The Red Sea Fight Needs an African Shore

Abstract

The United States (US) military presence in East Africa is well positioned to help defend the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but its basing arrangements and host-country restrictions were designed primarily for counterterrorism rather than a maritime confrontation with Yemen’s Iran-backed political-military movement Ansar Allah, better known as the Houthis. As the war with Iran exposes the vulnerability of Red Sea commerce, Washington should develop distributed access at Berbera, in Somaliland, and Bosaso, in the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland. These footholds would support surveillance, maritime security, and contingency operations. Such arrangements would reduce dependence on Djibouti, bridge the operational divide between Africa Command and Central Command, and strengthen the US military’s ability to defend the chokepoint without requiring immediate recognition of Somaliland.

Introduction

The war between the US and Iran has opened a new maritime front along the Red Sea. As Washington and Tehran contest the Strait of Hormuz, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have declared a blockade of Saudi commerce through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—the narrow waterway splitting Yemen and Djibouti that forms the southern gateway to the Red Sea. The corridor’s importance has grown for the global economy as Saudi Arabia now leans on the passage to export oil, now that the Strait of Hormuz has seized up. Ships still transit, but under enough risk that Saudi tankers now run dark and reroute. The threat reaches past Saudi Arabia: Houthi missiles have struck vessels flying non-Saudi flags and left merchant crews dead. That southern access point to the Red Sea is now contested, and the US posture there was built for an important but entirely different fight.

The Counterterrorism Posture Meets a Maritime War

The US military posture in East Africa is well placed but too narrowly tasked. For two decades, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has optimized its East Africa presence for counterterrorism in Somalia: surveillance flights, strikes, special operations, and partner training against al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based al-Qaeda affiliate, and the Islamic State. That fight is necessary, and it has helped prevent al-Shabaab from overtaking the Somali capital of Mogadishu and driven the Islamic State’s Somalia branch into hiding. But while US forces in Africa, concentrated in Djibouti, sit almost exactly where a Red Sea fight would want them, their basing arrangements were built for striking and advising inland counterterrorism operations, and Djibouti’s restrictions constrain the offshore operations the Houthi threat now requires. The strategic landscape has outgrown an access architecture built for a narrower fight.

Geography compounds the problem. The Bab el-Mandeb divides two US combatant commands, AFRICOM to its west and Central Command (CENTCOM)—which remains focused on the fight against Iran—to its east. Adversaries have long worked that seam. Recent public reporting from the Wall Street Journal describes Houthi technicians supplying al-Shabaab with drone and explosive-device expertise. The two groups have not merged their campaigns, but they share a common enemy. Their cooperation shows how untenable it is to treat the two shores as separate files.

Djibouti Is Not Enough

On the African shore, the American presence rests solely on one installation. Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti sits close to the strait—offering prime real estate for operations—but Djibouti has refused to let US forces strike Houthi positions that threaten the Bab el-Mandeb. Ironically, America’s only base in Africa cannot be used to defend the strait critical to its economic well-being. China’s only overseas base sits a few miles away, a separate reason not to stake America’s presence on one location. On the Arabian side, major CENTCOM operating locations sit well away from the chokepoint.

A single base in Djibouti is not enough; Washington needs options.

Build a Distributed Network at Berbera and Bosaso

The near-term answer to the Houthi challenge is distributed access, and the US can build it quickly. Somaliland has offered the US the use of Berbera, which pairs one of the longest runways in Africa with a deep-water port on the Gulf of Aden. From Berbera, US forces could fly persistent surveillance over the strait; base maritime patrol and counter-drone assets; refuel and stage naval and special operations; and hold a recovery airfield on the chokepoint’s southern flank. Berbera would not win the maritime fight by itself, but it would give the US an additional, politically unencumbered foothold that Djibouti will not provide.

The semi-autonomous Somali state of Puntland offers a second option. The US has agreed to expand the base at Bosaso, another Gulf of Aden port, for counterterrorism and maritime security. The deal is young and its results are unproven, but its significance is the shift it represents: the US has demonstrated a willingness to make direct security arrangements with capable sub-federal authorities when operations demand it, rather than wait on the federal government in Mogadishu. Bosaso and Berbera together would give American forces a network across the coast that matters most.

Access at Berbera would also align the US with Israel, which recognized Somaliland in December and, according to Bloomberg, has established a small intelligence presence there and is exploring a base from which to monitor and strike the Houthis. Somaliland’s leaders have been guarded about hosting foreign forces, so this remains unsettled. But a shared foothold on the southern flank would knit together partners already hitting the same Iranian adversary.

Access Without Immediate Recognition

The US needs only enough access to improve its ability to defend the Bab el-Mandeb, and that does not require recognizing Somaliland now. Skeptics will call a base at Berbera a de facto recognition of Somaliland, even if the US does not say so in an official capacity. But access can rest on a security agreement with the Somaliland authorities that govern Berbera by dealing with them as the party in control on the ground, which avoids recognizing Somaliland as a sovereign state. That is the approach the US just took at Bosaso, where it dealt directly with Puntland’s local authorities instead of Somalia’s federal government in Mogadishu. Going around the federal government does carry real costs: strain on a fragile federal system; propaganda for al-Shabaab; and friction with the African Union, Turkey, the UAE, and Ethiopia.

But two facts blunt the sovereignty charge.

The federal government cannot deliver quick, reliable coastal access in a crisis. And in early 2025 Somalia itself offered the US its strategic ports, Berbera and Bosaso among them, that it does not control.

The Houthi threat predates this war and will likely outlast it. The tools to manage it—runways, ports, sensors, patrol aircraft, and counter-drone systems—are available on both shores of the chokepoint. If we have learned anything from the current fight in the Persian Gulf, it is that getting the geography right in front of a full-blown crisis matters.