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

The current literature on the study of rivalries in international relations focuses on “scrambling rivalry,” whose underpinning logic is that actors try to maximize their positional, spatial, ideological, and interventional influence in resource-rich regions. However, in the last three decades the Horn of Africa, an area with relatively poor natural resources, fragile states, and conflict-prone interstate relations, has hosted thousands of foreign troops. A new concept of “disrupting rivalry” is put forward in the article. It argues that in the peripheral zone of outside powers’ rivalries actors establish a military presence without necessarily aiming to expand their security interests, but to disrupt the rival’s presence with the excuse of protecting overseas nationals or other rationalization. The foreign military presence does not aim to prepare for hard military confrontation, but to pursue soft political competition to spoil the rival’s eventual unchallenged gains.