A Critique of Bereket Habtemariam’s Proposal on Sea Access and Sovereignty
Author’s Note: This essay is written in response to a document recently shared by Bereket Habtemariam on his Facebook (also known as Biko Steph). His contribution to the debate over Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea is imaginative and provocative. Importantly, Bereket has been open that his intention is not to prescribe a final solution, but to spark dialogue. In that spirit, my goal here is not to diminish his effort but to respond in kind: to test the internal logic of his proposal, to examine its rhetorical strategy, and to ask what it would mean in practice. This response is written with respect for Bereket’s standing as an activist and for the openness with which he invited others to engage.
Bereket begins with Ethiopia’s claim that access to the Red Sea is not a matter of convenience but of survival. For him, this is dangerous rhetoric. When a state declares something a survival issue, it may act desperately, even recklessly. Eritrea, as the smaller and more vulnerable neighbor, cannot afford to ignore this. His proposed safeguard is striking: Eritrea should allow Ethiopia sea access only if Ethiopia amends its Constitution so that Eritrea nominates Ethiopia’s federal executive, the office responsible for defense, foreign policy, and national security. That nominee would then be confirmed and removable only by an Eritrean parliament. Ethiopia’s regions would remain intact, but the federal center would be tethered to Eritrean consent.
There is no denying the rhetorical force of this idea. It mirrors Ethiopia’s claim of survival with an equally existential counterclaim. If survival justifies intrusion into Eritrea’s security, then Eritrea is justified in demanding survival-level guarantees in return. But as we look more closely, the proposal faces challenges at every level: in its seriousness, in its rhetorical framing, and in its feasibility.
Ambiguity at the Core
One of the difficulties in responding to Bereket is that his proposal shifts between two modes. At some points he insists it is not meant literally, but only as rhetoric, a way of exposing the absurdity of Ethiopia’s claim by holding up a mirror. At other times, he elaborates on it as if it were serious, internally logical, even fair. This ambiguity makes it hard to know how to engage: is it satire, or is it policy? My approach is to take it seriously on its own terms, since Bereket does present it in a way that invites such treatment. But this ambiguity itself is a weakness: if an idea is both absurd and serious at once, it risks being neither.
Internal Logic of the Proposal
If we treat Bereket’s safeguard as a genuine policy suggestion, its difficulties quickly come into view.
The first challenge is enforceability. Constitutions and treaties do not enforce themselves; they work only when violations are punished by a credible arbiter. If Ethiopia later rejects such an arrangement, Eritrea has no way to compel compliance. International law gives landlocked states transit rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, but no mechanism could force Ethiopia to accept Eritrea’s nomination power over its executive. History confirms this. Bolivia spent decades trying to compel Chile to grant it sovereign access to the Pacific. Even after appealing to the International Court of Justice, it was told Chile had no obligation. Bolivia remains landlocked to this day. Uganda, Rwanda, and Laos survive through negotiated access (tariffs, corridors, contracts) not through constitutional intrusion. Eritrea’s safeguard, which looks ironclad in words, would dissolve in practice.
The second challenge lies in Bereket’s use of “survival.” He assumes that if Ethiopia calls access a survival issue, it signals willingness to concede extraordinary powers. But survival claims often mean the opposite: desperation, unpredictability, and unreliability. A drowning man may promise his rescuer everything, but once on shore he resists payment. A starving man may trade his freedom for bread, but in desperation he may snatch the loaf instead. A patient gasping in an emergency room may nod to any condition, but no sane observer would enforce such a promise once the crisis passes. Survival rhetoric signals urgency, not reliability. Agreements signed under desperation are the least likely to hold.
A third challenge is the absence of limits. Bereket stops at demanding veto power over Ethiopia’s executive. But if survival claims justify survival-level demands, why stop there? Why not demand Ethiopia’s army, its treasury, or its sovereignty itself? The logic has no natural boundary. It appears reasonable only because Bereket halts at one step. Extended further, it collapses into absurdity.
A fourth challenge is ambiguity between access and ownership. Bereket does not clarify whether Ethiopia is seeking transit rights, like those it already enjoys in Djibouti, or outright ownership of Red Sea territory. These are radically different demands. If it is ownership, Eritrea would be ceding land, not simply granting access. And if Ethiopia gains ownership, what would “withdrawal” even mean? One cannot withdraw from territory once sovereignty has changed hands. Withdrawal assumes something temporary; ownership is permanent. By failing to distinguish these categories, Bereket’s proposal lacks clarity at its foundation.
Finally, Bereket’s safeguard has no precedent. No landlocked state has ever demanded constitutional change in a neighbor as the price of access. Not Bolivia, not Laos, not Uganda. The absence of precedent is telling: it signals the impracticality of the idea. The entire international order rests on sovereignty. Bereket’s safeguard pushes against that principle.
The Proposal as Rhetoric
Bereket also presents his idea as a rhetorical gesture. By demanding something impossible in return, Eritrea exposes the impossibility of Ethiopia’s own demand. It is meant as a mirror: if Ethiopia calls Red Sea access survival, then Eritrea calls for survival-level guarantees in return, however absurd.
But this strategy too falters. Ethiopia’s claim (however exaggerated) is about trade access. Eritrea’s counter-claim is about reshaping Ethiopia’s constitutional order. These are not equivalents. To equate them is not to reveal absurdity, but to introduce a new absurdity of our own.
More importantly, Ethiopia’s claim is already vulnerable to criticism. It insists Red Sea access is a matter of life and death, yet Ethiopia has doubled its population (from 60 million to over 120 million) while relying almost entirely on Djibouti. If Eritrean ports were the line between existence and extinction, Ethiopia would not be here today. And international law is clear: access must be negotiated, not seized. The Bolivia–Chile ruling makes this point unmistakably. Ethiopia’s claim is already exaggerated and unlawful. It does not need a rhetorical mirror to be exposed.
The danger of such mirrors is that they distract. Instead of pointing directly to Ethiopia’s decades of survival, to the clarity of international law, and to the normal reality of interdependence, they divert attention to the gesture itself. What was meant as reflection risks becoming distortion.
This distortion is reinforced by Bereket’s metaphors. He invokes the cake-cutting allegory: one slices, the other chooses, ensuring fairness. But Ethiopia’s Constitution is not a cake to be divided. Eritrea is not waiting for a slice; it is demanding the knife. That is intrusion, not fairness. And once survival is invoked, the allegory collapses entirely. Desperate people do not politely accept slices; they seize the knife, the oven, or the entire cake. The metaphor conceals intrusion beneath the language of balance, but survival rhetoric strips it bare.
Even as rhetoric, then, the safeguard struggles. It does not mirror Ethiopia’s claim so much as distort it, and in doing so risks distracting from stronger, clearer arguments already at hand.
Feasibility in Practice
Finally, let us imagine Bereket’s safeguard literally. What would it mean for Eritrea to nominate Ethiopia’s executive?
Bereket appeals to Lebanon, where political offices are allocated along sectarian lines: the president Maronite Christian, the prime minister Sunni Muslim, the speaker of parliament Shi’a Muslim. He suggests that Eritrea could have a similar “slot” in Ethiopia’s executive. But this analogy misfires. Lebanon’s arrangement exists within one state. If Eritrea is to be “allocated” a seat in Ethiopia’s executive, then Eritrea has effectively become part of Ethiopia’s political system. That is not a safeguard; it is unification.
This raises fundamental questions. Under Bereket’s plan, what exactly is Eritrea? A federated unit of Ethiopia? A protectorate with special rights inside Ethiopia’s constitution? No such category exists in international law. The arrangement collapses the distinction between independence and incorporation. In the name of protecting Eritrea’s sovereignty, it risks erasing it.
Even setting aside sovereignty, practical questions remain. Would the Eritrean-nominated official live in Ethiopia or in Eritrea? If in Ethiopia, Ethiopian politics would shape his allegiance. No one acts for Eritrea simply by virtue of birthplace. Allegiance is shaped by incentives and constituencies. An Eritrean official in Addis Ababa would answer to Ethiopian pressures. If in Eritrea, would Ethiopia accept an absentee executive? And if not, how would Eritrea enforce its choice?
Bereket himself suggests Ethiopia would be free to withdraw from the arrangement at any time. But if so, what is the safeguard worth? An agreement that can be abandoned unilaterally is not a protection; it is a gesture. If the safeguard lacks persistence, it secures nothing.
Even if Ethiopia did not withdraw, the safeguard remains hollow. Nomination power does not create allegiance. If agreements are enforceable, nomination is redundant. If they are unenforceable, nomination is meaningless. Either way, the safeguard cannot deliver what it promises.
Conclusion
Bereket Habtemariam’s proposal deserves recognition for its creativity and for its willingness to spark dialogue. It is not offered as dogma, but as an invitation to think differently. Yet when engaged seriously, it encounters difficulties on all sides.
As a serious safeguard, it falters: it cannot be enforced, it misreads survival logic, it lacks limits, it blurs the line between access and ownership, and it has no precedent. As rhetoric, it distorts more than it reflects: Ethiopia’s claim is already exaggerated and unlawful, and Bereket’s mirror risks distracting from stronger counter-arguments. As feasibility, it collapses: the Lebanese analogy erases sovereignty, practical mechanics go unanswered, and the arrangement has no continuity if Ethiopia can withdraw at will.
What Bereket presents as brilliance is, in fact, a gesture, a way of provoking thought. That in itself has value. But clever mirrors cannot substitute for serious safeguards. Eritrea’s survival will not be secured by rhetorical devices or symbolic nominations. It will be secured by enforceable agreements, by the weight of international law, and above all by Eritrea’s own institutional strength.
Awate Forum