Recommendations
To defend and advance the US interests outlined within a new strategic framework that accounts for and responds to the changed geopolitical landscape of the Red Sea arena, the United States should undertake the following steps and reforms.
Develop a political and diplomatic strategy to inoculate the Horn of Africa against the fallout of Middle Eastern rivalries
The most destabilizing trend in the Red Sea region is the zero-sum competition for influence among Middle Eastern actors and the risks that competition poses to state integrity in the Horn of Africa. The Libyan civil war and confrontation in the eastern Mediterranean should serve as cautionary tales. The fallout of a similar internationalization of conflict in the Horn of Africa would be catastrophic for peace and security and leave the region vulnerable to exploitation by states, such as Iran and Russia, who can benefit from the instability. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE could, if they choose, be partners in ensuring that the transitions in Ethiopia and Sudan succeed on the basis of meaningful reforms as well as in addressing emerging threats to maritime security.
The United States should therefore undertake a sustained diplomatic campaign to broker a détente in the Horn of Africa between the rival Middle Eastern blocs, remove that region as a battleground for their competition, and preserve the sovereignty of the Horn’s states. The United States should enable and provide cover to the states of the Horn to remain neutral amid the rising competition for influence, in part by itself remaining a neutral, stabilizing actor in issues such as the conflict around the use of the Nile’s waters. As noted, all of these rivals are US allies and partners, and the United States maintains influence over them, which it can exercise if it chooses. The United States must be prepared, for example, to exact specific consequences—such as the threat of sanctions or reconsideration of weapons sales—when Middle Eastern interventions in the Horn undermine its states’ attempts at neutrality and reform or exacerbate political fault lines. This—which would require elevating the Horn as a priority in US bilateral relationships with governments throughout the Middle East, including Israel—could help deter Middle Eastern states from further polarizing the Horn’s already charged political landscape.
Washington should catalyze a new regional architecture that minimizes rivalry and maximizes cooperation. The United States remains the sole international actor capable of convening across the political fault lines within the Red Sea arena. It can and should take a more active role in exploring new mechanisms and forums for addressing challenges of shared concern. Working closely with the European Union and its member states can be a force multiplier for these efforts given their deep political and military engagements in the region. No ministerial-level contact group has met, nor has a multilateral meeting been held, since the onset of the transitions in Ethiopia and Sudan. If it plays a pragmatic and neutral role, the United States can support the resolution of the dispute over the use of the Nile’s waters between Egypt and Ethiopia and build on that to forge a collective international effort to improve water security in northeast Africa to harness positively the interests and investments of Gulf states in the Horn in concert with European partners and the international financial institutions.
The United States can also be instrumental in bridging across multilateral institutions and initiatives to minimize competition and promote mutually reinforcing efforts. The various multilateral initiatives currently underway include the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Task Force on the Red Sea, the African Union (AU) High-Level Implementation Panel consultations, and the Council of Arab and African Coastal States of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. These forums provide ample opportunity for discussions of new structures that effectively promote regional peace and security. The United States should play a vital role in catalyzing these efforts toward concrete action.
Maritime security is also ripe for the cooperation given that it is one of—if not the—most unifying priorities among regional states. The strongest models for international cooperation in the Red Sea arena have been counterpiracy efforts dating to the 2008 adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1851, including Operation Atalanta, undertaken by the EU Naval Force (EU NAVFOR), and the multinational Combined Task Forces 150 and 151. The new array of emerging maritime threats, however, demands that the international architecture for confronting them be updated. Such an update should include a focus on coastal law enforcement, not just military interventions. The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Central Command (CENTCOM) can also play an important role in multilateral, military-to-military engagements that reinforce diplomatic efforts to foster cooperation on shared maritime challenges
Institute structural reforms to overcome the bureaucratic seams within the US government
The regional divides within the US government’s foreign policy bureaucracy that differentiate Africa from the Middle East are anachronistic given the evolved geopolitical landscape in the Red Sea arena. They, therefore, impede the development and execution of a strategy for effectively advancing US interests. Several options for addressing this deficiency are possible
One option would be to designate a special envoy with responsibility for the Red Sea arena. The advantage is that a senior official would be charged with addressing the region’s complexity in an integrated way—spanning regional bureaus and leadership—and that the appointment itself would suggest a heightened prioritization of the issue. The disadvantage is that the addition of another bureaucratic node could lead to internal turf battles
A previous study on the use of special envoys concluded that they are most effective when (1) an issue reaches a high level of interest and concern, has strong regional as well as bilateral aspects, and exceeds the capacity of the normal State Department system; (2) the mandate is clear and limited; and (3) the envoy is empowered and recognized as such by the president and secretary of state, which includes direct access to both 5 Given the US bilateral relationships at stake in the region, these conditions both obtain and would be necessary for a Red Sea envoy to be successful.
Another option would be to designate the deputy secretary of state as the interagency lead for developing and executing an integrated strategy on the Red Sea arena. The primary advantage of this approach is that the deputy secretary, along with the undersecretary of state for political affairs, has supervision of both the African and Near Eastern bureaus at the State Department and could therefore ensure more effective integration and prioritization of policy objectives and interventions across regions. In addition, that individual is well-positioned to manage the coordination of US assistance in the Red Sea arena with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Defense, and the Department of the Treasury to ensure alignment. As the second-highest-ranking official in the State Department, the deputy secretary faces significant draws on their time, but the deputy secretary playing a robust role in the Horn of Africa has precedent. As deputy secretary of state during the presidency of George W. Bush, Robert Zoellick was the administration’s point person on Sudan while also leading US diplomatic efforts on China and India.
Under either option, the executive branch should establish a standing interagency policy committee (IPC) on the Red Sea arena. Addressing acute transnational or transregional challenges, such as drugs, refugees, and global health crises has benefited from the establishment of a senior-level coordination mechanism based at the White House to develop and oversee policy execution across US government agencies. The establishment of an IPC co-chaired by the National Security Council’s senior directors for Africa and the Middle East would ensure policy alignment and the coordinated execution of a strategy on the Red Sea across foreign affairs institutions and agencies, including the State Department, the Defense Department, USAID, and the Treasury Department as well as with the Office of Management and Budget. This would complement and reinforce the diplomatic engagement undertaken by a special envoy or the deputy secretary of state. To maximize the effectiveness of the IPC process, the national security advisor and deputy national security advisor would need to establish the Red Sea arena as a priority.
Realign US assistance to promote inclusive, legitimate governance in the Horn of Africa as well as economic growth in the region
Power in the Horn of Africa is now too diffuse and contested for long-term stability to be established by authoritarianism or force, despite the myriad attempts to do just that. The transitions in Ethiopia and Sudan in particular present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the region. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic demands that governments pursue more consensus-driven politics. The United States and its European partners can play an instrumental role in asserting the importance of this and providing incentives to do so.
A commitment to humanitarian and development assistance is one of Washington’s strongest assets in trying to exert principled influence relative to other extra-regional actors such as China. US diplomacy and foreign assistance throughout the region should be anchored in the emerging consensus on the importance of promoting inclusive, legitimate governance as the key to mitigating violence, fragility, and extremism as outlined in the Global Fragility Act and in the fragility strategies adopted by, among others, the United States, the United Kingdom, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. These approaches aim at reducing inequality, exclusion, and injustice while reforming institutions and addressing structural factors that fuel grievances.
US objectives in the Red Sea arena are broadly aligned with those of its European partners and Japan. Effective multilateral coordination with the EU, its member states, and Japan would enable the United States to jointly leverage its investments and assistance resources to maximize impact. For example, combined US, EU, and British foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti since 2003 is estimated at $10 billion, compared with $6 5 billion from China 6 The EU, meanwhile, is the largest humanitarian and development donor in the region, followed by the United States.
To these ends, the United States should ensure that US development and humanitarian assistance in the Red Sea region is commensurate with and adaptable to the scope and scale of the regional and bilateral challenges to US interests. The United States should designate the Horn of Africa as a priority region under the Global Fragility Act, unlocking access to the Prevention and Stabilization Fund, the Complex Crisis Fund, and the Multi-Donor Global Fragility Fund. The administration should also require that annual State Department Integrated Country Strategies; USAID Country Development Cooperation Strategies; and Department of Defense campaign plans, operational plans, and regional strategies explicitly support a five-year integrated regional strategy for the Red Sea to be developed jointly by the special envoy (or equivalent) and the USAID administrator, who should be designated the president’s special assistance coordinator for the Red Sea. Relatedly, the United States should establish a USAID Red Sea task force, led by a director reporting directly to the administrator, to serve as the secretariat for coordinating the development of USAID’s regional and country assistance strategies to support the integrated regional strategy across all categories of USAID’s assistance accounts and operating units.
Further, the United States should convene a chiefs of mission and USAID mission directors Red Sea regional conference on an annual basis to review and update the integrated regional strategy, including senior participation of the Defense Department officials charged with security cooperation and operations in Africa and the Middle East as well as senior State Department officials (deputy secretary or special envoy as well as regional assistant secretaries for Africa and the Middle East). The integrated regional strategy should be informed by expert political economy analyses, updated annually, to pay special attention to the underlying sources of exclusion and grievance within countries in the Red Sea region and the interconnectedness of geopolitical efforts of external actors to exploit grievances or negate the foundations of accountable state-society relations. The integrated regional strategy should also require that humanitarian, development, governance, or security-sector assistance—bilateral and regional—be provided only if it can, using an evidence-based theory of change, demonstrate that it will deliver essential services to citizens; advance meaningful (liberal and inclusive) political reform; and advance state- and society-based reforms needed to foster the legitimacy, accountability, and transparency of state and regional institutions critical to mitigate and prevent violent contestation
Washington should also ensure that US security assistance and security cooperation reinforce inclusive, legitimate governance. Train-and-equip programs centered exclusively on counterterrorism have often distorted governance in the states of the Horn, skewing it toward securitized responses to domestic opposition and away from efforts to foster inclusion and legitimacy, ultimately undermining efforts to mitigate or prevent violence or promote stabilization. Relatedly, during the Cold War, US security assistance privileged international alignment over citizen security, which exacerbated poor governance and impeded state effectiveness 7 To avoid these outcomes, the United States should subordinate bilateral security assistance and cooperation activities to the integrated regional strategy and integrated country strategies (as discussed), including clandestine support to elite special operations forces and other counterterrorism cooperation 8
Moreover, US policymakers and leaders should predicate security cooperation and assistance strategies in the Red Sea region on adherence to empirically grounded principles and programmatic approaches that prioritize
- ensuring sustainability and consistency of presence and engagement with national and regional actors;
- advancing civilian oversight and democratic accountability of security actors and institutions;
- enabling inclusive, nationally owned visions and processes of security sector reform;
- empowering and incentivizing reformers within security institutions; and
- identifying and mitigating long-term risks of US (and other external) security cooperation and assistance activities impeding progress toward democratic, civilian-led security institutions
The convening capacity of the United States is unrivaled. Washington should reinvigorate the ministerial-level Tidewater Group of Western nations plus Japan and South Korea jointly with the United Nations, the AU, IGAD, the international financial institutions, and the Gulf states with a specific focus on the Red Sea to provide a mechanism for developing a set of common principles and priorities as well as accountability. The Tidewater Group could provide a focus for developing a strategic, long-term economic growth plan for the Red Sea region, in particular the Horn of Africa, that includes incentives for regional integration and support for the political transitions in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The United States should also establish a G20 working group on debt relief for the Horn of Africa to catalyze a dialogue among Paris Club and non–Paris Club creditors 9 The Horn is one of the most heavily indebted regions of the world. That indebtedness has a deleterious impact on stability in the region because it hinders the prospects for governance reform, undermines economic growth, and impedes efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic and other health crises as well as food insecurity and other challenges. The G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative cast too wide a net, included a number of countries that did not need or request debt relief, and has largely stalled. The G7 debt moratorium, extended in September 2020, is not likely to meaningfully alleviate the debt crisis in the Horn 10 There is, however, a unique rationale for building a coalition of creditors for the Horn to catalyze a pragmatic solution to its debt crisis without undercutting the Paris Club. Despite the tensions in the US-China bilateral relationship, it is in the interests of both countries to stabilize the region, and an opportunity exists to cooperate on debt relief despite the difficulty. With deft diplomacy, the United States and China could partner with the G20 troika of Saudi Arabia, Italy, and India to anchor the effort. Saudi Arabia can provide important leadership given the substantial debt that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states hold. Given India’s growing economic investments in the Horn, New Delhi also has an interest in seeing both stability and economic growth.
Washington should also leverage the newly established Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to encourage private-sector growth in the Horn and build on the DFC’s current focus on Ethiopia and Kenya. The DFC should designate the Horn of Africa as a priority region and deploy Africa investment advisors to the Horn states. It should also exercise its statutory flexibility under the BUILD Act (2018) to support like-minded commercial interests seeking to engage in the region. Like US companies, Western and allied companies usually bring more transparent business practices. Relevant US agencies should work with the Sudanese government to raise its labor standards to enable DFC-backed projects in Sudan, which are currently precluded in the face of weak labor standards. The DFC should expand backing for local financial institutions in the Horn to improve liquidity in the face of the economic contraction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last, the United States needs to explore the potential for qualified industrial zones, such as those between Israel and Jordan and Israel and Egypt, as mechanisms for promoting regional cooperation among the Red Sea states.
Activate Congressional Oversight and Political Engagement on the Red Sea Arena
Congress can be instrumental in ensuring that the United States has an effective, integrated policy in the Red Sea region that accounts for the new geopolitical picture and adequately defends and advances US interests. The executive branch’s execution of a new Red Sea strategy would be significantly reinforced through strengthened coordination among the relevant congressional bodies on both a transregional (i.e., Africa and the Middle East) and interdisciplinary (i.e., foreign affairs, armed services, appropriations) basis. This could include mechanisms for regular reporting requirements on the destabilizing actions by Middle Eastern states in the Horn of Africa. Congress could also reinforce any new US executive architecture by empowering and receiving regular reports on the Red Sea arena from a special envoy or the deputy secretary of state.
 Download (PDF) |
In addition, a bipartisan group of members of Congress could provide particular focus to the transitions in Ethiopia and Sudan, which exemplify the broader Red Sea dynamics and present, as elaborated in this report, both the greatest opportunities and greatest threats to US interests. Congressional champions could not only be vital in sustaining US foreign assistance in this region but also provide equally important political engagement through regular visits and contact with key stakeholders on both sides of the Red Sea.
Senior Study Group Members
Ambassador Johnnie Carson
Senior Advisor to the President, United States Institute of Peace
Former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin
President Emeritus, Middle East Institute
Former Deputy UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Former USAID Assistant Administrator for Asia-Near East
Ambassador Chet Crocker
James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, Georgetown University
Former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
Ambassador Eric Edelman
Roger Hertog Distinguished Practitioner-in-Residence, School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Former US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
Former US Ambassador to Turkey
Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman
Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow, UN Foundation
Former UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs
Former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs
Ambassador Michelle Gavin
Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Former Senior Director for Africa, US National Security Council
Former US Ambassador to Botswana
Nancy Lindborg
President and CEO, David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Former President, United States Institute of Peace
Former USAID Assistant Administrator for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance
Andrew Natsios
Executive Professor, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University
Former Administrator of USAID
Former Presidential Special Envoy for Sudan
General Joseph L. Votel
President and CEO, Business Executives for National Security
Former Commander of US Special Operations Command and US Central Command
EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS
Payton Knopf
Senior Advisor, United States Institute of Peace
Susan Stigant
Director, Africa Programs, United States Institute of Peace
SENIOR ADVISORS
Scott Morris
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development
Thomas P. Sheehy
Distinguished Fellow, United States Institute of Peace
Ambassador David Shinn
Adjunct Professor, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
Former US Ambassador to Ethiopia
Michael Phelan
Senior Advisor, Africa and Asia, United States Institute of Peace
Michael Yaffe
Vice President, Middle East and North Africa, United States Institute of Peace
STAFF, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE
James Barnett
Lead Writer and Researcher
Brianna Ferebee
Research Analyst
Lisa Smith
Program Assistant
