Alarm Bells in Tigray

Toward the end of the first Trump administration, when the world was in the throes of the COVID pandemic and the United States was distracted by its own electoral processes, a horrific war broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Now, at the chaotic beginning of the second Trump term, the region may be on the cusp of war again. The latest reports of military mobilizations hauntingly echo the days leading up to the conflict in 2020. How the United States responds to the unfolding developments in the Horn of Africa may help clarify how “America-first transactionalism” will work in practice.

Today, Tigray is at risk of bearing the brunt of a localized power struggle and two sets of nested proxy conflicts. Internal tensions between the leadership of the region’s interim administration, appointed after the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA) in 2022, and its predecessor have escalated dramatically, a dynamic worsened by the failure to ensure implementation of all aspects of the COHA. Prominent Ethiopians insist that those tensions have been stoked by Eritrea, which sent military forces into Tigray during the last round of conflict. At that time, Eritrea was working with the Ethiopian government to defeat the Tigrayans, but that marriage of convenience has long since fallen apart, and both countries have returned to hostile rhetoric, rehashing bitter history, and flirtations with each other’s opponents.

Rivalries from further afield are overlaid on this toxic relationship. Egypt, at odds with Ethiopia over the potential of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to affect the flow of the Nile and alarmed by the Ethiopian leadership’s unabashed pursuit of a Red Sea Port, has drawn closer to Eritrea. So too has Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the United Arab Emirates has played a crucial role in backing Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and Turkey has maneuvered for influence throughout the region. The brutal war in Sudan is an object lesson in just how willing these powers are to stoke African conflicts as they compete for regional dominance, and how quickly the voices of civilians on the ground can be drowned out by actors with arms and deep pockets.

The Trump administration may not care about the plight of Ethiopians in Tigray, but it is not credible for Washington to pretend that growing instability in the Horn of Africa is of no concern to the United States. The economic importance of freedom of navigation in the Red Sea is undeniable, and Yemen’s Houthis have demonstrated how relatively weak actors can leverage that fact. While transactionalism might suggest deferring to partners in the Gulf to pursue their agendas in the region, that’s a dicey proposition when those agendas are at odds. “What’s in it for us” might turn out to be instability, mass migration, and radicalization.  Conflict prevention requires investing in deft diplomacy, but it would yield more appealing returns.