Red Sea Horn · Outside Powers
Reference: RSH/OUTSIDE/2026-01 | Coverage period: 8–15 September 2026 | Published: 15 September 2026
This week
Three outside powers moved to lock in coastline this week — the United States and China by simply staying put next to each other in Djibouti, Egypt by funding a naval upgrade in Eritrea, and the UAE by quietly continuing to run a port that Somalia says it no longer owns a piece of.
1. Djibouti
A Country the Size of Vermont, Eight Foreign Armies
Djibouti now hosts American, Chinese, French, Japanese and Italian military installations, among others, compressed into a territory roughly the size of Vermont. Camp Lemonnier, the US installation established in 2002, sits a few miles from China’s PLA Support Base — opened in 2017, Beijing’s only overseas military base, and the one place on earth where American and Chinese forces maintain a permanent side-by-side presence. Analysts describe the result as a “hyper-congested strategic garrison” with recurring gray-zone friction between the two militaries. The asymmetry is telling: Chinese personnel move relatively freely into Djiboutian towns and run public-diplomacy programmes, including multinational basketball tournaments; US personnel need special permission to leave Camp Lemonnier and are barred from much of the capital. Djibouti’s government draws roughly 10% of GDP from military basing rents — income that has not reached the roughly 40% of the population living in poverty. — Atlantic Council; Horn Review, 2026.
2. Egypt · Eritrea
Cairo Buys Leverage It Can Point at Addis Ababa
Egypt, locked in a long-running dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, signed a deal reported in December 2025 to upgrade Eritrea’s port of Assab and add berths able to take warships — at the exact port Ethiopia is now openly discussing retaking. Cairo does not need to say out loud that this gives it a card to play in the Nile dispute; funding naval infrastructure at Ethiopia’s most contested access point says it for them. — The National, cited December 2025.
3. UAE
A Cancellation That Didn’t Actually Cancel Anything
Somalia announced in January it was tearing up UAE port and security agreements at Berbera, Bosaso and Kismayo. Eight months later, DP World — the Dubai-owned operator holding 51% of Berbera — says operations continue unchanged, and Somaliland, which controls Berbera on the ground, never accepted Mogadishu’s cancellation in the first place. The UAE’s position at Berbera has survived a diplomatic cancellation entirely on the strength of who actually controls the port, not who claims to. — Maritime Executive; Rio Times, 2026.
Briefing points
- The US-China rivalry in Djibouti is no longer theoretical proximity — it is documented gray-zone friction between two garrisons a few miles apart.
- Egypt’s Assab investment fuses two separate disputes (the Nile, the Red Sea) into a single piece of leverage over Ethiopia.
- Sovereign cancellations of port deals mean little when a foreign operator and a breakaway government both prefer the deal stays in place.
Bottom line
None of this week’s outside-power moves required a treaty signing or a summit. Staying put, funding one port upgrade, and simply not leaving another port were enough to shift the balance on this coastline.
References
Atlantic Council, “Djibouti is the next arena for US-China competition in the Red Sea,” atlanticcouncil.org.
Horn Review, “Djibouti at the Center of Growing Global Security Threats,” January 2026, hornreview.org.
The National (Abu Dhabi), cited in Horn of Africa reporting, December 2025.
Maritime Executive, “Somalia and Ethiopia Makes Progress on Talks for Port Access,” 2026, maritime-executive.com.
Rio Times, “Somalia Cancels Berbera Port Deals as Ethiopia and UAE Reshape Horn of Africa Geopolitics,” 2026, riotimesonline.com.
Abdinasir Hassan Timoweyne is Founder and Director of the Nexa Centre and Senior Lecturer in International Relations at New Generation University. He is the author of several published articles on Horn of Africa and Middle East politics.