Opinion
Ethiopia’s Red Sea Pretensions: The Ambition is Grand. The Reality is Not.
By Ghidewon Abay Asmerom
https://redseabeacon.com/ethiopias-red- ... ty-is-not/
November 30, 2025
Ethiopia’s claim that it is destined to “
secure the Red Sea” would be audacious, if it were not so astonishingly detached from reality. A landlocked state that cannot hold the center, that commands no coastline, no navy, and increasingly little authority beyond its own capital, now imagines itself a maritime guardian. It is a classic case of political overreach: a frog that insists it roars like a lion. Its leaders speak as though the salty waters of the Red Sea possess a kind of holy cure for Ethiopia’s internal breakdown, as if geography might redeem governance. The result is not strategy, but spectacle. A government struggling to manage its own districts, is now claiming stewardship over one of the world’s most strategic waterways. It is a delusion at best, and an absurdity that borders on the laughable.
The claim that the Red Sea only became unstable
after Ethiopia left
is not merely false; it is a deliberate inversion of the historical record.
The region’s volatility today, is overwhelmingly a product of the war in Yemen and intensifying great-power competition. Long before that, however, Ethiopia played a central role in destabilizing the Horn. Its 2006 invasion of Somalia collapsed an emerging political order and, as a UN investigation later affirmed, the arms flows and upheaval that enabled extremist militancy were directly tied to Ethiopia’s intervention; even as Addis Ababa fabricated evidence to justify its actions. Ethiopia’s prime minister has also admitted in parliament, that Ethiopia’s government helped ignite the crisis in South Sudan. Recent reports have also made it clear Ethiopia, working as a proxy, is responsible for the civil war in Sudan. A state that has repeatedly been a catalyst for regional disorder, cannot now credibly claim the mantle of regional savior.
That makes Ethiopia’s new claim, that it is
best suited to secure the Red Sea,
not a foreign-policy doctrine but political theater.
A landlocked country cannot secure a maritime corridor it does not border, does not administer, and has never lawfully possessed. Yet Ethiopia’s leadership continues to repeat this narrative, as if repetition could transform fantasy into jurisdiction. It cannot!
The domestic context explains the performance. Ethiopia today struggles to govern itself. Insurgencies rage in Oromia. Amhara defies federal authority. Tigray remains fractures and in limbo. Beyond Addis Ababa, state authority is thin, inconsistent, or absent. In such circumstances, sweeping declarations about Red Sea stewardship are not strategy but escapism. A state losing cohesion seeks symbolic victories abroad to mask fractures at home.
The military realities are even harsher. Ethiopia’s last naval encounter ended when the young EPLF navy swept aside Ethiopian naval installations, in 1990 and 1991. Now, with no coastline, Ethiopia proposes to build a navy on Lake Tana and deploy it onto one of the world’s most contested maritime corridors. This is not ambition; it is fantasy dressed as policy.
Diplomatic consultations with France or the United States offer no validation for Ethiopia’s territorial desires. They are routine exchanges and in France’s case often motivated by commercial need. Paris has been scrambling for defense clients, since losing the enormous AUKUS Australian submarine contract to the United States and has been pushed out of several West African states. If France entertains naval cooperation with Ethiopia, it is chasing business, not endorsing redrawn borders.
Ethiopia’s claim to moral authority is equally hollow. The state played a documented role in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, acting as a venue for “
enhanced interrogations,” or torture that Western governments preferred not to conduct themselves. Ethiopia has also aligned with terrorist groups, whenever convenient. A government with such a record, cannot credibly cast itself as a guardian of maritime peace.
Ultimately, Ethiopia’s maritime rhetoric arises from internal fragility rather than external necessity. The country is strained by political polarization, armed uprisings, severe economic deterioration, and a crisis of legitimacy. The Red Sea provides an easy distraction, a distant horizon onto which the government can project grandeur while avoiding its own failures. The sea becomes a symbol, not a strategy.
No Red Sea state, African institution, or global power supports Ethiopia’s claim to sovereign coastal territory. The security of the Red Sea belongs to the states that actually border it, whose coastlines are protected by the UN Charter and the principles of territorial integrity. Eritrea’s coastline is legally defined and cannot be seized or negotiated away by pressure or desperation.
As always, Ethiopia’s talk of “
Red Sea security” is less about regional stability than about advertising itself as a willing subcontractor for foreign powers. Its own prime minister has said openly, that he is
ready to fight and die for America
and that Ethiopia could fight the wars Western countries are unwilling to send their children to.
The message is unmistakable: Ethiopia is positioning itself as an errand state and a supplier of expendable manpower for great-power agendas.
This is not theoretical. Ethiopia is already operating as a mercenary force for the UAE in the destabilization of Sudan and has become a key transit route for ferrying Colombian narco-trafficker paramilitaries to fight alongside the RSF. A state that rents out violence and facilitates foreign militias, cannot credibly present itself as a guardian of security in one of the world’s most sensitive maritime corridors.
In the end, Ethiopia’s Red Sea pretensions collapse under the weight of their own impossibility. A government that cannot secure the road from Addis Ababa to Ambo, now claims it will secure the shipping lanes from Suez to Bab-el-Mandeb. A state that loses territory to its own insurgents, imagines it will police global chokepoints. A leadership that treats geography as a suggestion and history as a prop demands a role that neither law, nor capacity, nor neighbors will ever grant it.
The truth is simple. The Red Sea does not need Ethiopia’s protection. Ethiopia needs the Red Sea as a political distraction. Its leaders are chasing saltwater, not because it strengthens the nation but because it masks its unraveling. They try reaching for a coastline they cannot touch, in the hope that no one notices the ground collapsing beneath their feet.
But illusions do not make borders. Fantasies do not create navies. And desperation does not confer sovereignty.
The Red Sea will remain secure, through the states that actually border it and through the international laws that govern it. Ethiopia is not on that list. No amount of rhetoric, repetition, or theatrical ambition will place it there.
Pretension is not power. Geography is not optional. And the Red Sea is not Ethiopia’s to claim, to police, or to dream into reality.
The Eritrean state is resilient despite concerted aggression. The EU has failed to recognize that the 2009 UN sanction was a ploy staged by TPLFites & sponsored by @AmbassadorRice.
The Eritrean state is resilient despite concerted aggression. The EU has failed to recognize that the 2009 UN sanction was a ploy staged by TPLFites & sponsored by @