The Red Sea is the scene of today's clash of African and Arab power politics.

For the Arab Gulf states, the Horn of Africa is a strategic border. They want to minimize political threats. Some are hostile to Islamists, but all want to suppress pro-democracy movements. Anticipating a world of decarbonization and food insecurity, Gulf states want to own rich agricultural land. Each has their own vision of their African client states and caters to their demands.

This is a recipe for proxy wars, state divisions and dictatorships in northeast Africa.

For the Horn of Africa, today's crisis is existential. Wars, dictatorships, and famine are causing the collapse of nations. The African Union is at risk and its peace and security system is collapsing. The United Nations has retreated from peace negotiations and is increasingly reduced to a bare-bones humanitarian aid agency.

The surprise New Year's agreement between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Muse Bihi of the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway region in northwestern Somalia, underscores the danger. Ethiopia is known for its cautious diplomacy, including defending the inviolability of its existing borders. After experiencing war with Somalia in the 1960s and 70s, Ethiopia learned to be cautious and consultative in its dealings with Mogadishu.

Last week, Ethiopia reversed that tradition. In exchange for recognizing Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, it promised to lease 12 miles of land, including a seaport, and allow Ethiopia to establish a naval base. This prompted strong words from Somalia, which was not known beforehand. The AU called on Ethiopia to treat Somalia with respect. Fears of new conflict grew. Although not said publicly, the UAE is widely suspected of sponsoring the deal.

For the United States, the Horn of Africa crisis is a sideshow to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war and conflict with Iran. Gunboat diplomacy in the Red Sea (warships deployed under Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect ships from attacks by Yemen's Houthis) is a priority.

This narrow stretch of water is responsible for 12 percent of the world's seaborne trade. For sailors, the Red Sea is a sea on the way to somewhere else, and its shores are an inconvenience at best and a security threat at worst.

There is a global consensus on keeping shipping lanes open. If the Red Sea were to close, as happened after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the spillover effects on trade between Europe and Asia would be economically severe. Operation Atalanta, run by the EU, operates an anti-piracy fleet involving warships from 13 European countries (including the UK, which served as the flagship until Brexit), in cooperation with ships from Ukraine, India, South Korea, and Colombia. There is.

Years later, fleet commanders concluded that the solution to piracy lay on land in the form of diplomacy to resolve the conflict in Somalia and economic aid to provide livelihoods to poor fishermen. It was a step in the right direction.

Saudi Arabia chairs the Red Sea Forum, a group of eight coastal states (excluding Israel) that aims to address issues of piracy, smuggling and marine resources, rather than politics.

Six years ago, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, chair of the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel on the Horn of Africa, introduced the term 'Red Sea Arena'. The idea is to create a diplomatic forum that includes not only coastal states but also all other countries with significant interests in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, or with political and commercial ties across the narrow sea area. Met.

Former AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtang Ramamula explained: “The Red Sea has historically been a bridge, not a divide, and people on both sides have shared culture, trade and social relations.” Egypt has had millennia-old interests in the Nile River basin and on both banks of the Red Sea. Ethiopia has significant interests in access to the sea. The UAE, Qatar, Oman and Turkey all have historical or current interests.

Regional and global power struggles play out in the Red Sea Arena. Seven countries have naval bases there, including the United States, China, Turkey, and the UAE. Other countries, including Iran and Russia, have warships nearby and are actively seeking bases. The port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba is Israel's strategic back door, as Houthi shipping attacks have dramatically demonstrated.

Plans for a permanent meeting of the Red Sea Arena countries are based on proposals contained in the World Peace Foundation's report to the AU, “African Politics, African Peace.'' Mbeki and veteran UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi co-wrote the foreword. The idea was that Middle Eastern countries should sign up to the principles of the AU's peace and security architecture and establish a joint mechanism for cooperation.

The AU was unable to act on these proposals. It was not even taken up by the United Nations Security Council.

Instead, Arabia's Gulf states have become increasingly assertive in the Horn, bringing with them aggressive transactional politics, including funding proxies to wage war. The United States has protected the Red Sea under its security umbrella for decades, but it seems uninterested.

Saudi Arabia has long considered Africa's Red Sea coast part of its security perimeter. Qatar and Turkey sought influence in Sudan and Somalia, especially among the Islamists. Israel has carefully pursued a decisive role in the region.

But the star of the show is the UAE. The small, wealthy nation uses proxies to project power and supports separatists who flout international norms. Abu Dhabi's customers include major companies in Libya and Chad, establishing the company as the kingmaker in the Horn region. The UAE supports Ethiopia and provides weapons. It already controls a number of ports in the region, likely including an Ethiopian port and naval base planned on land leased from Somaliland. However, Abu Dhabi has not yet defined its strategic objectives regarding the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

The UAE had a free pass to Washington for many years. The United States has only recently begun to criticize Abu Dhabi's adventurism in Sudan, accusing it of brutally arming rapid support forces there.

The past decade has been a rollercoaster of hopes and fears for the people of Red Sea Arena. Popular uprisings in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Sudan all devolved into a deadly brew of dictatorship, war, brutality, and famine, and local conflicts escalated into proxy wars. Guided by short-term imperatives to maintain power and the ambitions of deep-pocketed foreign sponsors, today's leaders are too often myopic and transactional.

Under the guidance of the United Nations and the AU, a number of peace agreements were made that served as gateways to democracy. Today, peace agreements such as the flimsy “permanent cessation of hostilities” that ended Ethiopia's Tigray war may be little more than armistices. The principle of political primacy has served Africa's peace agenda well, but it has come to mean short-term transactionalism rather than a commitment to democracy, good governance, and inclusiveness.

A key African norm was “sovereignty as responsibility” developed by Sudanese/South Sudanese lawyer and diplomat Francis Deng. Today we have its antithesis, denounced as “neo-sovereignism” by Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe.

Today's regression means Eritrea's President Isaias Afewerki is on the mend. For three decades, Isaias has ruled with an iron fist, without political parties, public media or even a constitution, hoping to reverse the global trend of liberalism. It seems he was proven right.

Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagoro, known as Hemedi, commander of the Immediate Support Force, a rebel militia notorious for human rights abuses, is touring Africa. Inside the Royal Jet (United Arab Emirates airline)). He arrived in Addis Ababa last week and met with Prime Minister Abiy. Extending protocols to UAE-backed subversives has become the new normal in the region.

To the extent that the AU has functioned, it has departed from its founding principles and is becoming the face of illiberal multilateralism. The UN's practice of deferring to regional partners has left it eviscerated. The intergovernmental body for development, the eight-nation Northeast African bloc, is currently deeply divided and close to paralysis.

With the Horn of Africa and Yemen falling significantly down Western foreign ministries' priority lists, the United States and Europe are sending mid-level diplomats into the snake pit, woefully armed for the dangers they may encounter. They are too easily intimidated by arrogant local tyrants, perhaps swayed by zombie-like “Pan-Africanist” slogans that challenge their right to speak about human rights, and faced with the interference of ruthless Gulf powers. and left their own country irrelevant.

Recent developments could not be predicted in detail. But American diplomats faced a broader challenge several years ago. In 2020, a bipartisan “Senior Study Group” on the Red Sea convened by the U.S. Institute of Peace prioritized a broad diplomatic strategy for the Red Sea arena. The USIP report warned that conflict in the region could threaten U.S. national security and proposed sending a high-level special envoy with a wide range of duties.

The Biden administration quickly appointed a special envoy for the Horn of Africa, but the State Department's Africa Bureau quickly demoted the position. The cost of this strategic neglect is becoming clear today.

There are still opportunities for diplomatic forums that promote collective security. Washington has lost its best opportunity to take the lead—any U.S. effort today will arouse deep suspicion in others. Middle Eastern powers do not propose collective action in principle, and the Gulf states are divided. Europeans will follow, not lead.

The responsibility for leadership then falls on Africa and the United Nations. By acting together, the two countries can forge an agreement that brings the United States, Europe, China, and Russia into a forum aligned with the agenda of a stable and cooperative Red Sea arena.