The Military Presence of Foreign Powers in the Horn of Africa: a Case of “Disrupting Rivalry”

What is it about?

In this article, we propose a new concept of “disrupting rivalry” and argue that in the peripheral zone of the Horn of Africa, actors establish a military presence without necessarily aiming to expand their security interests, but for disrupting the rival’s own presence with the excuse of protecting overseas nationals or other rationalization. The foreign military presence in the Horn does not aim to prepare for hard military confrontation, but to pursue soft political competition to spoil the rival’s eventual unchallenged gains.

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