The architecture of transactional survival: middle power security substitution and sovereign asset exchange in Horn

Why do embattled regimes secure decisive hard-security and emergency financial support from middle powers rather than from their longstanding superpower patrons during acute crisis windows? This article advances ‘transactional survival’ as a mechanism-level answer for a condition under which superpower patrons are substituted by middle powers and subsequent asset exchanges during acute crisis periods. The study proposes two testable hypotheses: the hypothesis of selective substitutions of superpowers with middle power patrons and the hypothesis of exchange of sovereign assets with immediate financial and hard-security instruments during periods of crisis. Employing qualitative process-tracing methods within a least-likely single-case design, the study tests the hypotheses across Ethiopia’s Tigray War (2020–2022) and Amhara crisis (2023–present). Data were drawn from peer-reviewed scholarship, official documents, investigative journalism, and structured Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) analysis classified across four evidentiary certainty tiers. Findings confirm that US punitive conditionality through African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) suspension and China’s structural non-interference doctrine jointly produced a hard-security void in Ethiopia that the UAE, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia selectively filled through emergency financial deposits and hard security assistance in exchange for sovereign assets. Critically, this confirms the transactional survival claims of selective substitution of superpowers by middle powers and exchange of sovereign assets with immediate financial and hard-security assistance during crisis windows.