The Thaw in U.S.-Ethiopia Relations Has Gone Far Enough

Ethiopia’s domestic war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has now become an international conflict involving Eritrea. These actors are old rivals — all three participated in the Tigray War from November 2020 to November 2022 — but this new fight involves higher stakes for the United States and its partners.

At the beginning of October, the Ethiopian government and the TPLF formally returned to war. The latter, which seeks independence for the Tigray region, withdrew from the Pretoria Agreement that ended the previous Tigray War and announced the creation of an alliance with other rebel groups.

Simultaneously, Eritrea sent its military into Ethiopia. Ethiopia is now striking back and has used its drones and air force against Eritrea. Reportedly, Eritrean and Ethiopian troops are massing against one another, with an improbable, anti-Ethiopian alliance of convenience now looking possible between the Eritreans and Tigrayans.

The Last War, Its Fallout, and an Attempted Reset

U.S.-Ethiopia relations nosedived as the Tigray War worsened in 2021. Both the TPLF and the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) committed mass atrocities against rival ethnic groups. The violence exceeded the usual tragedy of war; experts believe that 120,000 women were raped in Tigray province alone. In response, the United States distanced itself from Ethiopia, its longtime partner in the Horn of Africa.

However, over the past two months, Washington has reversed or allowed to lapse the punitive measures it imposed on Ethiopia. The Trump administration ended the Temporary Protected Status that was granted to Ethiopians fleeing the war (relieving diplomatic embarrassment for Addis Ababa), lifted the arms embargo Washington imposed in 2021, and ended the national emergency and the associated sanctions created by President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14046. The U.S. military reconnected with Ethiopia’s federal forces, and Ethiopian Airlines announced the purchase of Boeing cargo aircraft.

Ethiopia Sets a New, Less Stabilizing Course

Instead of resuming its role as the U.S. regional anchor against terrorism, Ethiopia is signaling that it wants to reshape the region and expand within it. The country recently increased its participation in the Sudan war. Instead of assuaging Egypt and Sudan’s concerns regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s (GERD’s) effect on the Nile, Ethiopia announced that it will build three more dams.

Most concerning to U.S. interests, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly promised to secure a Red Sea port for his landlocked country. He has said he will accomplish this peacefully but turned down an offer from Djibouti to lease one of its new ports and attempted to deal with Somaliland, a self-declared republic within Somalia recognized only by Israel. If Ethiopia uses Eritrea’s current border incursion as an excuse to seize one of Eritrea’s Red Sea ports, the combat could easily create enough risk to delay the 7 percent of global oil output flowing through the neighboring Bab el-Mandeb Strait, giving Iran a stronger hand in its war against the United States and Israel. Neighboring states find Ethiopia’s behavior threatening enough that they recently met to discuss security in the Horn, signaling the possibility of a new regional alliance. The United States has a strong interest in messaging its own disapproval.

Washington Should Penalize Eritrea To Support and Caution Ethiopia

The United States should steady its relationship with Ethiopia and continue to treat the TPLF as an illegitimate, anti-democratic force. It should address the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict by imposing visa restrictions on Eritrean military leadership for crossing Ethiopia’s border. By reemphasizing the inviolability of borders, the United States could respectfully and indirectly discourage Abiy from attempting to secure a Red Sea port by force. In the short term, the U.S. priority should be to maintain the status quo in the Red Sea to keep energy supplies moving to undercut Iran’s attempts to control global oil supplies; in the long term, U.S. planners should find a new, constructive way of partnering with Ethiopia.

Edmund Fitton-Brown is a senior fellow at FDD, focused on the Arabian Peninsula as well as terrorism and its enablers. Grant Wishard is an editor and the production manager at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Grant, Edmund, and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD. Follow Edmund on X @EFittonBrown. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.