Breaking the Cycle: Rethinking Ethiopia's Relations with Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan

This article examined the structural sources of national security threats confronting Ethiopia and the evolution of strategic responses across successive regimes. Situated within a volatile regional landscape, Ethiopia contends with persistent challenges emanating from its immediate neighbors—Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan—which have historically served both as direct antagonists and as transit corridors for external adversaries. Drawing on historical analysis and case study research design, this paper argued that Ethiopia's recurring policy challenges stem from a fundamental mismatch between rhetorical commitments to regional cooperation and the strategic realities of a competitive interstate system. The analysis traced the historical dynamics between Ethiopia and the three core states of the Horn, evaluating both historical contentions and subsequent policy countermeasures. The paper is structured in four parts: an introductory framework, three case studies examining Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea respectively, and a concluding synthesis that identified persistent patterns and proposes analytic recalibrations for Ethiopia’s foreign policy.