In capitals across the Horn an industry guesses what Washington wants. Lobby firms and well-connected intermediaries promise access, trade in speculation and hint that the United States will bless statehood projects if the right contracts are signed.

The new United States National Security Strategy, released in November, is a better guide than any of that. Read closely, it shows what matters to Washington, what does not and how narrowly American leaders now draw their priorities. For the Horn it serves less as a plan and more as a mirror.

The Horn does not receive its own chapter. It appears inside a wider map at the junction of Africa, the Red Sea and the Indo Pacific. At the same time American strategy has shifted back toward its own hemisphere and borders, with Latin America and migration control ranked above many distant theatres.

The Horn counts because of geography and spillover risk, not because Washington intends to redesign its politics or carry its burdens.

Africa’s place in the strategy marks a break with the post-Cold War script. The document criticises earlier United States policy for trying to export liberal ideology and says that phase should end.

Washington will work with a narrow circle of African states it deems predictable and open to its firms and capital. Foreign policy is narrowed to the defence of core national interests, while broader claims to global stewardship move to the margins.

The strategy roots policy in flexible realism and the primacy of nations, promising relations and trade that do not seek to rewrite other countries’ politics or traditions. It puts the nation state at the centre of world affairs and warns against outside networks that weaken a government’s authority.

It also takes a cautious view of diaspora politics, seeing foreign attempts to influence domestic debates through migrant communities as a security concern.

For the Horn, this is a retreat from the idea of the region as a laboratory for imported constitutions, transition roadmaps and governance schemes designed elsewhere.

The Horn enters the text most directly in a single line that should focus minds. On African wars, the strategy backs deals in Congo and Sudan and, above all, seeks to head off any new clash among Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.

Washington sees unresolved disputes over borders, sea access and internal authority in this triangle as a serious source of risk. Its tools of choice are preventive diplomacy and mediated bargains that lower the chance of wider war and keep the Red Sea corridor usable. Long occupations and open ended state building are not on offer.

The same restraint shapes security policy. The strategy accepts that militant and other cross border threats persist in parts of Africa, but states plainly that Washington will not commit to long deployments or new open ended missions. It expects regional powers to carry the main security burden while the United States supplies intelligence, support and, when it chooses, limited force.

Combined with a renewed focus on borders and migration, this frames Africa, including the Horn, less as a partner in long term reform and more as a potential source of spillover into Europe and North America.

For the Horn, this has direct consequences. It raises expectations that Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Egypt and interested Gulf states will carry more of the operational load in Somalia, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea corridor.

Washington will not design a security architecture for the region. At most it will reinforce arrangements that regional actors are prepared and able to build.

The economic story is significant. The strategy presents energy dominance, resilient supply chains and secure access to critical materials as foundations of United States power and ties them to reindustrialisation and rebuilding of the defence industrial base.

Industrial policy, tariffs and tight control of supply chains are treated as instruments of statecraft, not technocratic details. In Africa, the text calls for a shift from grants to trade and investment and again returns to energy and critical minerals as the main fields of engagement.

In the Horn, this logic points toward intensified interest in ports, transport corridors, telecommunications cables, data infrastructure and possible offshore resources. Berbera, Bosaso and Djibouti are already crowded with foreign flags.

The strategy is unusually personalised. It presents this president, his worldview and his record as the organising centre of United States policy. For East African leaders it is a reminder that the commitments expressed here are tied to one political project and may be revisited if domestic winds shift.

Three implications stand out for East Africa.

The first concerns negotiation of peace. When the United States steps in as mediator, it does so with its own risk map and political calendar in mind. It will back outcomes that lower the chance of war near key sea lanes, limit space for rival powers and keep governments broadly cooperative.

The real decisions still sit with local actors. Settlements that meet external timelines but leave questions of force, revenue and belonging unresolved do not produce stable states. The record of late developing states in Africa and beyond is clear. Where rulers fail to build fiscal and coercive institutions grounded in domestic bargains, outside guarantees weaken and conflict returns.

The second concerns how the region handles partnership. By promising to work with select states and tying support to alignment with American objectives, the strategy pushes governments to compete for preferred status.

Each will feel pressure to trade basing rights, port concessions, intelligence or diplomatic loyalty for short term gain. The collective cost is fragmentation. Regional economic communities lose relevance when they are most needed.

Common positions on ports, maritime boundaries and foreign military presence lose coherence. In that environment outside powers can more easily set governments against one another and steer the region’s choices.

The third concerns the belief that external actors will design and fund a new political order for the Horn. The strategy is sceptical of transnational projects that weaken sovereignty and critical of earlier attempts to remake other states.

It tells American activists and institutions that Washington will not spend energy on elaborate political roadmaps or new state like entities in our region. It will act when core interests are at stake, but it will not underwrite ambitious schemes to redraw maps or invent new sovereignties.

This goes to the heart of the lobbyists’ narrative. Recent claims that the United States is quietly preparing to recognise new states in the Horn find no support in this document.

The strategy is built around the defence of existing nation states and their sovereignty, not around their division. It cares about whether those states can police their territory, manage their conflicts and remain open to certain forms of cooperation. It does not offer a path for those who hope to convert contracts and connections into new flags.

Africa is not held back because big powers overlook poor countries; major powers intervene only when their interests are clear. It is held back when leaders accept scarcity as fate and fail to turn national resources into institutions that serve their people.

Until governments confront the structural constraints that limit their citizens’ prospects, no plan from Washington or anywhere else will substitute for the hard work of building a capable state.

If we treat this strategy as a mirror rather than a menu, it is useful. It shows where we matter and where we do not. It also strips away convenient illusions. No foreign capital will resolve the unfinished business of building functional states in the Horn or carry burdens our own leaders refuse to shoulder.

The question now is whether those leaders use this period of renewed external attention to strengthen institutions, settle disputes with a long horizon and embed their economies in continental arrangements, or whether they chase short term rents and comforting myths while the strategic choices are made elsewhere.

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