It’s A Catch-22: An Analysis Of The Horn Of Africa’s Strategic Significance And Its Enduring Fragility

What is the relationship between the enduring state instability in the Horn and the region’s strategic significance? In the contemporary era, the Horn of Africa is often illustrated as a region of weak states plagued with instability. Although this is true, these features that characterize the Horn are not isolated to just this region, so what makes instability in the Horn different? This thesis explores the cycle of ethnic tension and state fragmentation that is fueled by the existing domestic contributors to state fragility as well as the increased pressures from extra-regional actors. The Horn’s strategic location at the nexus of two key elements of the global economy (the Suez Canal and the petroleum producing regions of the Middle East) has made this region a magnet for foreign intervention, which is demonstrated by the cycles of great power geopolitical competition that have cast a shadow over the political, economic, and security development of this region for nearly two centuries. The actors present in the region may shift change, but they continue to press on unresolved pressure points in in a region that is already fragile and vulnerable to state fragmentation.