Reading about the underpants bomb episode reminded me of a funny rant on airport security penned by Shashi Tharoor in the FT a few years back when airport security measures were stepped up in response to the ‘Shoe bomber’ incident, with the following prophetic words:

Generals are always fighting the last war, and security screeners are the same. I’m just grateful it was a shoe bomber they were reacting to. What on earth would they do if the next Richard Reid tried to ignite his underwear?

We’ll soon find out… (See the full piece here.)

What type of ethnic divisions and political circumstances are most likely to produce conflict?

There is no easy answer, but there are formulas that can provide a guide. (more…)

The New York Times has just published a genuinely wonderful (if just a little humorous) piece about Luxembourg’s revanchist dreams of dominating its neighborhood.  Read it in full, but first enjoy this map of the Grand Duchy’s potential territorial claims:

I have almost nothing to add to the NYT’s investigations, except that Luxembourg is running for a seat on the UN Security Council at the end of 2012. Watch out Belgium!

Last Friday, just as West Africa watchers were recovering from the excitement of the coup d’état in Mali a couple of weeks back, little Guinea-Bissau piped up with a putsch of its own. A group of soldiers attacked the residence of the prime minister and presidential candidate, Carlos Gomes Jr, and arrested him and the country’s interim president, Raimundo Pereira. They subsequently declared that they were forced to take action after discovering a secret document signed by Gomes Jr that gave a detachment of Angolan soldiers permission to “annihilate” Guinea-Bissau’s army. Said soldiers had been in the country, at Gomes Jr’s request, for a few weeks, ostensibly to restructure and reform the bloated military.

The secret document is quite likely to be a fabrication, but it seems probable that the coup happened because the army had had enough of Gomes Jr’s meddling and wanted to re-establish its authority. Indeed, the Transitional Council it has set up to run the country while the putschists decide its long-term future includes 22 opposition parties but has explicitly excluded Gomes Jr’s ruling party, the PAIGC.

The invitation to the Angolans was a provocative move. Downsizing the military would reduce its access to the lucrative drug trade which for the past few years, as Guinea-Bissau has become a staging post on the cocaine route from South America to Europe, has filled the coffers of the country’s top army, navy and air force officials. It is not known whether Gomes Jr was himself involved in the trade and wanted to weaken the competition (his late predecessor Nino Vieira almost certainly enriched himself with a spot of narcotrafficking on the side), but his removal from power – and he was very likely to win the presidency in the second round of voting later this month – leaves the way clear for the army to continue to profit from the cocaine boom.

Who is behind the coup is not clear. My immediate thought was that army chief-of-staff Antonio Indjai, a shrewd operator who has sidelined rivals such as former navy boss Bubo Na Tchuto and who a couple of years back briefly arrested Gomes Jr and labelled him a criminal, was masterminding things, and it seems Indjai attended the first two post-coup meetings between the junta and opposition leaders. Guinea-Bissau’s leading blogger, Antonio Aly Silva, was of the same opinion, and was arrested shortly after posting that the army chief was in control (he was later released after receiving a beating and having many of his valuables stolen).

But reports have recently emerged that Indjai himself has been arrested, and that his number two Mamadu Ture Kuruma is in control.  This made me wonder if Bubo Na Tchuto, a popular and influential figure who has attempted at least two coups in the recent past, was taking his revenge on his former ally, and at the same time eliminating another rival in Gomes Jr. Investigating, I found a single article from the Spanish news agency EFE claiming that Bubo, who has been described as a drug kingpin by the US, had indeed been released from prison over the weekend, that “military sources” said he had been collected from his cell by a group of uniformed men. This, I thought, confirmed my suspicions, but just as I was congratulating myself for my detective work I was shocked to read the last few words of the article, which stated that  ’according to unconfirmed rumours, Bubo was executed in the early hours of the morning.’

So we still do not know who is really in charge. Guinea-Bissau’s foreign minister is convinced that Indjai holds the reins and has dismissed rumours of his arrest as ridiculous. Bubo may or may not be alive, and may or may not be the coup mastermind. Indjai’s number two is also on the list of suspects, as is opposition presidential candidate Kumba Yala, who looks like benefiting from the political agreement (although at least one source says he too has been arrested).

But although speculating is interesting, to a large extent it does not matter who planned the coup. The real power in the country is held by the drug barons from South America, and this coup, like several before it and no doubt many more in the coming years, is really a squabble over who gets access to their gifts.

Update: Kumba Yala has denounced the coup and refused to join the “Transitional Council“, which coup leaders say will run the country for the next 1-2 years.

Update #2: This report (in Portuguese) suggests that Antonio Indjai had threatened to attack Angolan troops on 5 April, at a meeting of  the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abidjan. Indjai complained that the Angolans had heavy armaments, including fourteen tanks, and warned ECOWAS that its emergency forces would soon have to go into Guinea-Bissau as well as Mali.

Newt Gingrich, who is still hanging on to his presidential ambitions, has a long record of interest in the United Nations.  In the post-Iraq era he was, by Bush-era Republican standards, a bit of UN-booster and led a commission that recommended increasing funding for the organization’s peacekeeping and human rights monitoring.  Over the last year, however, he has mainly mentioned the UN when he’s needed an easy political target, and talked about stopping its funding.  Yesterday, he adopted a third strategy: advocating positive engagement at the UN as a way to spread guns.

Newt Gingrich accused the National Rifle Association of being “too timid” in a Friday speech to the group.

Desperate for attention and trying to get back into a conversation that has passed him by, the still-technically-running candidate said he will submit a treaty to the United Nations that would make the right to bear arms a universal human right.

“Far fewer women would be raped. Far fewer children would be killed…and far fewer dictators would survive if people had the right to bear arms everywhere on the planet,” Gingrich said, earning a standing ovation from a crowd of thousands. “We should say the second amendment is an amendment for all mankind.”

“Let’s take the George Soros’ and the Hillary Clintons’ head on,” he added.

Now, that’s what I call arms control.

A new book edited by Jeffrey Herbst, Terence McNamee, and Greg Mills discusses the most important problem in fragile states: weak social cohesion. It looks at “fragmented and weak states, made up of many nations and cutting across geographical, racial and religious boundaries” and explores why some countries with potential “fault lines” produce conflict while others are better at managing them.

More than a dozen authors contribute case studies on a broad range of countries including South Africa, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, India and even Canada and seek solutions that can be transferred elsewhere.

Over and over again, they learn that “the nature of the fault lines was far more complicated than the simple headline assigned to a country.” In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, Pierre Englebert finds an extraordinarily complicated picture, with “multiple and overlapping local fissures, widely distributed across the country, which contribute to a fragmentation of identities and networks at the local level and increased polarization of social life.” Christopher Clapham writes that Ethiopia is “riven by conflicts along almost every fault line–ethnic, religious, ecological, class, ideological, political–many of which are broadly aligned . . . Conflicts within Ethiopia itself spread across state frontiers–especially those with its three most important neighbors.” (more…)

Last Friday, my attention was caught by the title of a piece on the Mideastwire blog:

Richard Gowan misses the key aspect of conflict mitigation: positive incentives and weak actor/strong actors dialectic

Mideastwire’s editor Nicholas Noe took issue with this paragraph from something I wrote for Foreign Policy at the end of March (and also blogged about on GD):

Conflict resolution experts argue that combatants negotiate seriously when facing a “mutually hurting stalemate”: a situation in which both sides grasp that victory is unachievable. In February, it seemed possible that Syria was headed for just such a stalemate, with anti-government forces holding significant urban areas and the army losing confidence. If this situation had continued, Annan’s basic concept — a U.N.-supervised cessation of hostilities to create space for political dialogue — could have been workable.

Here is Mr Noe’s critique of what I had to say:

This is the old, one dimensional way to view attempts at conflict mitigation. But one critical side it misses is the effect of outside, preponderant powers and how this part of the equation can radically alter the playing field. For example, in Syria, the conflict is NOT between syria and an opposition – it is FAR beyond that. As such, the conditions of negotiation and conflict are radically different AND, because Syria is actually a fairly weak actor vis a vis its opponents, the opportunities can and should be far more open for its opponents to offer, perhaps, POSITIVE INCENTIVES which can 1) help fracture the regime if reasonable offers are rejected or 2) ease the regime actor into the guts of an international process that steadily drains the regimes ability and desire to exercise violence and project instability… either way flexibility is the possibility which must be seen and emphasized for the vastly preponderant actors!

Gowan’s standard, simplistic view does not allow for this aspect of dynamism which is critical in the current situation – reducing matters to “when both sides grasp that victory is unachievable”… But Mr, Gowan – what about when the weak regime actor sees benefits as well to mitigating conflict and moving into an internationalized process?

I felt a little put out, as what I said was taken out of context here.  You might assume that I was opposed to the Annan plan: but the FP piece was a qualified endorsement of the plan.  I concluded that “Annan is not a miracle-worker, but he is a professional: he should be given the chance grind out a peace deal.”   However, the last 2-3 days have brought a lot of evidence that the Syrian regime also has an ”old, one dimensional way” of looking at conflict.  Rather than entering into an internationalized peace process (perhaps out of fear of losing leverage), Syria has (i) ratcheted up the violence and (ii) effectively called on the Syrian opposition to admit defeat; and (iii) ignored intensified international condemnation of its behavior.

I can only read this series of events as follows: Assad grasps that if he can crush the opposition, he can either avoid political talks altogether or (more likely) sit down to talk with some set of cowed and broken foes from a position of strength.  In such circumstances, the fact that Assad is potentially vulnerable to pressure from outside powers may not matter.  After a convincing military victory, he could offer some vague package of insubstantial reforms and (as I argued in FP) find a few opposition leaders who would be prepared to go along with him out of desperation or opportunism.

This is clearly a scenario that many in the Syrian opposition fear, and why leading rebels have refused to accept his terms.  Assad’s militant opponents may be in bad shape, but they would rather hang on for increased military supplies from their Arab backers than put faith in flexibility and concessions in talks with Assad.

So I’m afraid that my pessimistic analysis looks more convincing now than it did last week.  Events may change again: Russia may yet finally get its act in gear and force Assad to back down and talk.  In that case, Mr Noe’s optimism may be justified.  A chastened Assad, fearing that Moscow could desert him, might start to behave very differently.  My initial support for the Annan plan was based on the assumptions that (i) Assad’s military push would lose steam and (ii) Russia would make a successful effort to call him to order.  As of now, the military situation is awful and Russia has either failed to apply sufficient pressure or (as the Washington Post quotes me today) Assad holds Moscow in contempt.  Simplistic, perhaps, but that’s the brutal reality.

The debate about Invisible Children’s “Kony 2012″ campaign has been impassioned, but there haven’t been many efforts to put it in a proper historical context.  The fact that the campaign harnessed social media to get its message across makes it feel new and hip.  But if you get past the techno-blather, there are precedents, as my colleague Keith Stanksi points out in World Politics Review:

In the late-19th century, for instance, a British intelligence officer named Francis R. Wingate launched a similar campaign focused on the leader of the Sudan, Khalifa Abdullahi. The campaign went the equivalent of “viral” for its era after numerous European newspapers, magazines and pamphlets reproduced Wingate’s account of how the social inequality, turmoil and inequity in Sudan reflected Abdullahi’s depraved character.

The argument resonated in Britain. After months of debate, and amid growing public pressure, the British Parliament launched a war and a sustained manhunt that culminated in the overthrow of Abdullahi’s regime and, ultimately, his death.

Colonel Wingate can be seen above (on the right) in a cunning disguise.  Coming back to the present, I wouldn’t have any moral qualms about Kony meeting an ugly fate per se, but Keith points out that fixating on Bad Men can come at a very high cost:

Simplification is not the Kony 2012 campaign’s primary offense. Numerous activist organizations, including some more-established than Invisible Children, take liberties in crafting slogans and public awareness campaigns. Policymakers, supporters and journalists of all persuasions are willing to overlook sins of omission or moments of exaggeration in the search for compelling causes.

Rather, the Kony 2012 debate illustrates a more troubling trend. Fixating on Kony as a warlord leads many policymakers and Invisible Children supporters to conclude that some of the most troublesome features of Central Africa could be mitigated — if not eliminated — by targeting one man. Invisible Children leads viewers and supporters to believe that to capture or kill Kony is to restore order to Northern Uganda and the surrounding environs.

The danger of this logic can be seen in the United States’ most formative encounter with a warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid. Almost two decades ago, Aidid became the target of a U.S.-led manhunt that, according to many policymakers at the time, would determine the political fate of famine-ridden Somalia. The failed mission and hasty U.S. exit from Somalia illustrated the danger of both underestimating the political complexity of local situations and overestimating the United States’ capacity to navigate them.

Briefing the General Assembly today, Kofi Annan noted that UN officials are now in Syria to plan a new ceasefire monitoring mission – one element of Annan’s peace plan.  Here is what he had to say about the mission:

As we prepare for such a mission, we need to keep the unique character of the Syrian crisis in mind. The violence in Syria cannot be addressed through the means of a traditional observer mission interposed between two armies. The situation is fluid. There is no established frontline. Peace will not be consolidated without a credible political process.  What we would need on the ground is a small and nimble United Nations presence. It would need to be deployed quickly with a broad and flexible mandate. Its freedom of movement throughout the country and security must be assured. It should engage all relevant parties. It should constantly and rapidly observe, establish and assess facts and conditions on the ground in an objective manner.

This assessment strikes me as sound.  Last week, I jotted down six criteria for a successful monitoring mission in Syria – Colum Lynch was kind enough to publish them on his blog over at FP:

1. Freedom of movement: The Arab League observer mission was under constant supervision by Syrian security personnel, and could not travel to trouble-spots without their minders. To have even minimal credibility, the U.N. mission would need to be able to make monitoring visits on their own initiative. The team would need their own vehicles (probably armored 4x4s) and independent close-protection officers. The Syrian authorities will argue that the observers should notify them in advance of trips for safety’s sake. Nonetheless, the U.N, should insist on the right on to make spot-checks with 2-3 hours notice at most.

2. A secure HQ and communications: The Arab observers were headquartered in a hotel, and had use Syrian communications systems to contact the Arab League in Cairo, inevitably compromising their reporting. A credible U.N. mission would need an independent base — off-limits to Syrian authorities — and the ability to send encrypted communications to New York. A neutral government such as Switzerland could provide military communications experts to support the mission. It might not take long for the Syrians (with Russian and Iranian help) to crack the codes, but this would at least signal the observers’ autonomy.

3. Access to Syrian artillery and armor: The use of big guns and tanks against civilians has been a defining dimension of the conflict. While the Arab observers were meant to oversee the removal of heavy weapons from urban areas, the Syrian Army only made cosmetic withdrawals. Annan and the Security Council have now called for the “end the use of heavy weapons in population centers, and [to] begin pullback of military concentrations in and around population centers.” U.N. monitors would need to prioritize tracking artillery and armored units, possibly even embedding personnel in their bases away from cities.

4. Satellites and drones: Heavy weapons can also be tracked by drones and satellites — which the United States has done already — and the observer mission should make use of these sources. Damascus will object to the U.N. turning to the United States for aerial or satellite intelligence, but the U.N. can get imagery from other sources and has its own satellite imagery analysts. The EU also has a satellite center that could be put at the U.N.’s disposal, and Belgium has a small fleet of drones that it has previously deployed in European peace operations.

5. Special investigators: While “observing” and “monitoring” sound like passive activities, the U.N. could also deploy investigative teams to gain more detailed information on specific incidents — including bombings and raids by rebel forces. While it’s very hard to gather reliable evidence in war zones, small teams of forensic and ballistics specialists may be able to piece together basic facts on new massacres. Although not much of a deterrent in the short term, the presence of these teams may make it possible to hold killers from both sides accountable later, as drawn-out prosecutions in the Balkans have shown.

6. An emergency exit strategy: However effectively the U.N. monitors might perform, there will still be a risk that the situation in Syria will deteriorate again — and either the government or opposition could try to seize some observers as hostages. There will need to be a military plan to get the monitors out at short notice. Russia, with its base at Tartus, is best-placed to arrange such a plan and could offer to do so as a sign of goodwill towards Kofi Annan. The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon and the Turkish armed forces — and possibly Britain, which has forces stationed nearby in Cyprus — could lend a helping hand.

Will the forthcoming UN mission meet these criteria?  My suspicion is that it will have limited freedom of movement (getting around Syrian obstacles and objections will be a daily nightmare) and get some access to Syrian armored units and probably have the necessary communications kit.  Drones and satellites are unlikely.  Adding special investigators – or even a just a simple human rights component to track abuses – to military monitor should be a priority, as these experts can dig into cases of torture and targeted killings.  But, frankly, a heavily-armed extraction mission is a bit fantastical…

Kofi Annan is briefing the Security Council on his efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis today.  As I wrote in a piece for Foreign Policy on Friday Annan – originally welcomed as a potential savior – has been coming under increasing criticism for his peace plan:

At first sight, Annan’s proposals don’t seem so contentious. The main pillars are an “inclusive Syrian-led political process,” an “effective United Nations supervised cessation of armed violence,” and “timely provision of humanitarian assistance.” Other points include the release of political prisoners, letting journalists move freely, and permitting peaceful demonstrations. While these are unquestionably urgent priorities, however, the plan will ultimately be judged on the implementation of its political and military aspects.

The standard line of attack on this blueprint is that it appeals to all the wrong people. Unlike the previous Arab League peace plan, it does not call for President Bashar al-Assad to stand down. Russia and China, having stopped the Security Council from backing the League’s proposals, welcome this softer approach. When Annan announced this week that President Assad had accepted the plan, skeptics accused Damascus of using the diplomatic opening to buy time. Assad, they allege with reason, is a congenital breaker of promises and probably views this war in existential terms: nothing short of total victory can guarantee his continuation in power. So his support for Annan’s plan is proof that it must be flawed.

Still, it’s unfair to criticize Annan for engineering a diplomatic consensus. He was chosen precisely because he could help soothe fraying tempers at the United Nations and avert calls for an ill-conceived military intervention in Syria, as I noted in a recent piece for World Politics Review. He has done a far better job in these terms than initially seemed possible. But he faces a far worse context for peacemaking inside Syria than when he took the job.

Conflict resolution experts argue that combatants negotiate seriously when facing a “mutually hurting stalemate”: a situation in which both sides grasp that victory is unachievable. In February, it seemed possible that Syria was headed for just such a stalemate, with anti-government forces holding significant urban areas and the army losing confidence. If this situation had continued, Annan’s basic concept — a U.N.-supervised cessation of hostilities to create space for political dialogue — could have been workable.

But the security situation has changed significantly. The army got the better of the opposition in Homs and Idlib. Rather than break under the strain of fighting in built-up areas, the military has kept up its offensives while rebels say they are running out of ammunition. In this context, even as intense fighting continues, Assad has less incentive to talk in good faith. Yet the Security Council and Arab League can hardly reverse themselves and say that they no longer believe negotiations are worthwhile.

Over the weekend, however, quite a few Western leaders began talking about the potential failure of the Annan plan.  At the meeting for the Friends of Syria in Turkey, Hillary Clinton cast doubt on Assad’s sincerity and William Hague argued that “there isn’t an unlimited period of time for this, for the Kofi Annan process to work before many of the nations here want us to go back to the UN Security Council.”  There is an argument going around that if Annan’s plan demonstrably fails, China and Russia may find it hard to veto any future UN resolution on Syria.  Frankly, I think that’s optimistic.  But Annan should be careful: he may find that Western and Arab hawks are now looking for his plan to fail, while the Assad regime continues to play for time…

The person who controls the Twitter feed for Aeon – a new magazine of philosophy, ethics and politics launching later this year - has hit upon a remarkable review of Mein Kampf by George Orwell, dated 21 March 1940.   The mix of mordant humour and on-the-mark analysis of Hitler’s attitude to the USSR is just political analysis at its best:

It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism.

Then suddenly it turned out that Hitler was not respectable after all. As one result of this, Hurst and Blackett’s edition was reissued in a new jacket explaining that all profits would be devoted to the Red Cross. Nevertheless, simply on the internal evidence of Mein Kampf, it is difficult to believe that any real change has taken place in Hitler’s aims and opinions. When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics. Probably, in Hitler’s own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention of smashing England afterwards. Now, as it has turned out, England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the more easily bribed of the two. But Russia’s turn will come when England is out of the picture — that, no doubt, is how Hitler sees it. Whether it will turn out that way is of course a different question.

Well, the headline pretty much says it all, but here’s some more of the story:

A mafia traitor was beaten to death with a hammer and then eaten by Serbian gangsters, police believe. Officers said Milan Jurisic, 37, was killed in Madrid by criminals from the Zemun Clan, a mafia group from Belgrade.His remains were then ground up with a meat grinder, cooked, and eaten, according to a confession by another Zemun Clan member, Sretko Kalinic, nicknamed “The Butcher”. Later the gang reportedly threw the bones into the River Manzanares in the Spanish capital.This week, police found bones in the river and the apartment where the killing apparently took place in 2009. Jurisic is thought to have betrayed his fellow gang members by stealing money from them. He was on the run after being convicted in his absence of assassinating Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003. Kalinic confessed to the murder after he was arrested in the Croatian capital of Zagreb in 2010. Police believe the murder and subsequent cannibalism was led by Luka Bojovic, a Serbian gangster arrested in Valencia last month.

Messed UP. Still, you hang around with a gangster nick-named ‘the Butcher’, what do you expect?  All I can say is I’m really glad I’m not a Serbian gangster. I don’t have the stomach for it.

This is my first post for a while as I’ve been off ‘fighting ‘ cancer though for a lot of the time ‘enduring ‘ would have been a more appropriate way of putting it .

Anyway,  I’ve written a piece for Yale Global asking whether the combination of US concern over the rise of China and the US debt crisis mean the country is now set on path to de facto becoming a regional as opposed to global power.

Media coverage of President Barack Obama’s high-profile visit to Australia and plan to boost US presence in Asia may mask America’s shrinking global footprint. The combination of concern over China and the US debt crisis could set Washington on a course to becoming a mere regional power in the Asia Pacific. Read More

This week, the FT had a special section on supply chains and risk management.  It was mainly very good, but one passage struck a funny note:

With Ethiopia having launched an attack on camps inside Eritrea last week, and apparently another over the weekend (though the Ethiopian government denies that), UN Dispatch is wondering how come the Security Council seems to be turning a blind eye. Their answer is that the Council has been silent – and is likely to remain so – for several reasons:

First, the Council has found itself spurned by Eritrea in the past. Following the 2000 peace agreement, a UN peacekeeping force called the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) was set up to monitor the situation. After increasingly restrictive conditions from Eritrea, including the cutting of logistical routes, the UN Security Council begrudgingly sunset the mission in 2008. There is no love lost between the two, also, due to Security Council sanctions on Eritrea for supporting al-Shabab despite prevailing arms embargoes.

Second, the issue is unlikely to be pressed by any of the Permanent Members for swift action. In its role as the President, the UK has yet to call for any meetings on the matter, and has stated that its focus this month will be on the Middle East. Once the United States takes up the Presidency in April, it will likely focus the status of Sudan and South Sudan, which are personal projects of Ambassador Susan Rice. Further, the United States is a strong ally of Ethiopia for its role in countering the spread of terrorism in the Horn. That leaves France, which is spending its diplomatic clout on getting a stronger resolution on Syria out of Russia and China.

Of the non-permanent states, while the African Union has called for calm between Ethiopia and Eritrea, South Africa and Togo have yet to echo the call from the Security Council. Barring a strong push by the two sub-Sahara African non-permanent members, it’s unlikely a sense of urgency will permeate the situation.

While this week’s fighting has been about training camps, all this is of course taking place against the larger backdrop of a border conflict that’s been left unresolved since the end of war between the two countries back in 2000. For some background on the impasse, it’s worth looking back at this International Crisis Group report from 2008, which argued that the two countries were at “serious risk of a new war”, and that

Ethiopia and Eritrea have had no incentive to resolve the frozen border conflict. Indeed, both regimes have used it as an excuse to enhance their domestic power at the expense of democracy and economic growth, thus reducing the attractiveness to them of diplomatic compromise. They support the other’s domestic rebels, and each is convinced that the fall of the other’s regime is imminent and the only real solution to the border dispute.

At the same time, the key international actors have allowed this situation to remain frozen because of overriding concerns, such as Washington’s concentration on its counter-terrorism priorities. However, the significance of the bilateral dispute has been magnified by its impact on the region, especially the conflict in Somalia, where insurgents backed by Eritrea battle Ethiopian troops that support the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

ICG’s take on what an endgame could look like, if the international community were to engage more seriously:

The basic goals remain to get Ethiopia to accept the border, Eritrea to accept the need for dialogue and the international community to provide the carrots and sticks needed to press the parties, including financing for trans-border development. Overcoming so many contrary predilections, even in the Security Council and major capitals, but especially in Addis Ababa and Asmara, will be hard.

But there are some objective considerations that might attract both sides to the process recommended [in the report]. Eritrea wants to consolidate its independence, prefers physical border demarcation to virtual demarcation, seeks Ethiopian withdrawal from Badme in particular and desires better relations with the West. Building a reconfigured progress on the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission’s conclusions about the border should give it enough to be open to a wide-ranging dialogue. Prospective access to Eritrean ports and essentially an end to internal armed insurgencies should be meaningful incentives for Ethiopia.