The Gulf and the Horn: Changing Geographies of Security Interdependence and Competing Visions of Regional Order

Abstract

The historical proximity between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa has in recent years been increasingly experienced as a relationship of growing insecurity. Gulf States have rapidly expanded their economic and political roles on the other side of the Red Sea and have established military bases. This article argues that this interventionist thrust is historically rooted and deeply structural: the politics of state survival that dominate both the Gulf and the Horn are leading aspiring regional hegemons with a self-proclaimed responsibility to provide order to securitise their near abroad. Originating from the self-identity of regional powers and efforts to protect their respective domestic political settlements, this is producing a profoundly destabilising pattern of regional polarisation.