Conflict, famine and a great-power competition are colliding in the Horn of Africa, creating enormous instability. The growing prospect of overlapping civil wars and conflicts between nations in the region, which is home to more than 200 million people and accounts for billions of dollars in global commerce, is reason enough for alarm. These conflicts also have the potential to unleash terrorist threats and an increase in migration that could engulf European and Persian Gulf countries, threatening America’s far-reaching interests.
America’s commitment to helping stabilize the Horn of Africa might have been taken for granted even a few months ago. That does not seem the case anymore. The questions that stand out today are whether the Trump administration has any interest in trying to address the sources of this instability and, if not, what will happen next.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio rolled out a plan for streamlining the State Department that included eliminating the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, responsible for heading off incipient conflicts and for providing technical expertise in mediation and peace building. President Trump’s recently unveiled State Department budget further proposes eliminating U.S. funding for international peacekeeping operations.
The department will reportedly no longer consider acts like the detention of political prisoners and the lack of free and fair elections, two precursors of wider conflict and instability, as part of annual human rights reporting required by Congress. These changes are on top of the gutting of U.S.A.I.D. and the U.S. Institute of Peace, which supported the kinds of conflict prevention that improved U.S. national security interests and our moral standing. Wars in the Horn of Africa will undoubtedly imperil even the administration’s more narrowly defined interests of counterterrorism and mineral extraction across the wider region. Red Sea shipping could well be shut down, and terrorist groups would probably proliferate.
Virtually every country in this vital region is at risk of collapse.
Sudan, with some 50 million people and roughly 500 miles of Red Sea coastline, is in the midst of its third year of civil war, which has displaced nearly 13 million people and left double that in need of lifesaving support. It is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and one of the most underresourced: Just over 10 percent of the funding needed has been allocated this year.
The Trump administration is struggling to maintain the emergency humanitarian assistance that it claims to be committed to. Nor does it seem inclined to appoint a special envoy, which every previous president since Bill Clinton did, including Mr. Trump in his first term. Washington’s cuts to humanitarian assistance are already costing lives, making an impossible situation far worse.
Neighboring South Sudan is on the cusp of another civil war, its second in just over a decade. Ethnic militias are being mobilized, and skirmishes have broken out. An attack on a U.N. helicopter in March killed a crew member and two dozen government troops and has put everyone on high alert, triggering the withdrawal of diplomatic staff members from the capital, Juba. The last conflict there cost nearly 400,000 lives — and that was with a U.S.-led global diplomatic response. A similar response seems unlikely to come.
In Ethiopia, with more than 130 million people, American diplomats helped broker a 2022 peace deal, ending a brutal war in the northern Tigray region that killed as many as 600,000 people, by some estimates. Relations in Tigray continue to deteriorate, stoked by neighboring Eritrea, which is looking for ways to stymie Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ambition of gaining sea access for his landlocked nation.
Eritrea has begun a general mobilization of troops, putting the country on a war footing. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a border war 25 years ago, and its end was negotiated by American diplomats and overseen by U.N. peacekeepers. But since last year, Washington has not tended to the peace deal it helped bring about and has left empty the position of a special envoy for the Horn of Africa that helped the Biden administration navigate these perilous waters.
The United States is playing an active role only in Somalia, home to the Islamic State’s main affiliate in Africa, but that role is limited to drone strikes against terrorist targets. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has stepped up activity, with the U.S. military striking over 20 times in his first 100 days — doubling the attacks under the Biden administration in its last year in office. While these strikes put terrorists on notice, they have done little to address substantial ground gains that the Shabab terrorist group has made.
Washington has grown frustrated that the billions of dollars it has spent over two decades to build state capacity in Mogadishu has produced few solid returns. It seems unlikely that the Trump administration will double down on the political and security support that is still needed. In another sign of cost saving, Washington is planning to significantly downsize or close a number of diplomatic missions in the region, including in Somalia, according to an internal State Department memo, further undercutting hope of being able to manage a regional crisis.
Mr. Trump’s national security team knows the U.S. military plays an irreplaceable role in the region. In the Signalgate text messages, Mike Waltz, then the national security adviser, argued that “European navies do not have the capability to defend against the kinds of sophisticated anti-ship, cruise missiles and drones the Houthis are now using.” He added, “It will have to be the U.S. that reopens these shipping lanes,” referring to Red Sea routes. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth agreed, writing: “We are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close.”
Much has been made recently of the administration’s near singular focus on restoring the warrior ethos and on America’s hard-power strengths, as evidenced by Mr. Trump’s trillion dollar defense budget request. But the challenges we face in the Horn of Africa are not solvable by armed drones alone. Gen. James Mattis explained the issue when he warned 10 years ago, “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition.” Not only is our peacemaking capability no longer fully funded; it is being crushed at the moment it is needed most.
If we don’t bring back peacemaking and save what remains of our ability to use development and diplomacy to end wars or, better still, to avoid them, the coming conflicts in the Horn of Africa are certain to teach us painful and costly lessons. States could fail, millions of refugees could suffer and take flight, and malign forces like Russia and Iran could seek advantage in the chaos.
The only question left will be: How many American warriors do we intend to commit to wars we could have stopped before they started?
Cameron Hudson is a senior fellow in the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
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