikes against Eritrean positions near Adigrat.

On October 9, Ethiopia accused Eritrea of an all-out invasion in a letter circulated to the United Nations Security Council, claiming that Eritrean forces had advanced as far as 60 kilometers into Ethiopian territory. Eritrea’s information minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, countered that Ethiopia had been pursuing a war of aggression through its repeated claims to sovereign maritime access.

These allegations require independent scrutiny. But the immediate military confrontation should not obscure the political trajectory that preceded it. Even as fighting intensified in northern Ethiopia, Abiy renewed his commitment to securing an outlet to the sea, presenting maritime access as essential to Ethiopia’s development.

The timing is revealing. Ethiopia faces renewed warfare in Tigray, armed resistance elsewhere and a deepening crisis of political legitimacy. Yet the Red Sea remains central to the prime minister’s national agenda.

In his August 2026 commentary, “Condemn Abiy Ahmed Regime’s Threats to Invade Eritrea”, former Eritrean ambassador Andebrhan Welde Giorgis traced the development of Abiy’s Red Sea claims from his October 2023 parliamentary address. Andebrhan argued that these demands constitute an increasingly explicit challenge to Eritrea’s sovereignty.

His criticism also extended to the Eritrean government, whose diplomatic failures, he argued, had weakened the country’s position. This distinction is essential. Defending Eritrea’s sovereignty is not synonymous with defending President Isaias Afwerki. Eritreans’ right to determine their political future is independent of the government in Asmara.

Nor does Ethiopia’s landlocked status constitute an existential crisis. Many landlocked countries prosper through negotiated access to neighboring ports. Ethiopia itself relies extensively on Djibouti. Transit dependence creates economic vulnerabilities, but these are problems of diplomacy, infrastructure and regional cooperation, not grounds for territorial acquisition.

Ethiopia’s more immediate existential crisis lies within its own political order.

Renewed fighting in Tigray, armed conflict in Amhara, insecurity in Oromia and emerging alliances against the federal government reveal a state struggling with profound political fragmentation. The 2022 Pretoria agreement ended the principal phase of the Tigray war but failed to resolve many of its underlying disputes.

My own view is that Ethiopia is confronting the decay of an imperial political order whose center can no longer hold its peripheries together as it once did. Competing national identities, contested boundaries, disputes over federalism and the unequal distribution of power have produced a crisis that military victories cannot resolve.

Abiy’s Red Sea campaign must be understood in this context. By presenting maritime access as a question of national survival, he directs attention toward an external territorial objective while Ethiopia’s internal contradictions remain unresolved. Another country’s sovereignty becomes an obstacle to Ethiopia’s purported national destiny.

Ethiopia is not gasping because it lacks a coastline. It is gasping because its internal political order is fragmenting.

Abiy’s assurances of peaceful intentions must also be assessed against his government’s conduct during the Tigray war. In July 2021, following the withdrawal of Ethiopian federal forces from Mekelle, he publicly compared the regional capital with Beshasha, the small town associated with his childhood, suggesting that Mekelle had lost much of its economic and strategic importance.

The remark came after months of devastating warfare that had destroyed infrastructure, disrupted livelihoods and inflicted enormous suffering on civilians. It offered a troubling indication of how the prime minister characterized the consequences of military destruction.

The earlier war also demonstrates the futility of treating military force as a substitute for political settlement. Ethiopian and Eritrean forces fought together against the TPLF during the 2020–2022 conflict. Their alliance has since collapsed into hostility, while Tigray is again becoming an arena of interstate confrontation.

The people of Tigray have already endured catastrophic losses. Renewed warfare threatens further displacement and destruction. Eritreans likewise face the prospect of another war after decades of militarization, economic hardship and political repression. Neither population stands to gain from another cycle of violence.

International law provides a clear distinction between legitimate commercial interests and claims of territorial sovereignty. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal states exercise sovereignty over their territorial seas and sovereign rights within their exclusive economic zones. Landlocked states enjoy rights of access to and from the sea and freedom of transit, subject to applicable agreements. These rights do not confer sovereignty over another country’s coastline or ports.

Ethiopia can negotiate port leases, transit corridors and commercial partnerships with Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia or other coastal states. But economic necessity cannot create sovereign title, and agreements extracted through threats are not genuine regional cooperation.

Access can be negotiated. Sovereignty cannot be acquired by necessity.

The confrontation is also becoming part of a wider geopolitical struggle. On October 4, 2026, the leaders of Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia met in New Alamein. Their joint declaration affirmed freedom of navigation while declaring Red Sea governance the exclusive responsibility of littoral states. It also emphasized territorial integrity, noninterference and peaceful settlement of disputes.

The declaration reflected concerns extending beyond Ethiopia’s maritime ambitions. The Nile dispute has strained relations between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia’s Somaliland policy generated confrontation with Somalia. Sudan’s war and the growing militarization of the Red Sea have further complicated regional alignments.

These conflicts are not isolated. Ethiopia’s internal political fragmentation is increasingly entangled with the geopolitics of the Red Sea, where ports, military partnerships, infrastructure, mineral resources and political patronage have become instruments of regional competition.

Outside powers are adding to the danger. Israel’s ambassador in Addis Ababa publicly expressed support for Ethiopia’s Red Sea objective, describing it as Israeli policy. Such endorsement raises serious questions when neighboring coastal states are contesting the implications for their sovereignty.

The United Arab Emirates has developed extensive commercial, political and security relationships across Ethiopia, Somaliland, Puntland and the wider region. Its involvement in ports, infrastructure and regional partnerships places it within several overlapping strategic contests.

External support can embolden regional actors while shielding their patrons from the human costs of confrontation. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were the principal outside powers competing for influence in the Horn. The region became one of the places where the Cold War was brutally hot. Today’s patrons differ, but the destructive possibilities of proxy politics remain.

There is another way.

Following the 2018 rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Arkebe Oqubay, one of the architects of Ethiopia’s earlier developmental strategy, emphasized the potential for joint economic programs, shared port facilities and lower transport costs. An Ethiopian Foreign Ministry account of his remarks presented peace with Eritrea as an opportunity for regional economic transformation.

That remains the sensible approach. Ethiopia can benefit from reliable access to Eritrean ports. Eritrea can benefit from Ethiopian commerce if arrangements are voluntary and mutually advantageous. Djibouti already demonstrates the economic importance of transit services. Regional geography can generate shared prosperity rather than territorial confrontation.

The same principle applies across the Red Sea. Yemen occupies some of the world’s most valuable maritime geography, yet years of conflict have devastated its economy and society. Its predicament demonstrates that strategic geography alone guarantees neither prosperity nor security. Domestic political struggles, external intervention and competing regional interests have instead turned its location into a source of prolonged instability.

Yemen needs reconstruction, functioning ports, employment and trade. The African shore needs the same. Eritrea, Yemen and Djibouti occupy strategic positions around Bab el-Mandeb, one of the world’s great maritime chokepoints. Their geography could support thriving economies built around shipping, logistics, fisheries and commerce. Instead, it repeatedly becomes an arena of military competition and foreign intervention.

The Horn has endured generations of warfare. One conflict produces another grievance, another armed movement, another outside intervention and another generation raised under militarization.

International diplomacy too often responds only after catastrophe has become unavoidable. Following the Rwandan genocide, Bill Clinton acknowledged that the international community had failed to act quickly enough. The lesson is not that the Horn today is Rwanda in 1994, but that waiting until mass violence becomes unmistakable is a failure of diplomacy.

The stakes extend far beyond Ethiopia and Eritrea. Sudan, Somalia, Egypt and Yemen are entangled in overlapping crises, while Gulf states, Israel and other international actors pursue strategic interests across the same region. A wider war could destabilize the entire Red Sea corridor.

Preventing that outcome requires more than expressions of concern. It requires respect for internationally recognized borders, opposition to territorial acquisition by force, protection of civilians and sustained diplomacy. Eritrea’s sovereignty must be respected, just as Ethiopian territory cannot legitimately be subjected to foreign military intervention. Neither principle cancels the other.

Ethiopia’s economic need for maritime access is legitimate. Its claim to sovereign control over another country’s coastline is not. Eritrea’s independence is not a concession to be renegotiated, and its sovereignty cannot be subordinated to Ethiopia’s political ambitions.

Abiy Ahmed’s Red Sea campaign has transformed a manageable economic question into a dangerous territorial confrontation. By presenting sovereign maritime access as a matter of national survival, he risks drawing Ethiopia and its neighbors into another war while the political foundations of the Ethiopian state continue to fracture.

The solution to Ethiopia’s fragmentation does not lie on Eritrea’s coastline. Nor can the political failures of governments in Addis Ababa or Asmara justify sacrificing another generation of Ethiopians and Eritreans.

Commercial access can be negotiated. Sovereignty cannot be demanded. The Red Sea should be a corridor of trade and cooperation, not a battlefield on which political leaders seek to resolve their domestic crises.

The international community must reject territorial coercion before threats become irreversible acts of war. The peoples of the Horn have already paid too high a price for militarized nationalism, external intervention and the ambitions of rulers who treat human lives as expendable.

The Red Sea cannot be won by war. Its future must be secured through peace, cooperation and respect for sovereignty.

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