From Corridor to Arena: The Red Sea and the Remaking of Sovereignty

Since late 2023, attacks by Houthi forces on commercial shipping in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait have forced hundreds of vessels to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to transit times and billions in costs to global trade. The episode has been widely read as a maritime security crisis. At the same time, it is better understood as the visible symptom of a deeper structural shift: the merging of land and sea into a single security system in the Red Sea region. For decades, the two domains were governed by separate logics. On land, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were defined by fragile states, border disputes, civil wars and proxy rivalries. At sea, by contrast, pragmatic cooperation prevailed, sustained by the shared interest of external and regional powers in keeping trade routes open.