Issue No. 937

The Other Strait

The Horn of Africa's political fate has always been wired to external commercial interests, with its expansive eastern edge on the Red Sea serving as an aorta of trade for millennia. A Greek merchant's manual from the 1st century AD describes the port of Obone in modern-day Puntland as a hub of ivory, tortoiseshell, enslaved people and cinnamon destined for Egypt. Today, as so often quoted, between 12-15% of the world's seaborne trade passes along the arterial waterway, with the Suez Canal bridging Europe and Asia. But well before the globalised world or the vying Gulf and Middle Powers over the Red Sea's littoral administrations, the logic of 'gunboat diplomacy' underpinned the passage over these seas. 

Over the past two centuries, the states and administrations hugging the Red Sea have been considered, at best, inconveniences, regarded as possible threats to broader maritime commercial and naval interests. First, the British, then the US, spent immense sums on 'securing the sea' and protecting shipping lanes, with the logic enduring as technologies shifted from the hulking Royal Navy's man-of-war ships to aircraft carriers today. Such interests, while often couched in a liberal-internationalist veneer, were hardly altruistic, but rather intent on keeping the lifeblood of their world order ticking over-- as well as projecting force to all corners of the increasingly globalised world. 

It was not just Washington, however, that understood this, with a spate of pirate hijackings from Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and the western Indian Ocean in the 2000s spurring a collective international maritime policing force that has proven remarkably successful, coming hand-in-hand with a number of onshore outreaches to Puntland's communities. It is no coincidence that China's first permanent overseas military base is in Djibouti; essentially a rentier city-state that survives on the securitisation of the Red Sea. But the American appetite and instinct to serve as the 'policeman of the world' has been fading for some time, a dynamic amplified by Donald Trump's return to the White House last year.

Instead, we are witnessing a new war in the Middle East, the explicit subordination of diplomatic and security norms to commercial deal-making, and the treatment of sovereign states as assets to be leveraged or acquired by the hegemon that underpinned the post-World War II global order. What has been particularly explicit, though, is the stripping back of the liberal-internationalist language that covered Pax Americana. Perhaps more simply, 'might is right'-- and a return to the wars of conquest of the 18th and 19th centuries is upon us, magnified by the destructive power of modern technologies. 

Virtually no country has been left unshaken by the dizzying, metastasising war in the Middle East, continuing to escalate at pace and scale-- and with no apparent Israeli or American endgame. Indeed, rather than folding under the incessant 'shock and awe' tactics of the American military, the Iranian regime has survived thus far despite the killing of the Ayatollah; and is inflicting commercial and political pain across the US allies in the Gulf, targeting their desalination, commercial, and oil infrastructure. Decades-old fears of Tehran choking or shutting off the Strait of Hormuz —the world's key hydrocarbon waterway —are coming to pass, with oil and gas prices rising despite OPEC interventions.

Supply chains of crude, gas, oil, petrochemicals, urea, and fertilisers have all been upended, sending inflationary shockwaves across our interconnected world. Even with a ceasefire tomorrow-- and that shows no sign of occurring-- the geopolitical and economic consequences of this short-sighted war will reverberate for time to come. And the world's "largest supply disruption in the history of oil markets"-- in the words of the International Energy Agency-- could not come at a worse moment for the Horn; a region wholly dependent on external hydrocarbon imports. Across Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan, reports of rocketing fuel prices are causing alarm, not least because inflationary and oil spikes historically last longer in the region. A meeting this week between leaders from Djibouti, Somalia, and Ethiopia in Djibouti City underscored such fears, with the three men discussing the fallout from the Middle East. 

As the Horn's limited hydrocarbon stocks dry up-- as they inevitably will in the coming days and weeks-- it will begin to drain precious foreign exchange reserves, constraining their ability to import key materials and commodities, not least fertiliser. Falling fertiliser imports would be terrible news for the agriculturally dependent economies of the region, with tens of millions already wrestling with acute food insecurity. That is just the economic consequences, and at each, the ruling regimes and administrations across the Horn have come under pressure; they have, for the most part, simply circled their wagons for their own limited patrimonial networks.

More broadly, though, speculation is rife about the possible geopolitical fallout for the Horn of Africa, not least whether the Houthis might intervene on behalf of their Iranian benefactors and target Israeli, American, or Emirati interests. Others have suggested that such an existential threat from Iran to their economies will force Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to the table to deconflict their interests across the Red Sea; less probable remains the possible disinvestment of Ankara and Cairo. No doubt this is critical for the Horn, with the pernicious influences from the Gulf and beyond spurring on conflict in Sudan, accentuating the splintering of the political settlements across the region, and undermining the multilateral architecture of IGAD and the African Union.

But the full impact of war in the Middle East remains the realm of speculation for the time being, obscuring some of the broader geopolitical trends at play as well, not least the long-overdue issues and questions about navigating naval security in an increasingly fragmented multipolar world. And there are broader, structural issues at play in the Horn that are going nowhere as well-- the gutting of international aid, the decline of internal sovereignty, rising domestic and regional polarisation, and more. On either side of the Red Sea, political and humanitarian crises are consuming Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and beyond. And these are states with hollowed-out capacity and sovereignty, governed by ever-diminishing patrimonial networks. 

The escalating war in the Middle East has once again focused global attention on the vulnerability of the world's maritime chokepoints. But while the crisis gripping the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf is threatening the flow of hydrocarbons through the world's most strategically sensitive waterway, it is simultaneously revealing the enduring nature and fragility of its southern counterpart: the Bab al-Mandab. Both are vital trade waterways — Hormuz controls roughly 20% of global petroleum consumption and over 30% of the world's LNG, and the Bab al-Mandab carries some 4.2 million barrels of oil per day. 

But the security logic of these two maritime corridors could hardly be more different: Hormuz is contested between supposedly coherent state actors — Iran, Israel, the United States, and the UAE — each with the military capacity to threaten closure. The Bab al-Mandab operates by an entirely different logic: a political marketplace that straddles state and non-state armed actors. And unlike Hormuz, instability around the Bab al-Mandab flows from a far more diffuse set of pressures stemming from civil wars, collapsing sovereignties, proliferating armed groups, and political contestation stretching across the shores of Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan.

If the war on Iran serves to close ranks amongst the Gulf countries and align their interests in the Horn, then it might - against all odds - provide greater stability to this troubled region. But at this early stage of the conflict, that may be little more than wishful thinking: far more likely that the economic shocks to the Horn will be followed by a new round of geopolitical competition. For the region, the real question is perhaps not whether the war in the Gulf will end in days, weeks, or months, but if these fragile states bordering the Bab al-Mandab can withstand the shocks rippling towards them, and yet another round of foreign-fuelled geopolitical contestation on its doorstep.

The Somali Wire Team