Ethiopia, Arms, and the Asset Logic in a Time of Global Reshuffle

The world is in transition. Power is no longer concentrated where it once was, and obedience is no longer assumed. Trade routes are being renegotiated, security guarantees are fragmenting, and the confidence that once underpinned Western dominance is eroding. In moments like this, regions long treated as peripheral acquire leverage. Africa, by geography and demography alone, should be among the principal beneficiaries of this shift.

Yet in the Horn of Africa, the opposite dynamic persists. Instability deepens, wars regionalize, and external actors extract strategic value while African states absorb the cost. Ethiopia stands at the center of this contradiction, not because it is uniquely flawed, but because it illustrates how African states are still treated less as sovereign political actors and more as assets to be positioned within larger power architectures.

This is not an indictment driven by accusation. It is an anatomy of how modern power operates.

Ethiopia has long been viewed through the lens of utility. During the Cold War, it was armed and supported as a proxy, first for Washington and later for Moscow, not because Ethiopian society was being strengthened, but because its territory and orientation mattered to global rivalry. After the Cold War, the logic did not disappear; it was repackaged. Following 9/11, Ethiopia was repositioned as a counterterrorism partner, drawing security assistance and intelligence cooperation aligned once again with external priorities rather than internal cohesion.

What distinguishes the present era is not the existence of this logic, but the way it now functions through networks rather than formal alliances. Contemporary conflict no longer depends solely on treaties or declared patrons. It moves through private contractors, intermediaries, permissive airspace, logistics hubs, weak borders, and fragmented sovereignty. In such an environment, a state does not need to intend harm beyond its borders to enable it. Instability itself becomes transmissible.

This is the context in which arms flows must be understood. There is no credible evidence of a formal or declared plan by which weapons supplied to Ethiopia were intended for Sudan. That distinction is essential for credibility. But focusing solely on intent obscures the more consequential reality. Across Africa, and particularly in regions experiencing overlapping crises, weapons move according to opportunity rather than law. This movement is predictable, repeatable, and well documented.

Libya remains the clearest warning. Once external intervention fractured the Libyan state, weapons dispersed southward into the Sahel, fueling conflicts in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and beyond. No single actor needed to orchestrate each transfer. The collapse of authority created a permissive system in which arms circulated almost automatically. Sudan today reflects a similar dynamic. As conflict escalated, external interests exploited fragmented authority and weak oversight, while responsibility dissolved into plausible deniability. Ethiopia’s internal war did not cause Sudan’s collapse, but it contributed to a regional environment in which arms circulation became easier, faster, and harder to trace.

The Horn of Africa has thus become part of a wider African security economy defined by cross-border militias, privatized logistics, drone warfare, weak arms oversight, and competing external patrons. In this system, Ethiopia functions less as a unified decision-maker and more as a node. Nodes do not need to choose to transmit pressure. Pressure passes through them because they exist within the network. This is how African wars become regionalized without ever being formally declared as such.

Ethiopia’s engagement with Gulf states, particularly the United Arab Emirates, further illustrates this asset logic. Addis Ababa framed the relationship as pragmatic diplomacy and economic partnership. Gulf actors, however, evaluate alignment through predictability, risk management, and deliverables. As Ethiopia descended into internal conflict, it lost predictability. From a Gulf perspective, it became landlocked, volatile, sanctions-adjacent, and logistically unreliable. This did not invite deeper trust. It triggered strategic distancing. Influence was not withdrawn so much as reallocated. Ethiopia ceased to be a pillar and became a variable.

In such moments, states are rarely punished openly. They are repositioned. When a state loses its utility as a stabilizer, it risks becoming a transit space rather than a partner. This is not moral judgment. It is calculus.

Sudan, meanwhile, became the downstream casualty of a collapsing regional architecture. Libya supplied weapons, the Sahel supplied fighters, the Horn supplied corridors, and global powers supplied incentives. Sudan absorbed the consequences. No single actor owned the outcome, which is precisely why the outcome was allowed to persist.

All of this is unfolding during a global reshuffle that should, in theory, favor African sovereignty. Western leverage is weakening. New patrons compete. Old hierarchies fracture. This is precisely the moment when African states could renegotiate the terms of engagement, assert control over corridors, ports, currencies, and security partnerships, and finally loosen colonial chains that have survived independence in structural form.

Yet Ethiopia’s trajectory demonstrates what happens when a state approaches a reshuffle with old dependencies. Militarization advances faster than legitimacy. External security guarantees deepen while internal cohesion frays. Influence is borrowed rather than built. Borrowed leverage always comes with conditions, and those conditions are rarely African.

This pattern is reinforced by Ethiopia’s renewed defense cooperation with the United States, concluded during a period of acute internal strain and intensified competition over global corridors. Defense agreements signed at such moments do not primarily strengthen sovereignty. They re-anchor influence. They preserve access to strategic geography, shape security doctrine, and preempt rival influence without overt occupation. Ethiopia’s geography, adjacent to Red Sea routes, Nile basin politics, and Gulf–Horn security interfaces, makes it attractive for this kind of alignment even when its internal stability is compromised.

Security assistance in this context functions less as state-building than as corridor management. Local militaries are trained, intelligence is shared selectively, and interoperability is emphasized. External powers secure access without owning the fallout. The arrangement stabilizes logistics, not societies. It locks states more firmly into external security architectures at the very moment they should be renegotiating autonomy.

This is the deeper contradiction Ethiopia exposes. Africa is still approached as terrain to be secured, stabilized, and leveraged, rather than as a political equal capable of shaping the emerging order. Until that changes, weapons will continue to flow, wars will continue to regionalize, and African crises will continue to be framed as internal failures rather than systemic exploitation.

Ethiopia’s experience is not unique. It is illustrative. It shows how African states can be pulled deeper into global power contests precisely when the opportunity exists to escape old hierarchies. It shows how instability converts countries into nodes and corridors. And it shows how sovereignty erodes not through invasion, but through structural dependence.

The global order is changing. Corridors are being redrawn. Power is decentralizing. Africa should be renegotiating its place. But every time a major African state accepts security frameworks designed elsewhere without demanding structural autonomy, it signals that the old chains are still useful to someone.

Ethiopia’s case is not exceptional. It is simply visible.

And in this era, visibility is not validation. It is a warning.