The first article in this series argued that the Halaib Triangle has too often been discussed through the language of politics while the legal framework governing the dispute has received comparatively limited attention. It suggested that the central question is not which national narrative appears more persuasive, but how an international tribunal would evaluate the historical evidence under established principles of international law.

That observation naturally leads to a more demanding question.

If the Halaib dispute were submitted to the International Court of Justice tomorrow, which legal arguments would carry the greatest weight?

This question differs fundamentally from asking which state currently exercises administrative control over the territory or which historical narrative enjoys greater political support. International courts do not determine sovereignty through contemporary political realities alone. They assess competing claims by applying a structured legal methodology developed through decades of jurisprudence concerning territorial title, treaty interpretation, colonial administration, state succession, and evidential assessment.

The distinction is significant because legal disputes are not decided by counting historical facts. The same documentary record may support different legal arguments depending upon how international law interprets the relationship between treaties, governmental practice, official correspondence, maps, and subsequent conduct. Consequently, the existence of historical evidence does not by itself determine the outcome of a territorial dispute. What matters is the legal weight attributed to that evidence within the analytical framework consistently employed by international courts.

The Halaib Triangle provides an ideal illustration of this principle. Both Egypt and Sudan rely upon substantial historical documentation. Egypt emphasises the legal significance of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899, particularly Article I and its reference to the twenty-second parallel north. Sudan, by contrast, places greater emphasis upon the administrative arrangements introduced in 1902, the prolonged exercise of governmental authority through the Sudan Government, and the broader documentary record generated during more than five decades of colonial administration. Neither position rests upon invented history. The disagreement concerns the legal significance of largely undisputed historical facts.

This distinction explains why the dispute has remained so resistant to simple answers. Political debate frequently encourages binary conclusions: either the 1899 Agreement determines the frontier conclusively, or the 1902 administrative arrangements fundamentally altered the legal position. International jurisprudence rarely adopts such absolute reasoning. Instead, the International Court of Justice evaluates documentary title, administrative practice, governmental conduct, official correspondence, and cartographic evidence as components of a single evidential framework. The legal question is therefore not which document exists, but how different categories of evidence interact when determining territorial sovereignty.

The purpose of this article is to apply that judicial methodology to the competing legal positions advanced by Egypt and Sudan. It does not seek to advocate for either state, nor does it presume the outcome that an international tribunal would ultimately reach. Rather, it asks how the principal arguments relied upon by each side would likely be assessed if examined according to the jurisprudence that has governed comparable territorial disputes before the International Court of Justice.

Accordingly, the discussion proceeds in three stages. It first identifies the legal standards that govern territorial disputes before the International Court of Justice. It then examines the principal legal arguments advanced by Egypt and Sudan, assessing the strengths and limitations of each within the framework of contemporary international law. Finally, it considers how the Court’s existing jurisprudence might influence the relative evidential weight attributed to the competing claims.

Only by applying this structured methodology is it possible to move beyond political assertion and examine the Halaib Triangle as international courts examine territorial disputes: not as competing national narratives, but as competing legal claims supported by documentary evidence.

The Legal Standard Before the International Court of Justice

Before examining the competing legal positions of Egypt and Sudan, it is necessary to establish the analytical framework that would govern any judicial assessment of the Halaib dispute. Territorial disputes before the International Court of Justice are not decided through political negotiation, diplomatic compromise, or contemporary administrative realities alone. They are resolved through a structured legal methodology that has evolved over decades of jurisprudence and has been applied consistently across disputes involving colonial boundaries, treaty interpretation, and competing claims to territorial sovereignty.

This methodological discipline is one of the defining characteristics of the Court’s jurisprudence. Rather than beginning with the competing narratives advanced by the parties, the Court first determines the legal framework within which those narratives must be assessed. The question is not which argument appears politically more persuasive, but which is more consistent with the applicable rules of international law and the available documentary evidence.

Although every territorial dispute possesses its own historical circumstances, the Court has developed a remarkably consistent evidential hierarchy. In cases ranging from Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali) and Kasikili/Sedudu Island to Cameroon v Nigeria and Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, the Court has repeatedly followed the same analytical sequence. It begins by identifying the legal title upon which sovereignty originally rests. It then examines whether subsequent governmental practice confirms, clarifies, or, in exceptional circumstances, assists in interpreting that title. Finally, it evaluates the broader documentary record—including official correspondence, maps, administrative reports, and subsequent conduct—to determine whether the cumulative evidence supports one interpretation over another.

This approach reflects a fundamental principle of international law: sovereignty is established through law rather than through political assertion. Contemporary administration, economic development, or effective control may possess evidential significance, but they are not substitutes for legal title. As the International Court of Justice observed in Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), **“where the act corresponds exactly to law, where effective administration is additional to the legal title, the effectivités can only be taken into consideration if they are consistent with the title.”¹ The Court therefore distinguishes carefully between the legal basis of sovereignty and the factual exercise of governmental authority.

At the same time, treaty title is not interpreted in isolation from historical reality. International courts have consistently recognised that colonial legal instruments must be understood within the administrative context in which they were implemented. Consequently, official correspondence, governmental reports, provincial administration, and other forms of state practice may become highly relevant where they illuminate the meaning of the underlying legal framework. The Court’s jurisprudence rejects both extremes: neither treaty title nor administrative practice automatically prevails in every case. Their relative significance depends upon the legal relationship between them.

Several principles therefore assume particular importance in any assessment of the Halaib dispute.

The first is documentary title. Where sovereignty derives from a treaty or another formal legal instrument, that document ordinarily provides the starting point of the Court’s analysis. The second is effectivités, referring to the effective exercise of governmental authority through administration, policing, taxation, judicial organisation, and regulatory control. Such conduct may assist in interpreting legal title but does not normally create sovereignty independently. The third principle is uti possidetis juris, whose “obvious purpose is to prevent the independence and stability of new States being endangered”.² Finally, the doctrine of intertemporal law requires historical acts to be evaluated according to the legal rules applicable when they occurred while recognising that their legal consequences continue into the present.

These principles are not abstract doctrines detached from the Halaib dispute. They provide the legal framework through which every document relied upon by Egypt and Sudan must ultimately be assessed. The 1899 Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement cannot be understood without reference to the principles governing treaty interpretation. The administrative arrangements introduced in 1902 cannot be evaluated without considering the jurisprudence relating to effectivités. Likewise, the significance of colonial administration, official maps, and subsequent governmental conduct depends entirely upon the methodology developed by the International Court of Justice over the past half-century.

The central question before the Court would therefore not be whether one state possesses more historical evidence than the other. Both clearly do. Nor would it be whether one political narrative appears more compelling. Rather, the Court would ask a narrower but legally more demanding question: which interpretation of the historical record is more consistent with the established principles of international law governing territorial sovereignty?

Only after establishing this legal framework is it possible to evaluate the competing cases advanced by Egypt and Sudan. The analysis therefore begins with the legal argument upon which Egypt has consistently relied: the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 and the doctrine of treaty title.

Egypt’s Legal Case: The Primacy of Treaty Title

Any assessment of the Halaib dispute before the International Court of Justice would almost certainly begin with the legal argument advanced by Egypt. This is not because the Court favours one party over another, but because international jurisprudence consistently treats documentary title as the starting point in determining territorial sovereignty. Where a formal legal instrument establishes a territorial framework, judicial analysis ordinarily begins with that instrument before considering subsequent governmental practice.

Egypt’s case is built upon precisely this principle.

The central pillar of its legal argument is the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 19 January 1899. In particular, Egypt relies upon Article I, which defines the territorial scope of Sudan by reference to the twenty-second parallel north. From Egypt’s perspective, this provision constitutes the original documentary title governing the frontier between Egypt and Sudan. Because treaty-based title enjoys a privileged position within international law, subsequent administrative measures cannot ordinarily modify or extinguish it unless the parties clearly intended such a result.

This approach finds considerable support in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice.

In Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), the Court reaffirmed that **“where the act corresponds exactly to law, where effective administration is additional to the legal title, the effectivités can only be taken into consideration if they are consistent with the title.”³ Administrative practice may confirm or assist in interpreting legal title, but it does not ordinarily replace that title. Similar reasoning appears throughout the Court’s territorial jurisprudence, reflecting the broader objective of preserving the stability of international boundaries and preventing administrative convenience from becoming an independent source of sovereignty.

Egypt further derives support from another recurring principle of international adjudication: treaty interpretation begins with the ordinary meaning of the text. Where a treaty clearly establishes a territorial framework, the Court approaches subsequent evidence with caution, ensuring that administrative conduct does not inadvertently undermine legal certainty. This reflects the Court’s longstanding preference for preserving stability in international frontiers, particularly those inherited from the colonial period.

Applied to Halaib, this principle strengthens Egypt’s reliance upon the 1899 Agreement. If Article I is interpreted as establishing the definitive international boundary between Egypt and Sudan, the subsequent transfer of administrative responsibility in 1902 would not, by itself, alter the legal frontier. From this perspective, the British decision to administer Halaib through Sudan represented an internal administrative arrangement adopted for practical reasons within a unified colonial administration. Administrative efficiency, however prolonged, would not possess the legal capacity to amend a treaty-based territorial title.

Egypt’s argument is further reinforced by the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. Since the International Court of Justice adopted the doctrine in Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), it has become one of the principal mechanisms through which post-colonial boundaries have been preserved. The doctrine seeks to minimise territorial conflict by maintaining the legal frontiers inherited at independence rather than allowing them to be reopened through subsequent political or administrative developments.

Under this interpretation, Sudan inherited only the territory legally defined as Sudan at the moment of independence. If the twenty-second parallel constituted the inherited legal boundary under the 1899 Agreement, the subsequent administrative arrangements would not alter the operation of uti possidetis juris. They would instead be regarded as practical measures of colonial governance lacking independent constitutional effect.

A further strength of Egypt’s position lies in the distinction between administration and sovereignty. International courts have consistently recognised that governments may administer territory for reasons of convenience without acquiring or transferring sovereign title. Colonial administrations frequently reassigned districts, delegated responsibilities, or reorganised provincial structures in response to local conditions. Such decisions were often motivated by accessibility, communications, or administrative efficiency rather than by any intention to redefine international boundaries. Egypt therefore argues that the 1902 arrangements fall squarely within this category of internal administrative measures.

This argument possesses undeniable legal force. It is coherent, firmly anchored in recognised principles of treaty interpretation, and supported by the Court’s consistent preference for documentary title as the juridical point of departure. Were the dispute to end with the existence of the 1899 Agreement alone, Egypt’s legal position would enjoy a considerable advantage.

Yet international adjudication rarely ends at the first stage of the analysis.

The International Court of Justice has repeatedly demonstrated that identifying documentary title marks the beginning of judicial reasoning rather than its conclusion. Once legal title has been established, the Court proceeds to examine how that title was implemented, understood, and applied in practice. It is precisely at this point that the Sudanese legal position diverges. Rather than denying the existence or legal importance of the 1899 Agreement, Sudan argues that the Agreement cannot be interpreted independently of the constitutional and administrative practice through which it operated during the remaining fifty-four years of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium.

Whether that argument ultimately proves persuasive is the next question the Court would be required to examine.

Sudan’s Legal Case: The Significance of Colonial Administration

Unlike Egypt’s legal position, the Sudanese case does not begin by rejecting the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899. On the contrary, Sudan accepts that the Agreement constitutes an essential part of the legal framework governing the dispute. Its argument instead concerns the manner in which that framework should be interpreted in light of the administrative and constitutional practice that followed during the remaining life of the Condominium.

This distinction is fundamental.

The Sudanese position does not seek to replace treaty title with administrative practice. Rather, it contends that prolonged and consistent governmental administration constitutes legally relevant evidence capable of illuminating how the colonial authorities themselves understood and implemented the legal framework established in 1899. In this respect, Sudan’s argument closely reflects the methodology repeatedly employed by the International Court of Justice when interpreting colonial boundary arrangements.

The centrepiece of Sudan’s legal case is the administrative reorganisation introduced in 1902. Under these arrangements, responsibility for administering the Halaib region was transferred to the Sudan Government. From that point onwards, the territory was incorporated into the ordinary administrative structure operating from Khartoum. Provincial governors exercised authority over the region, governmental departments discharged routine administrative functions, and relations with local communities were managed through Sudanese administrative institutions rather than through Egyptian civil authorities.

More importantly, this arrangement was not temporary.

For more than five decades, responsibility for governing the Halaib region remained consistently within the Sudanese administrative system. Matters relating to policing, taxation, licensing, judicial administration, tribal affairs, and local governance were conducted through Sudanese provincial authorities. British colonial correspondence and official administrative reports reveal no comparable system of continuous Egyptian civil administration operating within the disputed territory throughout most of the Condominium period. This continuity forms one of the strongest factual foundations of Sudan’s legal argument.

Standing alone, however, these facts would not determine sovereignty.

International law has never accepted prolonged administration as an automatic source of territorial title. The International Court of Justice has consistently distinguished between the exercise of governmental authority and the legal basis upon which that authority rests. As the Court observed in Kasikili/Sedudu Island, **“preference should be given to the holder of the legal title.”⁴ Administrative practice therefore derives its significance not because it replaces documentary title, but because it may clarify how that title was implemented and understood.

This is precisely where the Sudanese argument acquires legal force.

Rather than asserting that the administrative arrangements of 1902 independently transferred sovereignty, Sudan argues that fifty-four years of continuous administration provide compelling evidence concerning the practical application of the constitutional framework established by the Condominium. If the authorities responsible for governing the territory consistently treated Halaib as falling within the jurisdiction of the Sudan Government, that practice becomes legally relevant in determining how the documentary title should be interpreted.

The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice strongly supports the relevance of such an inquiry.

In Kasikili/Sedudu Island, the Court examined colonial administration because it assisted in interpreting the historical implementation of the relevant legal instruments. Likewise, in Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, the Court recognised that the conduct of the parties may be relevant in determining the legal situation, particularly where that conduct sheds light on the practical understanding of territorial arrangements.⁵ In neither case did governmental practice automatically replace documentary title. Instead, it served as evidence capable of clarifying the operation of the underlying legal framework.

Sudan’s legal position follows precisely the same analytical logic.

The British archival record reinforces this argument considerably. Foreign Office correspondence, reports of the Governor-General, provincial administrative files, intelligence memoranda, and routine governmental communications consistently place the Halaib region within the operational responsibilities of the Sudan Government. These documents were not produced to support a future sovereignty claim. They emerged as part of the ordinary administration of the Condominium and therefore possess particular evidential value as contemporaneous records reflecting how the frontier functioned in practice.

Sudan also places considerable emphasis upon the constitutional nature of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium itself. Although the 1899 Agreement established the legal framework of the new administration, the Condominium operated as a unified colonial system under overwhelming British control rather than as two fully sovereign states exercising authority across an international frontier. This institutional context is significant because it suggests that internal administrative practice may possess greater interpretative value than it would in disputes involving long-established sovereign boundaries.

From the perspective of international adjudication, these considerations produce an important legal consequence.

If the International Court of Justice were called upon to determine sovereignty over the Halaib Triangle, it is difficult to envisage the Court disregarding more than half a century of continuous colonial administration supported by extensive archival documentation. Whether that evidence would ultimately outweigh Egypt’s reliance upon the 1899 Agreement is a separate matter. What can be said with greater confidence is that the Court’s own jurisprudence indicates such evidence would require detailed judicial examination rather than summary dismissal.

Accordingly, the Sudanese legal case should not be understood as resting upon political assertion or historical sentiment. It raises recognised legal questions concerning treaty interpretation, colonial administration, state succession, and the evidential significance of prolonged governmental practice. These are precisely the types of issues the International Court of Justice has repeatedly examined in post-colonial territorial disputes. Their ultimate weight can only be assessed by applying the Court’s jurisprudence directly to the competing evidence—a task to which the analysis now turns.

Applying International Court of Justice Jurisprudence to Halaib

Having examined the principal legal arguments advanced by Egypt and Sudan, the analysis now turns to the question that would ultimately determine the outcome of any judicial proceedings: how would the International Court of Justice evaluate these competing claims if the Halaib dispute were submitted to The Hague?

Although no tribunal can predict the outcome of a case that has never been litigated, the Court’s jurisprudence provides a reliable guide to its analytical methodology. Across disputes involving colonial boundaries, the International Court of Justice has demonstrated remarkable consistency in the manner in which it evaluates documentary title, administrative practice, state conduct, official maps, and historical evidence. The Halaib dispute is therefore best understood not by asking which political narrative appears more persuasive, but by examining how the Court has approached comparable legal questions elsewhere.

The Court’s first point of reference would almost certainly be the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899. Consistent with its established jurisprudence, documentary title would constitute the juridical starting point of the analysis. The Court has repeatedly emphasised that where sovereignty is founded upon a formal legal instrument, that instrument ordinarily provides the legal framework within which subsequent evidence must be interpreted rather than displaced.

Applied to Halaib, this approach initially strengthens Egypt’s legal position. Article I of the 1899 Agreement undeniably constitutes the principal documentary title upon which Egypt relies. Any judicial assessment would therefore begin by determining the legal character of that provision and whether it established a permanent territorial frontier capable of surviving the dissolution of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium.

Yet this would represent only the first stage of the Court’s analysis.

The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice demonstrates that documentary title is rarely examined in complete isolation from subsequent implementation. In Kasikili/Sedudu Island, Pedra Branca, and numerous other territorial disputes, the Court examined administrative practice because it provided evidence of how the relevant legal instruments had been understood and applied by the administering authorities themselves. Administrative conduct did not replace treaty title; rather, it assisted in interpreting its practical operation.

This principle is particularly significant in the Halaib dispute.

The British administration did not merely issue the 1902 administrative arrangements and subsequently abandon them. The available documentary record indicates that those arrangements were implemented consistently throughout the remaining decades of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium. Responsibility for civil administration, provincial governance, policing, taxation, judicial affairs, and relations with local communities remained vested in the Sudan Government until Sudan achieved independence in 1956. Such continuity is precisely the type of evidence that international courts have repeatedly regarded as legally relevant when interpreting colonial documentary title.

The British archival record therefore assumes greater significance than is often recognised in contemporary political debate.

Rather than viewing the archives simply as historical material, an international tribunal would examine them as contemporaneous evidence generated by the very administration responsible for implementing the Condominium. Official correspondence, provincial reports, Governor-General files, and administrative memoranda were not drafted in anticipation of future litigation. Their evidential value lies precisely in their routine administrative character. They reveal how the colonial authorities themselves organised, understood, and administered the frontier over an extended period.

The Court would also examine the cartographic evidence with considerable caution. In Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), it observed that **“maps merely constitute information which varies in accuracy.”⁶ Maps therefore do not create territorial sovereignty. Their legal significance depends upon their provenance, official character, consistency with the wider documentary record, and the purpose for which they were produced. Applied to Halaib, maps would neither determine the outcome nor be disregarded; they would instead be treated as supporting evidence whose value depends upon its relationship to treaties, administrative practice, and other contemporary documents.

Equally important is what the Court would be unlikely to do.

It would not determine sovereignty solely because one state exercised longer or more effective administration. Nor would it conclude that the existence of a treaty automatically renders every subsequent administrative act legally irrelevant. Such binary reasoning finds little support in the Court’s territorial jurisprudence. Instead, as the Court made clear in the Cameroon v Nigeria judgment, its task is **“to interpret and apply the treaties.”⁷ That duty necessarily requires evaluating how treaties operated in practice when their implementation forms part of the legal dispute.

This methodological approach has important implications for both parties.

Egypt’s legal position benefits from the existence of an identifiable treaty-based title. Sudan’s position benefits from the consistency and duration of the subsequent colonial administration. Neither advantage automatically determines the outcome. The decisive question is whether the administrative practice merely reflected a practical arrangement within an unchanged legal framework, or whether it assists in interpreting the territorial title inherited by the successor states at independence.

Viewed in this way, the Halaib dispute appears considerably more balanced than political discourse often suggests. Both parties possess legally relevant evidence. Both rely upon recognised principles of international law. The task before any future tribunal would therefore not be to choose between history and law, but to determine how history should be interpreted through law.

This is perhaps the most important lesson emerging from the Court’s jurisprudence. Territorial disputes are not resolved by identifying the single strongest document. They are resolved by assessing the cumulative interaction of treaties, administrative practice, official correspondence, governmental conduct, and historical context within a coherent legal framework. If the Halaib dispute were ever argued before the International Court of Justice, it is this integrated methodology—not contemporary political narratives—that would almost certainly determine the outcome.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Competing Legal Positions

Having applied the methodology of the International Court of Justice to the Halaib dispute, the relative strengths and limitations of each legal position become clearer. Neither Egypt nor Sudan advances a frivolous claim. Both rely upon recognised principles of international law and both draw support from substantial historical documentation. The difference lies not in the existence of evidence but in the legal weight that the Court would likely attribute to different categories of evidence.

Egypt’s Legal Position

Strengths

Egypt’s strongest argument is the existence of a formal documentary title. The Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 provides an identifiable legal instrument defining the territorial framework of the Condominium. Throughout its jurisprudence, the International Court of Justice has consistently treated treaty-based title as the juridical starting point in territorial disputes. This gives Egypt an important procedural and legal advantage at the outset of the analysis.

A second strength is the principle of territorial stability. International courts have repeatedly demonstrated reluctance to disturb boundaries established through formal legal instruments unless compelling evidence requires a different interpretation. This judicial preference reflects the broader objective of maintaining international stability and preventing uncertainty in inherited frontiers.

Egypt also benefits from the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. If the Court concludes that the 1899 Agreement established the colonial legal boundary inherited at Sudanese independence, the doctrine would reinforce the preservation of that boundary rather than permit its modification through subsequent administrative arrangements.

Finally, Egypt’s legal case possesses conceptual simplicity. It rests primarily upon one formal legal instrument whose text can be interpreted according to established principles of treaty law. This provides a relatively straightforward legal narrative that international courts generally regard as preferable where documentary title is clear.

Weaknesses

The principal difficulty confronting Egypt concerns the implementation of the 1899 Agreement. The historical record demonstrates that responsibility for administering the Halaib region was exercised through Sudanese governmental institutions for more than half a century. Any judicial assessment would therefore require an explanation of why such prolonged administrative practice should carry limited interpretative significance.

A second challenge lies in the Court’s reluctance to interpret colonial legal instruments in isolation. The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice consistently evaluates treaties alongside their practical implementation. Consequently, a purely textual interpretation of Article I may not fully address the evidential significance of the subsequent colonial administration.

Finally, much of the surviving British documentary record appears to reflect the administrative reality of governance through the Sudan Government rather than through parallel Egyptian civil institutions. Although this fact does not independently determine sovereignty, it inevitably becomes relevant within the Court’s cumulative assessment of the evidence.

Sudan’s Legal Position

Strengths

Sudan’s strongest argument is the exceptional continuity of colonial administration. For more than five decades, the Halaib region was governed through Sudanese provincial institutions under the authority of the Governor-General in Khartoum. This continuity is supported by an extensive body of contemporaneous administrative records rather than by retrospective political assertions.

The British archives provide a second significant strength. Official correspondence, provincial reports, administrative memoranda, and governmental files consistently document the practical administration of the region through Sudanese institutions. Because these materials were produced during the ordinary operation of the Condominium, they possess considerable evidential value as contemporaneous records.

Sudan also benefits from the Court’s established jurisprudence concerning effectivités. International tribunals have repeatedly accepted that prolonged governmental practice may assist in interpreting documentary title where colonial legal instruments require contextual analysis. Sudan’s argument therefore aligns closely with a recognised judicial methodology rather than seeking to create a new legal principle.

Finally, Sudan’s case is cumulative rather than dependent upon a single document. It combines administrative practice, archival correspondence, official reports, maps, and constitutional context into a coherent evidential framework. International courts frequently evaluate precisely this type of integrated documentary record.

Weaknesses

The principal weakness of Sudan’s case is the absence of an explicit legal instrument transferring territorial sovereignty. The administrative arrangements introduced in 1902 reorganised governmental responsibility but did not expressly amend the territorial provisions contained in the 1899 Agreement. Sudan must therefore persuade the Court that the significance of those arrangements lies in their interpretative value rather than in any independent transfer of title.

A second challenge is that administrative practice alone does not establish sovereignty. The Court has consistently maintained that effectivités cannot ordinarily prevail over an existing legal title. Sudan’s argument therefore depends upon demonstrating that its administrative evidence assists in interpreting the original documentary framework rather than replacing it.

Finally, Sudan’s legal case requires a more sophisticated chain of reasoning than Egypt’s. Instead of relying primarily upon one treaty, it asks the Court to assess the cumulative interaction of constitutional arrangements, administrative practice, official correspondence, and historical implementation. Although this complexity reflects the realities of the dispute, it also places a heavier burden upon judicial interpretation.

Preliminary Judicial Assessment

Measured against the established jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, Egypt appears to possess the stronger initial documentary title, while Sudan appears to possess the stronger documentary record concerning the implementation of that title throughout the colonial period.

Accordingly, the dispute cannot be characterised as a contest between law and administration, nor between treaties and history. Rather, it presents two legally relevant bodies of evidence that must be reconciled within a single judicial framework. The decisive issue would therefore not be the existence of the 1899 Agreement or the reality of the 1902 administrative arrangements, both of which are well established. The decisive issue would be the legal relationship between them.

Understanding how the Court would perform that balancing exercise is therefore essential to any realistic assessment of the Halaib dispute.
Judicial Balancing: How Would the Court Weigh the Evidence?

Having identified the principal legal arguments advanced by Egypt and Sudan, the Court would not proceed by asking which state has produced the greater quantity of evidence. International adjudication is not an exercise in counting treaties, administrative acts, or historical documents. Rather, the judicial task is to determine the relative legal weight of different categories of evidence within a coherent legal framework.

The first stage of that balancing exercise would almost certainly favour Egypt. Consistent with its established jurisprudence, the International Court of Justice would begin with the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 as the principal documentary title. The existence of a formal legal instrument defining the territorial framework of the Condominium gives Egypt an important juridical advantage at the outset of the analysis. Treaty-based title has repeatedly been recognised by the Court as the normal point of departure in territorial disputes.

The second stage, however, would require the Court to determine whether the subsequent historical record merely confirms that documentary title or assists in interpreting its practical operation.

It is at this stage that Sudan’s evidential position becomes considerably stronger.

The Court would be confronted with more than five decades of continuous colonial administration conducted through the Sudan Government, supported by provincial reports, official correspondence, administrative memoranda, taxation records, judicial administration, and other contemporaneous documents. The cumulative nature of this evidence distinguishes it from isolated administrative acts. It presents a sustained pattern of governmental practice extending throughout the remaining life of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium.

The critical judicial question would therefore not be whether administrative practice can replace treaty title. The Court has consistently answered that question in the negative. Instead, it would ask whether that practice reveals how the colonial authorities themselves understood and implemented the legal framework established by the 1899 Agreement.

This distinction is decisive.

If the Court concludes that Article I of the 1899 Agreement establishes an entirely clear and unambiguous territorial title, the evidential significance of the subsequent administration would necessarily be reduced. Administrative practice would then perform a confirmatory rather than interpretative function.

Conversely, if the Court determines that the constitutional operation of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium leaves room for legal interpretation, prolonged and consistent administration through Sudanese institutions would assume substantially greater evidential significance. In that circumstance, the Court would likely regard the colonial administrative record not as evidence capable of replacing treaty title, but as evidence capable of explaining how that title was understood and implemented by those responsible for governing the territory.

The British archival record would occupy a particularly important position within this balancing exercise. Unlike retrospective political arguments advanced decades after independence, these documents were created contemporaneously by the officials responsible for administering the frontier. Their evidential value therefore derives not from advocacy but from administrative necessity. They reveal the practical operation of the colonial system before any sovereignty dispute had emerged.

The Court would also examine the consistency of each party’s evidential narrative.

For Egypt, the principal question would be whether the subsequent colonial administration can be reconciled with its interpretation of Article I without creating internal inconsistency. The Court would ask why administrative authority remained with Sudan for such an extended period if the legal boundary was regarded as entirely settled in operational terms.

For Sudan, the principal question would be whether prolonged administration merely reflected practical convenience or whether it possesses genuine interpretative significance concerning the operation of the Condominium itself. The Court would examine whether the continuity of administration demonstrates more than efficient colonial governance and instead reveals the legal understanding of the administering authorities.

Neither inquiry would be answered through a single document.

International courts rarely decide territorial disputes by identifying one decisive piece of evidence. Instead, they evaluate whether treaties, administrative practice, official correspondence, maps, governmental conduct, and historical context point consistently towards the same legal conclusion. Where different categories of evidence appear to diverge, the Court seeks to reconcile them rather than automatically privileging one category over another.

Measured against this methodology, the Halaib dispute appears neither legally straightforward nor legally indeterminate. It presents two competing evidential frameworks, each supported by recognised principles of international law. Egypt possesses the stronger initial documentary title. Sudan possesses the stronger record of prolonged colonial implementation. The judicial challenge would therefore be to determine whether these bodies of evidence ultimately reinforce one another or require a different interpretation of the inherited colonial legal framework.

This is precisely where judicial reasoning diverges most sharply from political debate.

Political narratives often search for a single decisive fact capable of resolving the dispute. International courts do the opposite. They weigh competing evidence cumulatively, evaluate each category according to its legal significance, and reach conclusions only after considering the documentary record as a whole. If the Halaib dispute were ever argued before the International Court of Justice, it is this process of judicial balancing—not contemporary political narratives—that would almost certainly determine the outcome.
Which Legal Case Appears Stronger?

Having examined the competing claims through the methodology consistently applied by the International Court of Justice, the final analytical question is unavoidable: which legal case appears stronger when measured against the Court’s own jurisprudence?

A definitive answer cannot be given outside judicial proceedings. International law does not recognise scholarly opinion, diplomatic practice, or political consensus as substitutes for judicial determination. Only a competent international tribunal, exercising jurisdiction with the consent of the parties, can authoritatively determine sovereignty over the Halaib Triangle.

Nevertheless, the Court’s previous decisions permit a reasoned legal assessment of how the competing evidence would likely be evaluated.

The first conclusion is that neither party possesses a legally complete case in isolation.

Egypt’s legal position derives considerable strength from the existence of a formal documentary title. The Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 provides a clear legal instrument upon which its claim is founded. Throughout its jurisprudence, the International Court of Justice has consistently regarded treaty-based title as the natural starting point for determining territorial sovereignty. This gives Egypt an undeniable legal advantage during the initial phase of judicial analysis.

Sudan’s legal position, however, possesses a different—and equally significant—strength.

Rather than relying primarily upon the original documentary title, Sudan’s case is reinforced by the remarkable continuity of colonial administration. The available documentary record demonstrates that the Halaib region remained under the ordinary administration of the Sudan Government for more than five decades. Provincial governance, taxation, policing, judicial administration, licensing, and relations with local communities were all conducted through Sudanese administrative institutions operating under the Governor-General in Khartoum.

This continuity is not merely historical.

It is supported by a substantial body of contemporaneous British documentation generated during the ordinary operation of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium. Unlike retrospective political arguments, these records were created before any sovereignty dispute had emerged. Their evidential value therefore lies in their administrative authenticity rather than in any attempt to support a future legal claim.

The question before the Court would therefore not be whether either body of evidence exists. Both are firmly established.

The real question would be how international law reconciles them.

Here, the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice provides perhaps its clearest guidance.

The Court has never suggested that documentary title automatically excludes consideration of subsequent governmental practice. Equally, it has never accepted that prolonged administration alone is sufficient to extinguish an existing legal title. Instead, its decisions consistently seek to reconcile the two forms of evidence, asking whether administrative practice confirms, clarifies, or assists in interpreting the legal title upon which sovereignty originally rests.

Applied to Halaib, this methodology leads to an important observation.

Egypt would almost certainly prevail during the first stage of the analysis by demonstrating the existence of a formal documentary title.

Sudan, however, would possess substantial evidential strength during the second stage by demonstrating the continuous implementation of a different administrative reality over more than half a century.

The judicial challenge would therefore lie not in choosing between two incompatible histories, but in determining the legal significance of their interaction.

This observation also explains why the Sudanese legal case deserves considerably greater scholarly attention than it has often received.

Much contemporary discussion proceeds on the assumption that the existence of the 1899 Agreement effectively concludes the legal inquiry. That assumption sits uneasily with the Court’s own jurisprudence. In case after case, the International Court of Justice has examined prolonged governmental practice where such practice assisted in interpreting colonial legal instruments. The Court has never treated treaty title as automatically ending the analysis where subsequent implementation raises legitimate questions concerning its practical operation.

This does not mean that Sudan would necessarily prevail before the Court.

Nor does it diminish the legal significance of the 1899 Agreement.

Rather, it means that the Sudanese legal position cannot fairly be characterised as resting upon political aspiration or historical sentiment alone. It raises precisely the kinds of legal questions that international courts have repeatedly regarded as requiring detailed judicial examination.

Perhaps the most significant conclusion emerging from this analysis is therefore not that one party clearly wins, but that the legal debate is considerably more balanced than political discourse often suggests.

Public discussion frequently presents the dispute as though its legal outcome were already obvious. The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice points towards a more nuanced conclusion. It suggests that both Egypt and Sudan possess legally relevant evidence, that both rely upon recognised principles of international law, and that the decisive issue lies not in the existence of a single decisive document but in the judicial reconciliation of documentary title with more than five decades of consistent colonial administration.

Measured against the Court’s established methodology, one conclusion appears difficult to avoid.

The Sudanese legal case is substantially stronger than it is often portrayed in contemporary political discourse. This observation should not be confused with a judicial declaration of Sudanese sovereignty. It simply reflects the fact that the Court’s own jurisprudence would almost certainly require extensive consideration of Sudan’s documentary and administrative evidence rather than permitting it to be dismissed as legally insignificant.

The Halaib dispute therefore remains unresolved not because international law lacks an answer, but because the legal questions have never been examined by the institution specifically created to answer them.
Conclusion

The purpose of this article has not been to predict the outcome of a hypothetical judgment or to advocate the legal position of either party. Rather, it has sought to answer a narrower—and arguably more important—question: how would the International Court of Justice analyse the Halaib dispute if it were asked to determine sovereignty according to its own established jurisprudence?

That exercise produces several important conclusions.

First, the Halaib dispute cannot be reduced to a simple contest between the 1899 Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement and the administrative arrangements introduced in 1902. Such a characterisation oversimplifies both the historical record and the methodology consistently employed by international courts. The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice demonstrates that territorial disputes inherited from the colonial period are rarely resolved through the exclusive reliance upon a single legal instrument. Instead, they require the cumulative assessment of documentary title, administrative implementation, official correspondence, governmental conduct, cartographic evidence, and the broader constitutional context in which these materials were produced.

Secondly, both Egypt and Sudan advance legal arguments that fall squarely within recognised principles of international law.

Egypt’s position derives its strength from the existence of a formal documentary title and the Court’s long-established preference for treaty-based boundaries as the starting point of territorial analysis. Sudan’s position derives its strength from the remarkable continuity of colonial administration, supported by an extensive body of contemporaneous British archival material documenting the practical implementation of the Condominium over more than five decades.

Neither position can be dismissed without departing from the methodology consistently adopted by the International Court of Justice.

The analysis also demonstrates that much contemporary discussion of Halaib tends to oversimplify the legal issues involved. Political debate often proceeds as though the existence of the 1899 Agreement conclusively determines the dispute, or alternatively as though prolonged Sudanese administration automatically establishes sovereign title. The Court’s jurisprudence supports neither proposition. Instead, it requires both categories of evidence to be evaluated together within an integrated evidential framework.

Perhaps the most significant conclusion concerns the Sudanese legal position itself.

Measured against the Court’s established jurisprudence, the Sudanese case appears considerably more legally substantial than it is often portrayed in contemporary political discourse. This conclusion does not establish Sudanese sovereignty, nor does it diminish the legal significance of Egypt’s reliance upon the 1899 Agreement. It simply reflects the reality that prolonged and consistent colonial administration, supported by extensive contemporaneous documentation, constitutes evidence that international tribunals have repeatedly regarded as legally relevant when interpreting territorial title.

In other words, the legal debate surrounding Halaib is not nearly as one-sided as political narratives frequently suggest.

Whether Sudan’s evidence would ultimately outweigh Egypt’s documentary title cannot be answered outside judicial proceedings. The International Court of Justice has never considered the Halaib dispute, and no responsible legal analysis can claim certainty regarding the outcome of litigation that has never occurred. Any definitive conclusion regarding sovereignty would therefore exceed the limits of legal scholarship.

That observation leads to the central lesson of this study.

The Halaib Triangle remains unresolved not because international law lacks the principles necessary to address the dispute, but because those principles have never been authoritatively applied by the institution responsible for interpreting them. The dispute continues to be debated through diplomacy, politics, and historical narrative rather than through judicial reasoning.

Until that changes, assessments of sovereignty will inevitably remain matters of legal argument rather than judicial determination.

The next article in this series moves beyond the comparative evaluation of legal claims and asks an even more challenging question:

If the Halaib dispute were argued before the International Court of Justice, how might the judges themselves reason through the evidence—and which legal argument would be most likely to prevail?

Few territorial disputes in Africa have demonstrated the legal longevity and analytical complexity of the Halaib Triangle. More than seventy years after Sudan attained independence, sovereignty over the territory remains contested, yet the dispute has neither been resolved through bilateral agreement nor submitted to binding international adjudication. It has instead evolved into one of the continent’s most enduring unresolved territorial controversies, sustained by competing legal interpretations of colonial instruments and by the absence of an agreed judicial mechanism capable of determining sovereign title.

The persistence of the dispute presents an important question for international legal scholarship. Contemporary international law possesses a sophisticated body of rules governing territorial sovereignty, treaty interpretation, state succession, and boundary delimitation. Over the past century, international courts and arbitral tribunals have resolved numerous disputes involving colonial frontiers through the application of well-established legal principles. The continued absence of an authoritative legal settlement in the Halaib case therefore cannot be explained simply by the existence of legal uncertainty. Rather, it raises a more fundamental question concerning the relationship between historical evidence, legal methodology, and the institutional structure of international adjudication.

Existing scholarship has examined the Halaib dispute primarily through historical, political, diplomatic, or strategic perspectives. Studies have reconstructed the evolution of the frontier, analysed the competing positions adopted by Egypt and Sudan, and assessed the broader regional implications of the dispute. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to a systematic examination of how the documentary record would be evaluated under the methodology consistently employed by contemporary international courts in territorial disputes. In particular, insufficient attention has been paid to the legal interaction between treaty title, colonial administration, subsequent governmental practice, and the evidential principles developed through the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice.

This article seeks to address that gap. It does not begin from the premise that either the Egyptian or the Sudanese position is legally correct. Nor does it attempt to defend a predetermined conclusion regarding sovereignty. Instead, it adopts the analytical framework applied in contemporary international boundary litigation. The central question is not which state advances the stronger political narrative, but how international law assesses competing forms of documentary and historical evidence when determining territorial title.

That distinction is critical. International courts do not resolve territorial disputes by balancing political interests or contemporary administrative control in the abstract. Their analysis ordinarily proceeds through a structured evaluation of treaty law, documentary title, colonial administrative practice, subsequent state conduct, cartographic evidence, and the relevant principles of international jurisprudence. No single category of evidence is automatically decisive. Rather, sovereignty is determined through the cumulative assessment of the evidential record within the applicable legal framework.

The Halaib Triangle provides an especially instructive case study because it encapsulates many of the legal questions that have characterised post-colonial boundary disputes more generally. It requires consideration of treaty interpretation, colonial constitutional arrangements, administrative jurisdiction, the doctrine of uti possidetis juris, the evidential value of effectivités, and the legal consequences of state succession. Although geographically confined to the Egypt–Sudan frontier, the dispute engages legal principles that extend well beyond the bilateral relationship between the two states and continue to shape the settlement of territorial disputes across Africa and other formerly colonised regions.

The central argument advanced here is that the persistence of the Halaib dispute reflects neither a deficiency in international law nor an absence of relevant legal principles. Rather, it arises from the interaction of three mutually reinforcing factors: competing interpretations of the colonial documentary record; the unresolved legal relationship between treaty title and subsequent administrative practice; and the consensual character of international adjudication, under which no international court may determine territorial sovereignty without the acceptance of jurisdiction by the states concerned. The dispute therefore illustrates the limits not of legal doctrine itself, but of its practical application in the absence of an agreed judicial forum.

Methodologically, the article adopts a documentary and doctrinal approach. Primary legal instruments, British colonial records, official administrative correspondence, and the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice constitute the principal evidential basis of the analysis. Rather than treating historical events as self-explanatory, the discussion evaluates their legal significance through the principles governing territorial sovereignty under contemporary international law. This distinction between historical reconstruction and legal assessment is maintained throughout in order to preserve analytical clarity and methodological neutrality.

Before asking which state possesses the stronger legal claim, a more fundamental question must first be addressed:

Has the legal debate itself been overshadowed by the political one?

If so, understanding Halaib requires returning not to contemporary diplomacy, but to the colonial documents, legal principles, and judicial methodology that continue to shape territorial disputes across the international legal order.

The Dispute Everyone Thinks They Know

The Halaib Triangle is often presented as one of Africa’s simplest territorial disputes. Public discussion typically reduces the issue to competing political narratives: Egypt emphasises the boundary established by the 1899 Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement, while Sudan points to the administrative arrangements introduced in 1902 and the decades of colonial administration that followed. Framed in this way, the dispute appears to revolve around a straightforward disagreement over historical interpretation.

Yet this perception is misleading.

The legal complexity of Halaib does not arise because the historical record is incomplete or contradictory. On the contrary, relatively few African territorial disputes possess such an extensive documentary archive. Constitutional agreements, administrative orders, official correspondence, provincial records, colonial maps, and governmental reports have survived in considerable detail. The real difficulty lies in determining how these different categories of evidence should be interpreted within the framework of contemporary international law.

Understanding the dispute therefore requires distinguishing between history and legal analysis. Historical events explain how the frontier developed during the colonial period. International law determines the legal significance of those events after the emergence of Egypt and Sudan as sovereign states. These are related but fundamentally different exercises. A historical fact does not automatically entail a legal consequence, just as prolonged administration does not necessarily establish sovereign title. The transition from colonial governance to international boundary law requires the application of established legal principles rather than historical description alone.

The origins of the dispute are inseparable from the broader reorganisation of north-eastern Africa during the late nineteenth century. Egyptian expansion under Muhammad Ali, the formal sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, Britain’s occupation of Egypt in 1882, the rise and collapse of the Mahdist State, and the Anglo–Egyptian reconquest of Sudan in 1898 all transformed the political geography of the Nile Valley. Yet these developments were driven primarily by imperial strategy rather than by any intention to create permanent international frontiers. Colonial administrators sought to improve security, taxation, communications, and governance, not to anticipate the legal disputes that would emerge after decolonisation.

The establishment of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium in 1899 marked the decisive constitutional turning point. Although formally presented as a joint administration, the Condominium functioned in practice under overwhelming British control. This institutional reality is legally significant because the documents that later became central to the Halaib dispute were originated within a single imperial administration rather than through negotiations between two independent sovereign governments. Decisions that appeared administratively routine at the time would later acquire entirely different legal significance once Sudan achieved independence.

The 1899 Condominium Agreement attempted to define the territorial framework of the new administration, most notably through its reference to the twenty-second parallel north. At the time, there was little reason to anticipate that this provision would become the foundation of one of Africa’s longest-running territorial disputes. For British officials, the boundary primarily defined the geographical limits within which the Condominium administration would operate. The frontier remained an internal imperial boundary rather than an international border separating sovereign states.

That apparent clarity proved temporary. As British administrators began governing the frontier, they quickly encountered practical realities that a geometric boundary could not accommodate. Tribal territories extended across the parallel, commercial networks ignored cartographic lines, seasonal migration followed environmental rather than political boundaries, and many remote communities were considerably easier to administer from Sudan than from Egypt. These practical difficulties encouraged a series of administrative adjustments designed to improve governance without necessarily altering the underlying constitutional framework.

The most significant of those adjustments came in 1902, when responsibility for administering the Halaib region was transferred to the Sudan Government. From the perspective of colonial officials, the decision reflected considerations of accessibility and administrative efficiency rather than an intention to redefine territorial sovereignty. Yet once Sudan became independent in 1956, these administrative arrangements acquired an entirely different legal significance. Documents originally drafted for internal colonial administration became evidence in support of competing sovereign claims.

This transformation explains why Halaib continues to occupy such an important place within international boundary law. The dispute did not emerge because colonial authorities failed to define the frontier. It emerged because colonial governance gave rise to multiple categories of documents—constitutional agreements, administrative measures, official correspondence, maps, and records of governmental practice—that served different purposes within a unified imperial system but later acquired competing legal meanings after decolonisation.

To understand the dispute, therefore, one must begin not with contemporary political claims but with the document from which every subsequent legal argument ultimately derives: the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899.

The Documents That Changed Everything

If the historical origins of the dispute explain why Halaib became contested, the legal instruments issued during the early years of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium explain how that contest emerged. Every contemporary legal argument advanced by either Egypt or Sudan ultimately traces its origins to two colonial instruments drafted only three years apart: the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 and the administrative arrangements introduced in 1902. Understanding their legal relationship is therefore indispensable to any serious assessment of the dispute.

The first of these documents established the constitutional framework of the Condominium. Signed on 19 January 1899 following the Anglo–Egyptian reconquest of Sudan, the Agreement defined the territory that would be administered under the new political order. Article I identified Sudan by reference to the twenty-second parallel north together with specified categories of territory incorporated within the Condominium. At first sight, the provision appears precise and unambiguous. It identifies a geographical line capable of objective determination and provides the territorial framework within which the new administration would operate.

For this reason, the 1899 Agreement has remained the cornerstone of Egypt’s legal position. From a textual perspective, the argument appears straightforward: where an international instrument establishes a territorial boundary, subsequent administrative arrangements cannot ordinarily alter that legal title unless the parties expressly agree to do so. This proposition reflects a well-established principle of international law and explains why treaty title occupies a privileged position within the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice.

Yet treaty interpretation rarely ends with the text alone. International courts consistently interpret legal instruments according to their ordinary meaning, but also in light of their context, object, purpose, and subsequent implementation. The question is therefore not simply whether the twenty-second parallel appears in the Agreement—it unquestionably does—but what legal function the Agreement was intended to perform. Did Article I establish a permanent international frontier that survived the dissolution of the Condominium, or did it define the territorial scope of a colonial administration operating within a single imperial system? That distinction lies at the heart of the Halaib dispute.

Only three years later, practical considerations complicated what had appeared to be a relatively clear constitutional settlement. British administrators found that the geometric frontier established in 1899 bore little relation to the realities of governing remote border communities. Tribal territories extended across the parallel, commercial networks ignored cartographic boundaries, and communication with many settlements was significantly easier through Sudan than through Egypt. Administrative efficiency, rather than constitutional theory, therefore became the dominant consideration.

These circumstances gave rise to the administrative arrangements of 1902. Responsibility for governing the Halaib region was transferred to the Sudan Government, while other frontier districts were organised according to similar practical considerations. Contemporary British correspondence indicates that these adjustments were adopted to facilitate effective administration rather than to renegotiate the territorial framework established by the 1899 Agreement. From the perspective of colonial officials, they represented routine measures of governmental organisation within a unified imperial administration.

The legal significance of the 1902 arrangements is considerably more complex than their historical purpose. International law draws a careful distinction between administrative jurisdiction and territorial sovereignty. Governments frequently administer territory for practical reasons without altering the underlying legal title. If every administrative adjustment automatically modified an international frontier, the stability of inherited boundaries would be fundamentally undermined. Conversely, if administrative practice were regarded as legally irrelevant in every circumstance, international courts would lose an important source of evidence for interpreting colonial legal instruments.

Modern international jurisprudence rejects both extremes. The International Court of Justice has repeatedly held that effective administration cannot ordinarily override an existing legal title. At the same time, the Court has recognised that administrative practice may become highly significant where it clarifies the implementation of treaty provisions, reveals the understanding of the administering authorities, or assists in resolving ambiguity within the documentary record. Administrative conduct therefore derives its legal importance not from its existence alone but from its relationship to the underlying legal framework.

Applied to Halaib, this principle transforms the nature of the debate. The dispute is not simply whether the 1899 Agreement established the twenty-second parallel, nor whether Sudan administered the territory after 1902. Both propositions are historically well documented. The real legal question concerns the interaction between them. Did the subsequent administrative arrangements merely implement the constitutional framework already established in 1899, or do they demonstrate that the colonial authorities themselves understood the frontier differently from what a purely textual interpretation of Article I might suggest?

Answering that question requires moving beyond the legal instruments themselves and examining how they were implemented in practice. Administrative authority derives much of its evidential value from its continuity over time. It is therefore necessary to consider how the Halaib region was actually governed during the remainder of the Condominium period, and whether that practice sheds light on the legal meaning of the documentary record inherited by Egypt and Sudan at independence.

What the British Archives Actually Reveal

The legal significance of the 1899 Agreement and the 1902 administrative arrangements cannot be assessed in isolation. Like most territorial disputes considered by the International Court of Justice, Halaib requires an examination not only of documentary title but also of the manner in which that title was implemented in practice. For this reason, the British colonial archives assume particular importance. They provide the evidential bridge between constitutional instruments and the day-to-day exercise of governmental authority.

Contrary to a common assumption, the Halaib dispute is not characterised by a lack of historical evidence. The surviving archival record is extensive. It includes Foreign Office correspondence, reports of the Sudan Government, communications between provincial administrators, intelligence memoranda, official maps, and administrative files compiled throughout the operation of the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium. Collectively, these materials document how the frontier functioned over more than five decades of colonial administration.

What makes these records significant is not merely their volume but their consistency.

Following the administrative reorganisation of 1902, the Halaib region was incorporated into the ordinary administrative structure of Anglo–Egyptian Sudan. Responsibility for local governance was exercised through Sudanese provincial authorities operating under the Governor-General in Khartoum. Matters relating to tribal administration, taxation, policing, licensing, and routine governmental regulation were managed through Sudanese administrative channels. Far from representing isolated interventions, these activities formed part of the regular machinery of colonial government and continued with remarkable continuity until Sudan’s independence in 1956.

The British archives repeatedly describe these arrangements in administrative rather than constitutional terms. Correspondence surrounding the 1902 decision consistently refers to practical considerations such as accessibility, communications, tribal organisation, and administrative convenience. Officials explained the reorganisation by reference to the geographical realities of governing remote frontier communities rather than by any intention to redraw the territorial boundary established under the Condominium Agreement. This distinction is central to understanding the legal debate. The archival record suggests that British administrators regarded the measures as instruments of efficient governance within a unified colonial administration rather than as constitutional amendments altering territorial title.

From the perspective of international law, however, the significance of this evidence lies elsewhere.

International courts do not ask whether colonial authorities intended to create future territorial disputes. They ask what legal significance should be attributed to the historical record when determining sovereignty after independence. Consequently, the evidential value of the British archives depends not upon the subjective intentions of colonial officials but upon what their conduct reveals about the implementation of the legal framework established in 1899.

This approach is entirely consistent with the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice. In Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), the Court explained that where a valid legal title exists, effectivités generally perform a supplementary rather than constitutive role. Administrative conduct cannot ordinarily displace treaty title, but it may assist in interpreting that title where uncertainty exists concerning its practical application. Similarly, in Kasikili/Sedudu Island and Pedra Branca, prolonged governmental practice was evaluated because it illuminated how the administering authorities themselves understood and applied the relevant legal instruments.

Applied to Halaib, this methodology narrows the legal question considerably.

The issue is not whether Sudanese officials exercised governmental authority in the region after 1902; the archival record leaves little doubt that they did. Nor is it whether Article I of the 1899 Agreement referred to the twenty-second parallel north; that proposition is equally undisputed. The question is whether the subsequent administrative practice merely implemented an already established legal title or whether it assists in interpreting the meaning of that title within the constitutional framework of the Condominium.

The cartographic evidence must be approached in precisely the same manner. Colonial maps prepared during the Condominium period cannot be treated as independent proof of sovereignty. The International Court of Justice has consistently held that maps possess evidential value only insofar as they support or clarify other legally relevant materials. Their significance depends upon their provenance, official status, and consistency with the broader documentary record. Accordingly, maps relating to Halaib neither resolve the dispute nor become legally irrelevant. They form one component of a wider evidential framework that must be evaluated as a whole.

Taken as whole, the British archives reveal a sustained and coherent pattern of colonial administration extending over more than half a century. That continuity does not, by itself, determine territorial sovereignty. Nor does it render the 1899 Agreement legally redundant. Instead, it provides the factual context within which the relationship between documentary title and administrative practice must be examined. It is precisely this interaction—rather than any single treaty, map, or administrative order—that lies at the heart of the Halaib dispute and would almost certainly become the central focus of any future judicial determination.

If Halaib Reached The Hague Tomorrow

The most revealing way to assess the Halaib dispute is to set aside contemporary politics and ask a different question: how would the International Court of Justice examine the case if both Egypt and Sudan agreed to submit it to judicial determination? Although no court has ever adjudicated the dispute, the Court’s jurisprudence over the past several decades provides a well-established methodology that makes its analytical approach reasonably predictable.

The Court would not begin by asking which state currently exercises effective control over the territory. Nor would it seek to balance political interests or diplomatic considerations. Instead, as in previous territorial disputes, the first stage of the analysis would be to identify the legal title upon which sovereignty originally rested. Only after establishing that foundation would the Court examine the subsequent historical evidence.

This methodological sequence is one of the defining characteristics of modern international boundary jurisprudence. In Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), the International Court of Justice emphasised that **“where the act corresponds exactly to law, where effective administration is additional to the legal title, the effectivités can only be taken into consideration if they are consistent with the title.”**¹ This principle has remained central to the Court’s treatment of colonial boundary disputes. Treaty title provides the legal point of departure, while subsequent governmental practice is evaluated in relation to that title rather than independently of it.

Applied to Halaib, the Court would almost certainly begin with the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899. The first judicial question would concern the legal character of Article I. Did it establish a permanent international boundary intended to survive the dissolution of the Condominium, or did it merely define the territorial competence of a colonial administration operating within a unified imperial system? The answer would determine the legal framework within which all subsequent evidence would be assessed.

The inquiry would not end there. International courts consistently interpret treaties according to their text, context, object and purpose, while also considering the manner in which they were implemented. Consequently, the administrative arrangements introduced in 1902 would become the second major stage of the analysis. The Court would examine whether those arrangements merely reflected administrative convenience or whether they illuminate the understanding of the colonial authorities concerning the operation of the legal framework established three years earlier.

Here, the doctrine of effectivités assumes particular importance. The concept refers to the effective exercise of governmental authority through activities such as administration, policing, taxation, judicial organisation, and regulatory control. International jurisprudence makes clear that such conduct does not automatically establish sovereignty. Instead, it acquires legal significance because it may clarify how documentary title was understood and implemented in practice.

This approach is reflected consistently throughout the Court’s case law. In Kasikili/Sedudu Island (Botswana/Namibia), historical administration and governmental practice were evaluated alongside the relevant treaty because they assisted in interpreting the colonial boundary. Likewise, in Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, decades of governmental conduct were treated not as an autonomous source of sovereignty but as evidence of how the parties themselves understood the legal status of the disputed territory over time.

Applied to the Halaib dispute, this jurisprudence yields an important conclusion. The decisive legal issue would not be whether Sudan administered the territory after 1902—that proposition is well supported by the historical record. Nor would it be whether the twenty-second parallel appears in the 1899 Agreement—that fact is equally undisputed. The central judicial question would concern the relationship between those two bodies of evidence. Specifically, does the subsequent administrative practice merely implement the existing legal framework, or does it assist in interpreting the territorial title inherited by Egypt and Sudan upon independence?

The doctrine of uti possidetis juris would provide a further layer of analysis. Frequently misunderstood in political debate, the doctrine does not itself determine the location of colonial boundaries. Rather, it preserves the legal boundaries inherited at independence once those boundaries have been identified. In the Halaib case, therefore, uti possidetis juris would not answer the dispute independently. It would require the Court first to determine what the inherited colonial legal title actually was before preserving it as the international boundary between the successor states.

The Court would also consider the principle of intertemporal law. Historical acts must be assessed according to the legal rules applicable when they occurred, while their continuing legal consequences are evaluated under contemporary international law. Applied to Halaib, this principle prevents modern concepts of sovereignty from being retrospectively imposed upon colonial administrators while recognising that their legal instruments continue to shape territorial rights after decolonisation.

Taken together, these principles demonstrate that the Halaib dispute cannot be resolved through reference to a single treaty, a single map, or a single administrative decision. International law requires a cumulative evaluation of documentary title, colonial administration, governmental correspondence, official cartography, and subsequent state practice. The legal question is therefore not which document should prevail in isolation, but how the entire evidential record should be interpreted according to the methodology consistently employed by the International Court of Justice.

That methodology, rather than contemporary political narratives, provides the appropriate framework for assessing the competing legal positions advanced by Egypt and Sudan.

Why the Sudanese Legal Case Deserves More Attention

One of the more striking features of the Halaib dispute is that public discussion often treats the Sudanese legal position as though it were primarily political. Contemporary commentary frequently focuses on diplomatic exchanges, competing official statements, or present-day administration, leaving the impression that Sudan’s claim rests largely upon historical sentiment rather than recognised principles of international law.

A closer examination of the documentary record suggests a more complicated picture.

The Sudanese position is not constructed around a rejection of the 1899 Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement. Rather, it questions whether that Agreement can be interpreted independently of the constitutional and administrative framework through which it was implemented during the remainder of the Condominium period. This is not a political argument. It is a legal argument concerning the interpretation of colonial title through subsequent state practice—a question that lies at the centre of modern international boundary jurisprudence.

From this perspective, the significance of the 1902 administrative arrangements becomes easier to understand. Sudan does not merely rely upon the fact that administrative responsibility was transferred to Khartoum. Instead, the legal relevance of that transfer derives from its continuity. For more than half a century, the Halaib region was governed through Sudanese administrative institutions, supervised by the Governor-General in Khartoum, and incorporated into the ordinary machinery of the Sudan Government. Provincial administration, policing, taxation, licensing, and relations with local tribal communities all followed this pattern.

International law does not treat such conduct as conclusive proof of sovereignty. Yet neither does it dismiss it as legally irrelevant.

The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice consistently recognises that prolonged administrative practice may assist in interpreting the meaning of documentary title where uncertainty exists regarding its practical application. In Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), Kasikili/Sedudu Island, and Pedra Branca, the Court repeatedly evaluated governmental conduct because it illuminated how colonial legal instruments had actually been understood and implemented by the administering authorities.

Applied to Halaib, this principle has an important consequence.

The question is not whether Sudanese administration automatically displaced the legal significance of the 1899 Agreement. International law provides no support for such a proposition. Rather, the question is whether five decades of uninterrupted administration constitute evidence capable of informing the interpretation of the original documentary title inherited by the successor states.

That distinction is often overlooked in political debate.

Public discussion frequently presents the dispute as a choice between treaty law and administrative practice, as though accepting one necessarily requires rejecting the other. International jurisprudence adopts a more sophisticated approach. Treaty title establishes the legal point of departure, while subsequent governmental practice assists the Court in determining how that title was implemented, understood, and applied. The relationship between these two forms of evidence is complementary rather than mutually exclusive.

This is precisely why the Sudanese legal case deserves more careful attention than it often receives.

Whether the claim would ultimately succeed before an international tribunal cannot be determined in advance. Judicial outcomes depend upon the Court’s evaluation of the entire evidential record. Nevertheless, the legal issues raised by Sudan correspond closely to the questions that international courts have repeatedly examined in comparable territorial disputes. They concern the interaction between documentary title, administrative implementation, colonial governance, and state succession—not questions of political rhetoric or diplomatic preference.

The British archival record reinforces this observation. Official correspondence indicates that the administrative arrangements adopted in 1902 were implemented consistently throughout the remaining decades of the Condominium. The absence of parallel Egyptian administrative structures within the Halaib region during much of this period strengthens the relevance of Sudan’s evidential argument, even if it does not independently determine sovereignty. Under the methodology employed by the International Court of Justice, such continuity would almost certainly require careful judicial examination.

None of this establishes that Sudan possesses the stronger legal claim. International courts do not reach conclusions by counting administrative acts or privileging individual documents in isolation. They evaluate the cumulative weight of the evidence within an integrated legal framework.

What it does establish, however, is something more modest—and perhaps more important.

The Sudanese legal position cannot fairly be dismissed as merely political. It raises substantive questions grounded in recognised principles of international law and supported by a substantial colonial documentary record. Whether those questions ultimately justify sovereign title is a matter that only an international tribunal could determine. But they are unquestionably legal questions, and they deserve to be examined as such.

The Real Reason the Dispute Never Ends

If the Halaib Triangle presents a substantial legal debate supported by an extensive documentary record, an obvious question follows: why has no authoritative legal determination ever been made? After all, international courts have resolved numerous territorial disputes involving colonial treaties, conflicting administrative practice, disputed maps, and competing historical narratives. Why has Halaib remained outside that judicial trajectory?

The answer lies not in the absence of legal principles, but in the institutional architecture of the international legal system itself.

Unlike domestic courts, the International Court of Justice does not possess compulsory jurisdiction over territorial disputes. Its authority rests upon one of the fundamental principles of international law: state consent. Unless both parties accept the Court’s jurisdiction, no judicial examination of the competing legal claims can take place, regardless of the quality of the evidence or the sophistication of the applicable legal framework.

This procedural limitation is frequently misunderstood.

Public discussion often assumes that unresolved territorial disputes persist because international law provides no clear answer. In reality, many disputes remain unresolved not because the law is inadequate, but because the legal process itself has never been activated. International law may supply the methodology, yet it cannot compel sovereign states to submit their disagreements to judicial determination.

The Halaib dispute illustrates this distinction with unusual clarity.

No international tribunal has ever examined the relationship between the 1899 Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement and the 1902 administrative arrangements. No court has evaluated the cumulative significance of the British archival record. No judicial body has weighed the interaction between treaty title, colonial administration, official correspondence, cartographic evidence, and subsequent state practice. Consequently, the legal debate has remained largely hypothetical. It has developed through academic scholarship, diplomatic exchanges, and political argument rather than through authoritative judicial reasoning.

This distinction is crucial because political non-resolution should not be confused with legal indeterminacy.

International law recognises many disputes in which competing legal arguments coexist until they are examined by a competent tribunal. The existence of disagreement does not imply that the governing legal principles are uncertain. Rather, it reflects the absence of a judicial process capable of applying those principles to the specific facts of the case.

The prolonged duration of the Halaib dispute has also transformed its political context. During the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium, questions concerning frontier administration were primarily matters of colonial governance. Following Sudanese independence in 1956, however, the dispute became intertwined with sovereignty, constitutional legitimacy, territorial integrity, national identity, and regional security. As these political dimensions expanded, the practical incentives for consensual judicial settlement became progressively weaker.

Over time, the legal debate has therefore become increasingly overshadowed by political narratives.

Administrative control, infrastructure development, official maps, diplomatic statements, and domestic legislation now dominate much of the public discussion. While these developments are politically significant, they do not replace the legal methodology employed by international courts. Judicial reasoning proceeds differently. It evaluates historical evidence according to recognised principles of treaty interpretation, state succession, evidential assessment, and territorial sovereignty rather than according to contemporary political realities alone.

This difference between political discourse and legal analysis explains much of the misunderstanding surrounding Halaib.

Political arguments often seek certainty. Legal analysis accepts complexity. Political narratives frequently privilege present-day realities. International courts begin with historical legal title before examining subsequent governmental conduct. The longer a dispute remains outside judicial determination, the greater the tendency for these two conversations to diverge.

The Halaib dispute demonstrates precisely this phenomenon.

Its persistence should not be interpreted as evidence that international law has failed to address territorial disputes inherited from colonial rule. On the contrary, the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice provides a coherent analytical framework capable of evaluating precisely the kinds of questions raised by Halaib. What remains absent is not legal doctrine, but the procedural conditions necessary for that doctrine to be authoritatively applied.

Ultimately, the Halaib Triangle remains unresolved for a remarkably simple reason. The dispute has been debated politically, analysed academically, and argued diplomatically—but it has never been tested judicially. Until that changes, discussions of sovereignty will continue to rest upon competing legal interpretations rather than upon an authoritative judgment applying international law to the full colonial documentary record.

Conclusion

The Halaib Triangle illustrates both the strengths and the practical limits of contemporary international law. Contrary to a common perception, the dispute does not persist because international law lacks the principles necessary to resolve it. On the contrary, the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice provides a sophisticated framework for evaluating colonial treaties, administrative practice, state succession, uti possidetis juris, effectivités, and the evidential significance of historical documentation. The legal methodology exists. What remains absent is an authoritative judicial application of that methodology to the Halaib dispute itself.

One of the principal conclusions emerging from this analysis is that the dispute cannot be reduced to a simple choice between the Anglo–Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 and the administrative arrangements introduced in 1902. Such a binary interpretation oversimplifies both the historical record and the jurisprudence of international courts. Contemporary international law requires a cumulative assessment of documentary title, colonial administration, official correspondence, governmental conduct, and cartographic evidence. None of these categories of evidence is legally decisive in isolation. Their significance lies in the way they interact within an integrated evidential framework.

This approach also clarifies an important methodological distinction that is often lost in political debate. Historical reconstruction and legal assessment are not identical exercises. Historical evidence explains what occurred during the colonial period; international law determines the legal significance of those events after independence. Administrative practice may illuminate the implementation of treaty title, but it does not automatically create sovereignty. Equally, documentary title cannot always be interpreted without considering the manner in which it was understood and applied by the administering authorities. International adjudication therefore requires the careful integration of both forms of evidence rather than the exclusion of either.

Viewed through this legal framework, the Halaib dispute appears considerably more complex than contemporary political narratives often suggest. The documentary record raises substantive legal questions concerning the relationship between treaty title, colonial administration, and state succession—questions that closely resemble those examined by the International Court of Justice in numerous post-colonial territorial disputes. Whether these questions ultimately favour the legal position of Egypt or Sudan cannot be determined without judicial evaluation. What can be said with confidence, however, is that they deserve to be examined through the established methodology of international law rather than through assumptions derived from contemporary political realities alone.

Perhaps the most significant lesson of the Halaib dispute therefore extends beyond the territory itself. It demonstrates that unresolved territorial controversies should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of legal uncertainty. In many cases, including Halaib, the principal obstacle is institutional rather than doctrinal. International law can establish rules, develop jurisprudence, and provide coherent methods of legal reasoning. What it cannot do is exercise jurisdiction without the consent of the states concerned. The absence of a judicial determination should therefore not be mistaken for the absence of a legal framework capable of producing one.

Ultimately, the Halaib Triangle remains one of Africa’s most important unresolved territorial disputes not because the law has failed, but because the law has never been permitted to speak with final authority. Until an international tribunal is asked to evaluate the competing documentary record in accordance with the principles of contemporary international law, the dispute will remain suspended between competing legal interpretations rather than resolved through judicial determination.

The purpose of this article has not been to declare where sovereignty ultimately lies. Its objective has been more fundamental: to demonstrate that any meaningful discussion of Halaib must begin not with political narratives, but with legal methodology. Once the dispute is viewed through the analytical framework consistently employed by the International Court of Justice, it becomes clear that the central question is not simply who claims Halaib, but how international law would evaluate those claims if given the opportunity to do so. Until that question is answered in a court of law rather than in the arena of politics, the legal status of the Halaib Triangle will remain one of the most consequential unresolved issues inherited from Africa’s colonial boundaries.

¹ Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali) (Judgment) [1986] ICJ Rep 554, para 63.

For Somaliland, this question has shaped its international existence since 1991. Yet it also exposes a broader challenge within the contemporary international order. While international law has developed an extensive body of doctrine governing sovereignty, territorial integrity, and statehood, it offers remarkably little guidance on a different question: when should an enduring political reality be reflected in diplomatic recognition?

Recognition is commonly portrayed as the natural consequence of objective legal criteria. In practice, however, it has always reflected an interaction between law and politics. Strategic interests, regional stability, historical precedent, and geopolitical calculation all influence recognition decisions. States remain free to determine whom they recognise, and no international institution can compel them to act otherwise.

This political discretion is both inevitable and legitimate. Yet it cannot remain indefinitely detached from political reality without raising broader questions about the coherence of the international system itself.

The legitimacy of international order depends not only upon preserving legal continuity but also upon ensuring that legal principles continue to correspond with the realities they are intended to regulate. When a political entity exercises the essential functions of government consistently over an extended period while continuing to be treated as merely provisional, the burden of explanation gradually shifts. The question is no longer simply why recognition should occur, but why it continues to be withheld.

Few contemporary cases illustrate this dilemma more clearly than Somaliland.

For more than three decades, Somaliland has maintained effective territorial administration, functioning public institutions, independent security forces, competitive elections, its own currency, and the practical capacity to engage internationally in trade, security, and regional cooperation. During the same period, it has established a reputation for relative political stability within one of the world’s most strategically significant and politically volatile regions.

Despite this record, it remains largely absent from the formal diplomatic architecture of international society.

Most analyses explain this paradox through debates over self-determination, territorial integrity, African precedent, or the legal consequences of the 1960 union with Somalia. These debates remain important, but they share a common assumption: that the central question is whether Somaliland deserves recognition.

This article proceeds from a different premise.

Rather than asking whether Somaliland should be recognised, it asks whether the contemporary international system possesses a coherent standard for recognising long-standing de facto states.

Current practice suggests that it does not.

Some internationally recognised states exercise only limited authority across significant parts of their territory, while other political entities have demonstrated decades of effective governance, institutional continuity, and growing regional relevance without achieving widespread diplomatic recognition. The resulting divergence between political reality and diplomatic practice has become increasingly difficult to justify.

This article does not argue that every unrecognised entity should become an independent state, nor that recognition should follow every claim to self-government. Its argument is considerably narrower.

It contends that Somaliland represents an exceptional case. After more than three decades of institutional durability, historical continuity, effective governance, and increasing strategic relevance, continued non-recognition no longer appears to be merely an exercise in diplomatic caution. It raises a more fundamental question about whether the principles governing international recognition are being applied with sufficient consistency.

Answering that question requires reconsidering one of the most enduring assumptions in international relations.

Recognition does not create political reality. Its purpose is to acknowledge a political reality that has already emerged.

States are not created by recognition. They emerge through the sustained exercise of public authority over territory and population. Recognition neither establishes institutions nor creates governments; rather, it acknowledges that a political order has become sufficiently established to participate formally within international society.

This distinction lies at the heart of one of the oldest debates in international law.

The declaratory theory maintains that a state exists once it satisfies the accepted criteria of statehood, irrespective of whether other governments choose to recognise it. Recognition merely confirms an existing legal reality. The constitutive theory reaches the opposite conclusion, arguing that an entity acquires full international personality only through recognition by other states.

Neither theory, however, adequately reflects contemporary practice.

If the declaratory approach were applied consistently, political entities that demonstrate effective and durable governance would eventually receive recognition as a matter of legal coherence. Yet recognition is rarely determined by legal doctrine alone. Strategic interests, regional politics, and diplomatic calculation frequently shape both its timing and its scope.

The constitutive approach presents an equally significant difficulty. If recognition alone creates international personality, then comparable political realities may produce fundamentally different legal outcomes depending upon the geopolitical preferences of recognising governments. Under such circumstances, statehood becomes determined less by observable political development than by diplomatic choice.

In reality, contemporary recognition practice occupies a position between these two theories. Law establishes the normative framework, but politics largely determines when recognition is ultimately extended.

This interaction between law and politics is neither unusual nor inherently problematic.

The difficulty arises when the gap between political reality and diplomatic acknowledgement becomes so prolonged that the original justification for withholding recognition becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

Immediately after conflict, caution is often both prudent and necessary. Political settlements may collapse, institutions may fail, territorial control may shift, and negotiated agreements may fundamentally alter constitutional arrangements. Under such conditions, withholding recognition reflects uncertainty rather than inconsistency.

The Somaliland case, however, has gradually moved beyond that phase.

Since 1991, Somaliland has maintained functioning institutions through successive political transitions. Governments have changed peacefully. Elections have been held repeatedly. Administrative structures have matured. Public authority has been exercised continuously across the territory under its control. What initially appeared to many observers as a provisional political arrangement has gradually evolved into a durable political order.

Time changes the character of political reality.

A political entity that survives for only a few years may reasonably be regarded as temporary. One that demonstrates institutional continuity over more than three decades presents a fundamentally different proposition. Entire generations have lived exclusively under Somaliland’s institutions, while commercial relationships, legal expectations, administrative routines, and systems of governance have become firmly embedded within everyday political life.

The issue is therefore no longer whether Somaliland has demonstrated political durability.

Few observers would now dispute that it has.

The more difficult question is whether indefinite diplomatic non-recognition remains a coherent response to that durability.

The implications extend well beyond Somaliland itself.

When diplomatic recognition persistently lags behind long-established political reality, the consequences become increasingly tangible. Legal uncertainty discourages long-term investment, restricts access to international financial institutions, complicates formal security cooperation, and obliges regional organisations to engage pragmatically with functioning authorities while withholding formal diplomatic recognition.

The costs of prolonged ambiguity are therefore not borne solely by the unrecognised entity.

They increasingly affect the wider regional order.

Somaliland is therefore significant not simply because it seeks recognition, but because it exposes a broader question about the contemporary international system itself.

Can an international order that claims to recognise political reality indefinitely postpone acknowledging one that has demonstrated durability, institutional effectiveness, and governmental continuity for more than three decades?

That question becomes even more compelling when Somaliland is examined within the changing geopolitical landscape of the Horn of Africa.

Over the past two decades, the Horn of Africa has undergone a profound strategic transformation. Regional influence is increasingly determined not simply by military capability or formal sovereignty, but by the ability to organise systems of trade, connectivity, infrastructure, and security. Ports, transport corridors, logistics networks, customs administration, energy interdependence, and institutional reliability have become central instruments of geopolitical influence.

Within this evolving regional environment, Somaliland has assumed growing strategic importance.

Its significance cannot be explained by diplomatic recognition, because widespread recognition has not occurred. Nor can it be understood solely through the historical debate surrounding the 1960 union with Somalia. Increasingly, it derives from the practical functions Somaliland performs within the wider regional system.

This distinction is fundamental.

Geography alone rarely produces geopolitical influence. Location becomes strategically valuable only when it is transformed into infrastructure, institutions, and networks upon which other actors increasingly depend. Strategic geography, in other words, is created not by location itself but by the functions that location enables.

Berbera provides perhaps the clearest illustration of this transformation.

Situated on the Gulf of Aden, adjacent to one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors, Berbera has evolved from a national port into an increasingly important regional logistics hub. Investment in port infrastructure, road connectivity, customs modernisation, and commercial facilities has expanded its role well beyond Somaliland’s domestic economy. The Berbera Corridor has similarly strengthened connections with Ethiopia, integrating Somaliland into a wider regional transport network.

Its importance lies not in replacing existing ports.

It lies in expanding regional choice.

Rapidly growing economies rarely rely indefinitely upon a single maritime gateway. Instead, they seek resilience through diversification, competition, redundancy, and flexibility. Multiple transport corridors reduce strategic vulnerability, improve commercial efficiency, and provide alternatives during periods of political or logistical disruption.

This logic is particularly relevant to Ethiopia, whose long-term economic strategy increasingly depends upon diversified and reliable access to international markets. From this perspective, Berbera should not be understood as a substitute for existing corridors but as an additional component of a broader regional logistics architecture capable of strengthening resilience and expanding strategic options.

Somaliland’s strategic importance therefore derives less from controlling regional trade than from increasing the adaptability and resilience of the wider regional system.

The same functional logic applies to maritime security.

The Gulf of Aden remains one of the world’s most strategically significant waterways, linking the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean and carrying a substantial share of global maritime commerce. Safeguarding this route requires more than international naval deployments. It also depends upon capable local institutions able to administer ports, regulate maritime activity, cooperate with external partners, and provide predictable governance along strategically important coastlines.

Over time, Somaliland has demonstrated an increasing capacity to perform precisely these functions.

International actors have repeatedly engaged with Somaliland’s authorities on maritime security, counter-piracy, humanitarian coordination, commercial investment, and regional stability. Such engagement reflects a practical acknowledgement that Somaliland possesses institutions capable of contributing to the effective functioning of the wider regional order.

Yet this practical engagement has not been accompanied by corresponding diplomatic recognition.

Here lies the central paradox.

In practice, Somaliland is increasingly treated as a functional political actor. In law, however, it remains largely excluded from the diplomatic framework normally associated with sustained governmental effectiveness.

Three decades ago, international caution reflected genuine uncertainty. Today, the defining characteristics of Somaliland are no longer uncertainty but continuity. Its institutions have endured, its administrative capacity has expanded, its economy has become more closely integrated into regional markets, and its strategic relevance has grown alongside intensifying competition across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

This does not mean that effective governance or strategic importance automatically justify recognition. Recognition remains one of the most consequential acts available to sovereign states and must always take broader legal, political, and regional considerations into account.

It does suggest, however, that the justification for continued non-recognition becomes progressively more demanding as political reality becomes more firmly established.

Immediately after conflict, governments may reasonably explain why recognition would be premature.

After more than three decades of uninterrupted governance, the more difficult question becomes whether continued non-recognition still reflects prudence—or whether it has become an increasingly difficult position to justify.

Answering that question requires examining the arguments that have sustained international caution for so long.

The persistence of Somaliland’s diplomatic isolation cannot be explained by a single factor. It reflects the interaction of legal caution, regional politics, and strategic calculation. Any serious argument in favour of recognition must therefore engage directly with the reasons why recognition has been withheld for so long.

The most frequently cited concern is the territorial integrity of Somalia.

Since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, successive governments and international organisations have invested substantial political, financial, and diplomatic resources in rebuilding Somalia as a unified sovereign state. Throughout this period, preserving Somalia’s internationally recognised borders has remained a central objective. From this perspective, recognising Somaliland could appear to undermine decades of state-building efforts before they have reached their intended conclusion.

This concern is neither superficial nor unreasonable.

Territorial integrity remains one of the foundational principles of the contemporary international legal order. It discourages unilateral border revision, reduces the risk of interstate conflict, and provides the legal certainty upon which international stability depends.

The issue, however, is not whether territorial integrity matters.

It unquestionably does.

The more difficult question is whether maintaining a legal position that has diverged from political reality for more than three decades continues to strengthen that principle—or whether, over time, it begins to weaken the credibility of the recognition process itself.

Somaliland presents an unusual challenge because its legal claim does not fit comfortably within the conventional framework of secession.

Supporters of recognition argue that Somaliland emerged as an internationally recognised independent state on 26 June 1960, before voluntarily entering into union with the former Trust Territory of Somalia five days later. They therefore contend that the events of 1991 represented the restoration of an earlier sovereignty rather than the creation of a new state. Critics reject this interpretation and continue to regard Somaliland as an integral part of Somalia’s sovereign territory.

The purpose of this article is not to resolve that legal disagreement.

Rather, it is to observe that the existence of such a disagreement reinforces the need for careful legal analysis rather than political simplification. Somaliland is sufficiently distinctive that it cannot easily be treated as merely another contemporary separatist movement.

A second concern relates to precedent.

Many governments, particularly across Africa, fear that recognising Somaliland could encourage other territorial movements to pursue independence. Given the continent’s history, such caution is understandable. Since the adoption of the principle of uti possidetis juris, preserving inherited colonial boundaries has been regarded as one of the principal safeguards against widespread territorial conflict.

Yet precedent has value only when comparable cases are genuinely comparable.

International law does not require fundamentally different situations to be treated identically. Courts distinguish cases. Governments distinguish cases. International organisations distinguish cases. The identification of exceptional circumstances is therefore not a departure from legal reasoning but an essential feature of it.

Whether Somaliland ultimately satisfies that threshold remains open to legitimate debate.

What is increasingly difficult to sustain, however, is the assumption that its historical circumstances, institutional trajectory, and legal claims are indistinguishable from every other movement seeking independence.

The third concern is geopolitical caution.

Recognition is never a purely legal act. Governments must also weigh their relations with Somalia, the positions of regional organisations, the interests of external powers, and the broader balance of stability in the Horn of Africa. Even governments that maintain constructive relations with Somaliland have frequently concluded that the political costs of recognition outweigh its immediate benefits.

From the perspective of individual governments, such caution is understandable.

Collectively, however, it produces an unintended consequence.

When every state postpones recognition because it expects another to bear the diplomatic costs of acting first, caution gradually becomes inertia. Recognition ceases to evolve alongside developments on the ground and instead becomes increasingly detached from them.

This raises a question that has received remarkably little attention.

What are the costs of continued non-recognition?

For much of the past three decades, policymakers have concentrated on the potential consequences of recognising Somaliland. Considerably less attention has been devoted to the consequences of maintaining indefinite ambiguity.

Those consequences are becoming progressively more apparent.

Legal uncertainty discourages long-term investment. Access to international financial institutions remains constrained. Formal security cooperation becomes unnecessarily complex. Regional infrastructure initiatives continue to operate within a constitutional ambiguity that bears progressively less resemblance to the political realities through which they function.

These costs are not borne by Somaliland alone.

They increasingly affect the wider Horn of Africa by reducing institutional predictability, complicating regional cooperation, and limiting the effectiveness of long-term economic integration.

Recognition should therefore be evaluated not only in terms of the risks associated with changing the status quo, but also in terms of the costs associated with preserving it indefinitely.

After more than three decades, that balance deserves to be reconsidered.

The debate is no longer simply whether recognition carries risks.

It is whether continued non-recognition now carries greater ones.

Conclusion

For more than three decades, the international debate surrounding Somaliland has revolved around a single question: should it be recognised?

This article has argued that this is no longer the most important question.

The more fundamental issue is whether the contemporary international order possesses a coherent standard for determining when enduring political reality should ultimately be reflected in diplomatic recognition. Somaliland does not merely challenge the territorial settlement of the Horn of Africa; it challenges the consistency of the international system’s own approach to recognition.

Recognition was never intended to function as a political reward, nor as an instrument of indefinite diplomatic hesitation. Its purpose is to provide legal certainty by acknowledging political realities that have demonstrated sufficient permanence, effectiveness, and responsibility to participate within international society.

Measured against that purpose, Somaliland presents an exceptional case.

For more than three decades it has exercised effective territorial authority, maintained functioning public institutions, conducted competitive elections, provided internal security, and assumed an increasingly significant role within the political economy of the Horn of Africa. Whatever conclusion one ultimately reaches on recognition, Somaliland today bears little resemblance to a temporary political experiment awaiting resolution.

This does not mean that recognition should be granted lightly, nor does it imply that every unrecognised political entity presents a comparable case. Recognition remains one of the most consequential acts in international relations, carrying profound legal, political, and strategic implications. Exceptional decisions require exceptional evidence.

The argument advanced here is that Somaliland has accumulated precisely such evidence.

Its recognised independence in June 1960, the distinctive legal circumstances surrounding its union with Somalia, its sustained record of effective self-government, and its growing regional significance together distinguish it from most contemporary territorial disputes. To treat Somaliland simply as another secessionist movement is to overlook the historical and legal characteristics that make its case unusually distinctive.

Ultimately, the question is not whether international law should abandon its principles.

It is whether those principles are being applied consistently.

An international order that values effective governance, institutional resilience, regional stability, and the rule of law cannot indefinitely separate those principles from the political realities they were designed to regulate. To do so is not to preserve international order; it is to weaken the credibility upon which that order ultimately depends.

The significance of Somaliland therefore extends beyond one territory on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden.

It raises a broader question about the future of international recognition itself.

If diplomatic recognition exists to acknowledge enduring political realities rather than indefinitely postpone them, then prolonged non-recognition requires a justification at least as persuasive as recognition itself.

After more than three decades of institutional continuity, effective governance, historical distinctiveness, and increasing strategic relevance, the burden of justification has gradually shifted.

The question confronting the international community is therefore no longer whether Somaliland has endured long enough.

It is whether the international system can continue to postpone acknowledging an enduring political reality while maintaining that its practice of recognition remains guided by coherent legal principles rather than prolonged political convenience.

How that question is answered will shape more than Somaliland’s future.

It will shape the credibility of an international order that claims to align legal recognition with political reality.

For if recognition exists to acknowledge enduring political realities, Somaliland is no longer merely a test of statehood. It has become a test of the consistency of the international order itself.

International Relations was built upon a powerful assumption: that despite wars, crises and geopolitical rivalry, the international system ultimately possesses the capacity to produce order. Whether through balances of power, international institutions, diplomatic settlements or normative change, instability has generally been understood as a transitional condition rather than a permanent feature of world politics.

The strategic environment of the twenty-first century increasingly challenges that assumption.

Across multiple regions, crises persist without comprehensive settlement. Wars continue without decisive victory. Global supply chains are repeatedly disrupted without being fundamentally restructured. Maritime corridors remain contested while international trade continues. Economic coercion, cyber operations, technological competition and climate shocks increasingly interact across interconnected systems whose behaviour cannot be adequately explained through conventional geopolitical analysis alone.

These developments raise a broader question than the individual crises themselves. They suggest that the organising logic of international politics may be changing in ways that existing theoretical frameworks only partially capture.

This article argues that the principal challenge confronting International Relations is no longer simply the explanation of international order. It is the explanation of how an increasingly interconnected international system continues to function despite persistent fragmentation, continuous disruption and the absence of comprehensive political settlement.

To address this problem, the article introduces Systemic Collapse Theory (SCT) as a framework for understanding the changing logic of contemporary international politics. Rather than interpreting persistent crises primarily as failures of international order, SCT proposes that they reflect a broader transformation in the strategic priorities of the international system itself. Increasingly, the preservation of systemic functionality appears to take precedence over the production of comprehensive political order.

The argument developed in the following sections proceeds in three stages. It first examines why the traditional questions that have shaped International Relations are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. It then develops the central propositions of Systemic Collapse Theory before considering its implications for the future study of international politics.

A World That No Longer Behaves as Expected

There is a growing paradox at the heart of contemporary international politics.

The international system appears simultaneously more interconnected than at any previous point in history and yet increasingly incapable of producing durable political order. Every major crisis now seems to spill rapidly across geographical and functional boundaries. A regional war reshapes global energy markets. Disruptions to maritime shipping affect inflation thousands of miles away. Cyber-attacks launched from one continent disable financial systems on another. Competition over semiconductors influences military planning, while climate shocks alter migration patterns and domestic political stability far beyond the regions in which they originate.

Individually, none of these developments is unprecedented. International politics has always experienced wars, economic crises, technological competition and geopolitical rivalry. What is unprecedented is the degree to which these phenomena have become interconnected, producing cascading effects that transcend traditional political and geographical boundaries. Contemporary crises no longer remain confined to the sectors or regions in which they originate. They move across systems, generating consequences that frequently prove more significant than the initial event itself.

Yet despite this growing interconnectedness, another pattern has become equally striking. Many of the defining crises of the twenty-first century neither end decisively nor evolve into stable political settlements. Wars continue without victory. Peace negotiations prevent escalation without delivering peace. Humanitarian interventions alleviate suffering without reconstructing political authority. Maritime coalitions secure strategic waterways while the conflicts surrounding them persist. Economic sanctions impose substantial costs without fundamentally altering strategic behaviour. Across diverse regions, instability increasingly appears to endure rather than conclude.

This persistence has become one of the defining characteristics of contemporary international politics. Crises no longer resemble temporary interruptions within an otherwise stable international order. Instead, they increasingly constitute the environment within which international politics operates. Instability has become less an exception than a recurring structural condition.

The implications of this transformation extend far beyond the management of individual conflicts. They challenge some of the most fundamental assumptions upon which the discipline of International Relations has been built. For decades, scholars have sought to explain how political order emerges, how stability is restored following periods of disruption, and how institutions or balances of power generate durable equilibrium. These questions reflected the historical experiences of the twentieth century, when major conflicts were often followed by new political settlements and institutional reconstruction.

The contemporary international environment presents a markedly different reality. The international system continues to function, global trade continues to flow, financial markets remain deeply integrated, and diplomatic engagement persists across multiple regions. Yet this continuity increasingly coexists with persistent fragmentation, prolonged crises and the absence of comprehensive political settlements. The system has not ceased to operate, but it appears to operate according to a different logic.

Recognising that transformation requires more than updating existing theories to accommodate new empirical developments. It requires reconsidering whether the conceptual foundations through which International Relations understands contemporary politics remain fully adequate for the strategic environment now emerging.

The central argument of this article is that they do not.

The international system has entered a historical phase in which its primary challenge is no longer the production of political order in the traditional sense. Instead, it increasingly seeks to preserve the functioning of an interconnected global system under conditions of persistent fragmentation and continuous strategic disruption.

Understanding this transformation begins with recognising that the most important question in International Relations may no longer be the one the discipline has spent decades trying to answer.

 The Question That Built International Relations

Every academic discipline is shaped by a small number of foundational questions. These questions determine not only the theories that emerge, but also the assumptions researchers take for granted and the phenomena they consider most important. International Relations is no exception. Although its major theoretical traditions differ profoundly in their explanations of world politics, they have long shared a common intellectual starting point.

For more than a century, the discipline has been preoccupied with a single overarching question: How is international order created, maintained, and transformed?

This question has provided the foundation upon which successive generations of scholarship have been built. Realist thinkers sought to explain how balances of power produce strategic stability under conditions of anarchy. Liberal institutionalis examined how institutions, rules and economic interdependence could mitigate conflict and sustain cooperation. Constructivists demonstrated how norms, identities and shared understandings shape political behaviour and contribute to the evolution of international order. Despite their profound differences, these traditions converge on one fundamental assumption: that the principal task of International Relations is to explain the conditions under which order emerges.

This assumption reflected the historical experience of the twentieth century. The two World Wars were followed by new institutional settlements. The Cold War produced a relatively stable bipolar structure. Its conclusion generated another period of institutional expansion and liberal optimism. Throughout these successive historical phases, crises were generally understood as transitional moments—episodes of disruption that would eventually give way to renewed political equilibrium or a reconfigured international order.

The discipline therefore evolved around a particular historical experience in which order remained both the analytical objective and the expected outcome of international politics. Even periods of intense instability were interpreted as temporary deviations within a broader process of systemic adjustment. Whether through deterrence, diplomacy, institutional reform or shifts in the balance of power, the international system was ultimately expected to regain a degree of coherence.

That expectation is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Across multiple regions, crises now display a strikingly different pattern. Wars continue without decisive conclusions. Diplomatic initiatives reduce violence without resolving underlying disputes. Economic competition intensifies without producing clear strategic settlements. Technological rivalry accelerates while institutional governance struggles to keep pace. Rather than moving from instability towards a renewed order, many contemporary crises appear to settle into prolonged conditions of managed uncertainty.

The difficulty, therefore, is not that realism, liberalism or constructivism have ceased to offer valuable insights. Each continues to illuminate important dimensions of international politics. The difficulty lies in the historical question that continues to organise the discipline itself. Theories developed to explain the production of order inevitably encounter growing limitations when confronted with an international environment increasingly characterised by the persistence of fragmentation rather than the restoration of stability.

This observation does not invalidate the intellectual achievements of International Relations. It suggests something more modest, yet ultimately more significant: the historical conditions that gave rise to the discipline’s central question may no longer correspond to the strategic realities of the twenty-first century.

If the empirical world has changed, then the questions through which we seek to understand it must also change.

The challenge is therefore not simply to refine existing theories, but to reconsider the problem they were originally designed to solve. Before asking how order is created, we must first ask whether the contemporary international system continues to organise itself around the production of order at all. It is this question that opens the way for a different understanding of contemporary global politics.

The Historical Shift That International Relations Has Yet to Recognise

The central challenge facing International Relations today is not simply that the world has become more unstable. History has witnessed many periods of profound instability, from the Napoleonic Wars to the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War. What distinguishes the contemporary era is not the existence of crises themselves, but the transformation of the structures through which crises emerge, spread and persist.

The twentieth century was largely organised around competition between states. Military capabilities, territorial control, industrial production and alliance systems formed the principal foundations of international power. Although economic interdependence expanded considerably after the Second World War, states remained the dominant units through which strategic competition was understood and exercised. International order, whether liberal or bipolar, rested upon political structures that retained a relatively clear relationship between territory, sovereignty and power.

That relationship has progressively weakened.

The strategic environment of the twenty-first century is increasingly shaped by systems that extend beyond the authority of any individual state. Global supply chains connect production across continents. Digital infrastructure enables instantaneous communication and financial transactions on a global scale. Maritime trade routes sustain economic activity far beyond the regions through which they pass. Critical minerals underpin technological industries across multiple jurisdictions. Artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities and financial networks increasingly influence strategic competition in ways that cannot be understood solely through conventional geopolitical analysis.

As these systems have become more interconnected, they have also become more vulnerable. A disruption in one part of the international system rarely remains confined to its original location. Military conflict generates economic shocks. Economic coercion affects technological development. Climate events reshape migration flows. Cyber operations influence financial markets and political institutions. Contemporary crises propagate through networks of interdependence, producing cascading effects that extend far beyond their immediate origins.

This transformation has altered not only the nature of international risk but also the strategic priorities of international actors. Governments increasingly devote resources to securing energy systems, protecting supply chains, safeguarding digital infrastructure, diversifying access to critical minerals and maintaining the resilience of essential services. These activities do not replace traditional security concerns, but they increasingly complement—and in some instances rival—them in strategic importance.

The result is a profound shift in the operational logic of international politics. 4Preserving the continuity of interconnected systems has become as strategically significant as defending national territory. Maintaining functionality has become inseparable from maintaining security. The international system is therefore increasingly organised around resilience, connectivity and systemic continuity rather than around the exclusive pursuit of territorial or military advantage.

Yet much of International Relations continues to interpret this changing reality through conceptual frameworks developed for an earlier historical period. The discipline has incorporated new issues into its agenda—cybersecurity, climate change, critical infrastructure and technological competition—but it has often treated them as additional policy domains rather than recognising that, taken together, they reflect a broader transformation in the organising logic of international politics.

The consequence is an increasing gap between theory and empirical reality. Existing frameworks remain valuable in explaining individual dimensions of international politics, yet they struggle to capture the cumulative significance of these interconnected transformations. The contemporary international system is not simply experiencing more crises; it is operating according to a different strategic logic.

Recognising that shift is the necessary starting point for developing an analytical framework capable of explaining contemporary international politics. It is from this historical transformation—not from the rejection of existing theories—that the foundations of Systemic Collapse Theory emerge.

 Why a New Theory Is Needed

The historical transformation outlined in the previous sections presents International Relations with a fundamental analytical challenge. If the organising logic of the international system has changed, then explanations developed for an earlier strategic environment will inevitably encounter growing limitations. Refining existing concepts may improve our understanding of particular developments, but it cannot fully explain a reality whose underlying dynamics have themselves been transformed.

The central question is therefore not whether contemporary international politics has become more complex. Complexity alone does not require a new theoretical framework. Nor is the issue simply that the international system has become more unstable. Periods of instability have accompanied international politics throughout history. The challenge lies elsewhere. It concerns the emergence of a recurring empirical pattern that existing theories acknowledge but do not adequately explain.

Across multiple regions, crises increasingly display similar characteristics regardless of their geographical location or political context. They persist without comprehensive settlement. External interventions remain selective and limited. Escalation is repeatedly contained, yet the structural causes of instability remain largely untouched. International actors continue to invest significant political, military and economic resources, but these efforts more frequently preserve operational continuity than produce lasting political resolution.

These outcomes are often interpreted as evidence of declining international leadership, institutional weakness or strategic inconsistency. Such explanations are undoubtedly relevant, but they remain incomplete. They describe why individual interventions may fail without explaining why similar patterns recur across fundamentally different crises. The repetition itself requires explanation.

This article argues that these recurring patterns should not be viewed merely as a series of unrelated failures. Rather, they suggest that the international system increasingly operates according to a different strategic logic—one in which preserving systemic functionality has become a more immediate objective than constructing comprehensive political order.

Recognising this distinction requires a different analytical perspective. Instead of beginning with the assumption that international actors primarily seek to resolve crises, it becomes necessary to examine how they manage crises under conditions where comprehensive resolution is increasingly constrained. The analytical focus therefore shifts from the production of order to the regulation of fragmentation, from political settlement to systemic continuity, and from equilibrium to resilience.

It is from this shift in analytical perspective that Systemic Collapse Theory (SCT) emerges.

Systemic Collapse Theory does not argue that the international system is collapsing into chaos, nor does it suggest that international actors intentionally sustain instability. Its central claim is more precise. It argues that the organising logic of contemporary international politics has evolved in response to a strategic environment characterised by unprecedented interdependence, dispersed power and persistent systemic vulnerability. Under these conditions, international action increasingly prioritises preserving the functionality of interconnected systems over achieving comprehensive political settlements.

SCT therefore proposes a different way of interpreting contemporary global politics. Rather than viewing persistent crises as deviations from an international system designed to produce order, it understands them as outcomes of a system whose operational priorities have fundamentally changed. The defining question is no longer why order repeatedly fails to emerge, but how an increasingly interconnected international system continues to function despite the persistence of fragmentation.

This shift does not seek to replace the major traditions of International Relations. Instead, it extends the analytical horizon of the discipline by directing attention towards a dimension of international politics that has become increasingly visible but remains insufficiently theorised. Systemic Collapse Theory is offered in that spirit: not as a rejection of existing scholarship, but as an attempt to explain a historical transformation that demands a corresponding transformation in theory.

The Central Proposition of Systemic Collapse Theory

At its core, Systemic Collapse Theory advances a simple but consequential proposition: the contemporary international system is no longer primarily organised around the production of political order. It is increasingly organised around the preservation of systemic functionality under conditions of persistent fragmentation.

This distinction represents more than a change in terminology. It reflects a fundamental transformation in the logic through which international politics operates. For much of modern history, international order was understood as the principal objective of political action. Wars concluded with settlements, institutions sought to consolidate cooperation, and diplomacy aimed to restore stability following periods of disruption. Order was treated both as the purpose of international politics and as the benchmark against which success was measured.

The contemporary international environment increasingly departs from this historical pattern. Across multiple regions and policy domains, international actors continue to invest substantial diplomatic, military and economic resources. Yet these efforts are directed less towards constructing durable political settlements than towards preserving the functioning of the wider international system. Shipping lanes remain operational despite unresolved regional conflicts. Financial markets continue to function despite geopolitical confrontation. Energy supplies are redirected rather than permanently secured. Humanitarian operations mitigate societal collapse without reconstructing political authority. Stability, where it exists, is increasingly operational rather than political.

Systemic Collapse Theory argues that this shift should not be interpreted simply as a series of policy failures or institutional shortcomings. Instead, it reflects a structural adaptation to an international environment characterised by deep interdependence, dispersed power and the rapid transmission of systemic shocks. As crises become increasingly interconnected, the costs of comprehensive political resolution rise, while the strategic imperative to preserve the continuity of essential global systems becomes progressively more urgent.

Within this context, the priorities of international action change. Rather than seeking to eliminate every source of instability, international actors increasingly seek to regulate its consequences. Escalation is contained rather than permanently resolved. Risks are managed rather than removed. Fragmentation is moderated rather than eliminated. The objective is not to create a perfectly ordered international system, but to ensure that disorder remains within thresholds compatible with the continued functioning of global political and economic systems.

This represents the central analytical departure of Systemic Collapse Theory. The theory does not assume that order has disappeared, nor that instability has become desirable. It argues instead that the relationship between order and instability has fundamentally changed. Contemporary international politics increasingly operates within an intermediate condition in which fragmentation persists, but systemic continuity is maintained through constant adaptation, selective intervention and the management of strategic risk.

Accordingly, Systemic Collapse Theory proposes that the defining feature of the twenty-first-century international system is neither the restoration of order nor the onset of uncontrollable collapse. It is the emergence of a form of international politics in which the preservation of functionality increasingly replaces the pursuit of comprehensive political settlement as the principal organising logic of the system.

This proposition provides the conceptual foundation upon which the remainder of the theory is built. Once the preservation of systemic functionality is recognised as the dominant strategic objective, many developments that appear disconnected—or even contradictory—begin to reveal a coherent underlying pattern. Persistent conflicts, limited interventions, resilient global networks and the continuous management of systemic risk cease to appear as isolated phenomena. Instead, they become expressions of a common organising logic that defines the contemporary international system.

From Order to Functionality

If the central proposition of Systemic Collapse Theory is that the contemporary international system increasingly prioritises functionality over comprehensive political order, then an immediate question follows: what does functionality actually mean in international politics?

Traditionally, functionality and order were treated as closely related concepts. Political order was assumed to provide the institutional and strategic conditions through which international systems could operate effectively. Stable governments, predictable alliances and durable diplomatic settlements were regarded as the foundations upon which security, trade and international cooperation depended.

The contemporary international system increasingly demonstrates that these two concepts are no longer synonymous.

Across multiple regions, essential global functions continue despite the persistence of profound political instability. International trade flows through contested maritime spaces. Global financial markets continue to operate during prolonged geopolitical confrontation. Energy systems adapt to major disruptions through diversification rather than permanent political settlement. Humanitarian assistance sustains millions of people without resolving the conflicts that produced humanitarian crises in the first place. The international system therefore exhibits an increasing capacity to preserve operational continuity even where political order remains absent.

This distinction lies at the heart of Systemic Collapse Theory.

Functionality refers to the continued operation of the interconnected systems upon which the international system depends. These systems include global trade, financial networks, energy distribution, digital communications, logistics, technological production and strategic infrastructure. Their uninterrupted operation has become an increasingly important objective of international action because their disruption generates consequences extending far beyond the immediate crisis in which they are embedded.

The strategic priorities of international actors consequently begin to change. Diplomatic initiatives increasingly seek to prevent escalation rather than impose comprehensive settlements. Military operations are frequently calibrated to contain conflicts rather than conclude them decisively. Economic policies prioritise resilience and diversification over complete strategic autonomy. Humanitarian interventions seek to prevent societal collapse while leaving broader political disputes unresolved. Success is therefore measured less by the achievement of peace than by the preservation of systemic continuity.

This does not imply that international actors have abandoned the pursuit of political order. Rather, it suggests that the structural conditions of the contemporary international system increasingly compel them to prioritise objectives that are operationally achievable over those that may remain politically desirable. In a world characterised by dense interdependence, fragmented authority and rapidly transmitted systemic shocks, preserving functionality frequently becomes the immediate strategic imperative.

Consequently, the contemporary international system displays a distinctive pattern of behaviour. It repeatedly absorbs disruption without eliminating its causes. It adapts to instability rather than resolving it. It redistributes pressures rather than removing them. Political crises remain unresolved, yet the wider system continues to operate because the functions upon which it depends are continuously protected, repaired or redirected.

From the perspective of Systemic Collapse Theory, this represents a profound transformation in the logic of international politics. The central objective is no longer the restoration of a comprehensive political order across the system as a whole. Instead, it is the preservation of sufficient functionality to ensure that fragmentation does not evolve into uncontrolled systemic breakdown.

Understanding this distinction is essential because it changes how contemporary international behaviour should be interpreted. Actions that appear limited, inconsistent or incomplete when evaluated according to the traditional objective of order often become coherent when understood as efforts to maintain systemic functionality. Maritime coalitions, supply-chain diversification, cyber defence, sanctions, humanitarian assistance and selective military intervention all perform the same strategic function: they preserve the operational capacity of the wider international system despite the persistence of political fragmentation.

Systemic Collapse Theory therefore argues that the defining measure of strategic success in the twenty-first century is increasingly not the production of order, but the preservation of functionality. This shift marks one of the most significant transformations in the evolution of the international system since the emergence of the modern state.

From States to Systems

Since the emergence of the modern state system, International Relations has largely been organised around a single analytical assumption: states are the primary units through which international politics should be understood. Whether explaining war, diplomacy, cooperation or economic competition, the discipline has traditionally begun with the behaviour of sovereign states. Even when non-state actors were incorporated into analysis, they were generally examined in relation to state interests rather than as components of broader systemic structures.

This assumption reflected the strategic realities of an earlier era. Military power was primarily territorial, economic production remained largely national, and political authority was concentrated within sovereign governments. Under such conditions, analysing international politics through the interactions of states provided a coherent and effective framework for understanding global affairs.

The contemporary international system increasingly presents a different reality.

States remain the principal holders of sovereignty, legal authority and military capability. Yet many of the processes that now shape international outcomes operate through systems that extend beyond the jurisdiction of any individual government. Global supply chains connect production across multiple continents. Financial networks transmit economic shocks within seconds. Digital infrastructure supports communication, intelligence and commerce on a global scale. Energy markets, critical minerals and semiconductor production have become deeply integrated into transnational systems whose disruption cannot be understood through territorial analysis alone.

These systems have become the essential infrastructure of international politics. They organise the movement of goods, capital, information, technology and energy upon which both national economies and international security increasingly depend. Their strategic importance derives not simply from their economic value, but from the fact that they connect multiple regions into a single operational environment. A disruption within one component of the system can generate cascading effects across numerous others, producing consequences that extend far beyond the immediate location of the original crisis.

This transformation requires a corresponding shift in analytical perspective.

Systemic Collapse Theory does not argue that states have become irrelevant. On the contrary, states remain indispensable actors. What has changed is the environment within which they exercise power. Increasingly, states compete not only through territorial control or military capabilities, but through their ability to influence the systems that organise contemporary global life. Strategic competition therefore unfolds simultaneously across maritime corridors, digital networks, financial infrastructures, technological ecosystems and critical resource chains. These systems increasingly define both the opportunities available to states and the constraints within which they operate.

The analytical focus of International Relations must therefore expand beyond the state without abandoning it. Understanding contemporary international politics requires examining how states interact with the operational systems that increasingly shape strategic behaviour. The question is no longer simply how states influence one another, but how they compete to shape, secure or disrupt the interconnected systems upon which international stability depends.

Within this framework, geography acquires renewed importance, but for different reasons than those traditionally emphasised. Strategic significance increasingly derives from connectivity rather than territorial size alone. Maritime chokepoints, digital infrastructure, logistics hubs, semiconductor production centres and critical mineral corridors matter because they occupy positions within wider operational systems whose continuity is essential to the functioning of the international system.

It is within this context that Systemic Collapse Theory introduces the concepts of Hinge Systems and Hinge States.

A Hinge System is a strategic system whose continued operation is indispensable to the functioning of wider international networks. These systems may consist of maritime corridors, global energy infrastructures, financial architectures, digital communications or technological production chains. Their defining characteristic is not their physical location, but their capacity to transmit disruption across multiple domains of international politics.

A Hinge State derives its strategic importance from its position within one or more Hinge Systems. Its influence does not necessarily depend upon demographic size, military superiority or economic output. Rather, it reflects the state’s ability to facilitate, protect, regulate or disrupt the critical systems upon which broader regional and global stability depends. Strategic relevance therefore becomes increasingly relational rather than purely material.

This shift—from analysing states as isolated units to analysing states as components of interconnected systems—constitutes one of the principal analytical contributions of Systemic Collapse Theory. It suggests that the future of International Relations will depend less upon understanding the distribution of power among states alone than upon understanding the structure, resilience and vulnerability of the systems through which that power is increasingly exercised.

What Systemic Collapse Theory Explains

The value of any theoretical framework ultimately depends upon its explanatory power. A theory justifies its place within academic inquiry not because it introduces new terminology, but because it enables scholars to recognise empirical patterns that remain only partially visible through existing analytical frameworks.

Systemic Collapse Theory is proposed on this basis. Its purpose is not to replace realism, liberal institutionalism or constructivism, all of which continue to provide indispensable insights into international politics. Rather, it seeks to explain a set of developments that have become increasingly prominent across the twenty-first century but remain difficult to interpret through theories primarily concerned with the production of political order.

The first of these developments is the persistence of open-ended crises.

Contemporary conflicts increasingly endure without producing decisive military victories, comprehensive diplomatic settlements or stable post-conflict political arrangements. Rather than progressing towards resolution, many crises enter prolonged phases in which violence fluctuates, negotiations continue intermittently, and external actors remain engaged without fundamentally altering the underlying political conditions. The expectation that crises naturally culminate in a new equilibrium has become progressively more difficult to reconcile with empirical reality.

A second pattern concerns the transformation of international intervention.

Military operations, economic sanctions, diplomatic initiatives and humanitarian assistance increasingly display limited and carefully calibrated objectives. Rather than pursuing comprehensive political transformation, interventions are frequently designed to reduce escalation, protect essential infrastructure, maintain humanitarian access or preserve broader regional stability. These measures often appear incomplete when evaluated against traditional objectives of conflict resolution, yet they become considerably more coherent when understood as efforts to preserve systemic functionality under conditions of persistent fragmentation.

A third pattern is the growing strategic significance of interconnected systems.

Contemporary geopolitical competition increasingly revolves around maritime corridors, energy networks, critical minerals, digital infrastructure, financial systems, semiconductor production and artificial intelligence. These domains are often examined separately within specialised fields of study. Systemic Collapse Theory instead interprets them as interconnected components of a wider strategic environment in which influence derives increasingly from the capacity to shape the systems through which global political and economic life operates.

The theory also offers an explanation for the changing character of international power.

Conventional approaches generally assume that strategic influence is exercised primarily through military superiority, economic size or institutional leadership. While these dimensions remain important, they do not fully explain why actors with comparatively limited conventional capabilities can nevertheless exert disproportionate influence by controlling strategic maritime passages, technological supply chains, digital infrastructure or critical resource networks. Such developments become more intelligible when analysed through the systemic rather than purely territorial distribution of power.

Perhaps most importantly, Systemic Collapse Theory provides an integrated explanation for why these seemingly diverse developments increasingly occur together.

Persistent conflicts, fragmented governance, strategic competition over infrastructure, the weaponisation of economic interdependence, the protection of global supply chains, the growing importance of resilience, and the continuous management of systemic risk should not be interpreted as separate historical trends. They represent interconnected manifestations of a broader transformation in the organising logic of the international system.

This perspective encourages a different interpretation of contemporary international politics. Rather than asking why individual crises repeatedly fail to produce order, it asks why the international system increasingly succeeds in preserving functionality despite the persistence of fragmentation. Rather than treating prolonged instability as evidence of policy failure alone, it considers whether such outcomes reflect the structural adaptation of an international system operating under fundamentally different conditions from those that shaped the dominant theories of the twentieth century.

Systemic Collapse Theory therefore seeks to shift the analytical focus of International Relations. The central question is no longer simply how order is created, maintained or restored. It is how an increasingly interconnected international system absorbs disruption, regulates fragmentation and preserves its essential functions without consistently generating comprehensive political settlement.

If contemporary international politics is indeed characterised by this transformation, then the challenge confronting the discipline is not merely to refine existing explanations, but to recognise that the object of explanation has itself changed. Understanding the twenty-first century requires more than new empirical observations. It requires a theoretical framework capable of explaining why fragmentation has become persistent, why functionality has become strategic, and why the management of interconnected systems increasingly defines the practice of international politics.

Toward a New Research Programme

The significance of Systemic Collapse Theory extends beyond the interpretation of contemporary crises. If its central proposition is correct, then it carries broader implications for the future development of International Relations as an academic discipline. The theory is not intended merely as an alternative explanation for a particular set of empirical developments, but as the foundation for a different research agenda capable of addressing a changing international environment.

For much of its history, International Relations has concentrated on explaining the origins of war, the distribution of power, the formation of alliances and the construction of international order. These remain essential areas of inquiry. Yet the strategic realities of the twenty-first century suggest that they are no longer sufficient on their own. A growing number of contemporary developments cannot be fully understood without examining the operation of interconnected systems that transcend traditional political boundaries and continuously transmit risks across multiple domains.

This shift requires new analytical priorities.

Rather than focusing exclusively on the distribution of capabilities among states, future research must also examine the resilience of the systems through which those capabilities are exercised. Understanding contemporary international politics increasingly demands analysis of how maritime corridors, financial networks, digital infrastructures, technological ecosystems, supply chains and critical resource systems interact to shape strategic outcomes. These systems have become central components of international power rather than merely supporting structures operating alongside it.

A second priority concerns the transmission of systemic shocks. Contemporary crises rarely remain confined to the political arenas in which they originate. Military conflict generates economic disruption. Economic coercion reshapes technological competition. Climate events alter migration patterns, domestic political stability and regional security. Future scholarship must therefore devote greater attention to the mechanisms through which instability travels across interconnected systems and produces cumulative strategic effects far removed from the original source of disruption.

Systemic Collapse Theory also opens new avenues for analysing strategic geography. Conventional geopolitical analysis has long examined the strategic significance of territory. SCT suggests that future research should pay equal attention to the strategic significance of connectivity. Maritime chokepoints, digital communication networks, semiconductor production, critical mineral supply chains and energy infrastructures increasingly derive their importance from the functions they perform within wider systems rather than from their geographical characteristics alone.

The theory similarly encourages renewed attention to the concept of resilience. Within traditional approaches, resilience has often been treated as a secondary characteristic of states or institutions. Under the framework proposed here, resilience becomes a central variable in explaining the continued functioning of the international system under conditions of persistent fragmentation. Understanding how systems absorb disruption, redistribute pressure and preserve operational continuity may prove as important as understanding how conflicts begin or how power is accumulated.

These analytical directions point towards a broader transformation in the discipline itself. International Relations has traditionally sought to explain the production of order. The strategic environment of the twenty-first century increasingly demands a discipline capable of explaining continuity without settlement, stability without equilibrium and functionality without comprehensive political order. This does not require abandoning the intellectual achievements of realism, liberal institutionalism or constructivism. Rather, it requires extending the discipline to address dimensions of international politics that have become progressively more significant as global interdependence has deepened.

Systemic Collapse Theory is offered as the beginning of that intellectual project rather than its conclusion. Like any theoretical framework, its propositions require empirical testing, conceptual refinement and critical engagement. Its concepts should be challenged, revised and developed through comparative research across different regions, policy domains and historical contexts. The purpose of the theory is not to provide a final account of contemporary international politics, but to establish a framework through which a new generation of questions can be explored.

If the twentieth century was primarily concerned with understanding how international order is constructed, the twenty-first century may increasingly require understanding how complex systems continue to function despite the persistence of fragmentation. It is within this emerging research agenda that Systemic Collapse Theory seeks to make its principal contribution.

Conclusion: A Different Question for a Different Age

Every generation of International Relations has been shaped by the historical conditions of its time. The great debates of the twentieth century emerged from a world defined by industrial warfare, ideological rivalry, bipolar competition and the construction of post-war institutions. The theories that followed sought to explain how order was established, preserved and transformed within that strategic environment. Their enduring contribution lies in the clarity with which they explained the world they confronted.

The international system of the twenty-first century presents a different reality. It is characterised by unprecedented levels of interconnectedness, persistent fragmentation, technological transformation and systemic interdependence. Political crises increasingly extend beyond territorial boundaries, generating consequences that propagate through financial systems, supply chains, energy markets, digital infrastructure and strategic networks. Stability has become increasingly operational rather than political, while continuity is maintained through adaptation rather than comprehensive settlement.

These developments do not render the established traditions of International Relations obsolete. Realism continues to explain strategic competition. Liberal institutionalism remains indispensable for understanding cooperation and governance. Constructivism continues to illuminate the influence of ideas, norms and identity. Yet no single tradition fully captures the transformation that occurs when the preservation of interconnected systems becomes as strategically important as the production of political order itself.

Systemic Collapse Theory has been proposed as a response to that transformation. Its central claim is not that the international system is collapsing, nor that disorder has replaced order as the defining condition of world politics. Rather, it argues that the organising logic of the international system has changed. Contemporary international politics is increasingly structured around preserving the functionality of interconnected systems under conditions of persistent fragmentation. This represents not the disappearance of order, but a different way through which international stability is pursued.

If this interpretation is correct, then the most significant challenge confronting International Relations is not simply to incorporate new issues into existing theoretical frameworks. It is to reconsider whether the discipline continues to ask the question most appropriate for the world it seeks to explain.

For much of its history, International Relations has sought to answer one enduring question:

How is international order created?

That question reflected the defining challenge of another era.

The defining challenge of the twenty-first century is different.

It is no longer sufficient to ask how order emerges. We must also understand how an increasingly interconnected international system continues to function when fragmentation persists, shocks cascade across systems, and comprehensive political settlements become increasingly rare.

Systemic Collapse Theory begins with that question.

Whether the theory ultimately succeeds will not be determined by the originality of its terminology, but by its capacity to explain empirical reality more effectively than the frameworks that preceded it. Like every theoretical contribution, it should be tested, challenged and refined through scholarly debate. If it encourages researchers to rethink the assumptions that have long structured the discipline and to investigate the changing logic of international politics with fresh analytical tools, it will have achieved its principal purpose.

The future of International Relations will not be determined solely by who possesses the greatest military power, the strongest economy or the largest alliances. It will increasingly be shaped by who understands how the systems upon which the world depends are organised, protected, disrupted and sustained. Explaining that transformation is the purpose of Systemic Collapse Theory.

How to Cite This Essay

Alsaeed, Sara Malik. Why International Relations Is Asking the Wrong Question: Introducing Systemic Collapse Theory (SCT). Substack, 2026.

© 2026 Sara Malik Alsaeed. All rights reserved.

Traditional geopolitics offers only a partial answer.

Across the Horn of Africa, the distribution of influence is increasingly shaped by factors that extend beyond military capabilities, territorial control, or demographic scale. States that perform indispensable regional functions are progressively acquiring strategic importance that cannot be fully explained through conventional measures of power alone.

This argument does not reject the insights of classical geopolitics or international political economy. Rather, it builds upon them while addressing an increasingly visible empirical gap. Existing approaches explain why geography, military capability, or economic size matter, but they offer only a partial account of why states with comparable strategic assets frequently occupy markedly different positions within the same regional system. The framework proposed here suggests that these differences are increasingly explained by the regional functions states perform and the degree to which those functions become embedded within wider networks of interaction.

The Horn of Africa continues to be portrayed as one of the world’s most volatile geopolitical regions. Civil wars, interstate rivalries, humanitarian crises, fragile governments, terrorism, maritime insecurity, and external intervention dominate both academic analysis and policy debates. From the Nile Basin to the Red Sea, discussion remains overwhelmingly framed by the language of conflict.

These challenges are real.

Yet they no longer provide a sufficient explanation of how power is evolving across the region.

Over the past two decades, a quieter transformation has been unfolding beneath the surface of these crises. The political economy of the Horn of Africa is being progressively reorganised through expanding markets, transport corridors, logistics networks, ports, energy interconnections, financial systems, digital infrastructure, and regional investment. These developments rarely attract the same attention as military confrontation, yet they are increasingly shaping the long-term distribution of regional influence.

This transformation raises an important analytical problem.

Much of the existing literature continues to interpret the Horn primarily through concepts inherited from classical geopolitics: sovereignty, borders, territorial control, military balance, and interstate competition. These concepts remain indispensable for understanding security dynamics, but they explain only part of a region whose economic and strategic relationships are becoming progressively more interconnected.

The analytical challenge is therefore not to replace traditional geopolitics. It is to complement it.

The Horn of Africa increasingly requires an additional framework capable of explaining why some states acquire influence through economic functions, institutional capacity, logistical integration, or regional connectivity rather than through military predominance alone.

The central argument advanced here is that power within the Horn of Africa is increasingly organised through regional functions.

For the purposes of this article, a regional function refers to a specialised economic, institutional, logistical, financial, or strategic role that becomes increasingly indispensable to the operation of the wider regional system. States acquire influence not simply because they possess assets, but because neighbouring economies and governments increasingly depend upon the functions those assets perform.

Under this emerging political economy, influence is generated less by the accumulation of isolated national assets than by participation in systems that organise regional interaction.

This does not imply that geography, military capability, or state sovereignty have become irrelevant. On the contrary, they remain fundamental components of regional power. The argument is instead that these traditional sources of influence increasingly derive additional value from the functions they perform within interconnected regional networks. Geography matters because it connects markets. Infrastructure matters because it organises movement. Institutions matter because they reduce uncertainty and coordinate economic activity. Strategic influence therefore depends not only upon ownership of assets, but upon the ability to organise relationships between them.

The implications are significant.

Rather than viewing the Horn of Africa as a collection of neighbouring states competing for relative advantage, it may increasingly be understood as an evolving regional system composed of complementary functions. Different states perform different roles. Together, these functions shape the wider political economy of the region.

This perspective does not deny competition. It suggests that competition increasingly unfolds alongside interdependence.

The future distribution of regional influence may therefore depend less upon which state becomes dominant than upon which states become indispensable to the operation of the wider regional system.

The following analysis develops this argument through four interconnected case studies. Ethiopia demonstrates how demographic scale and economic expansion generate regional demand. Djibouti illustrates how strategic geography can be transformed into a regional logistical function. Kenya shows how institutions themselves become sources of geopolitical influence. Sudan reveals how strategic relevance may increasingly depend upon connecting these complementary functions into a more coherent regional system.

Taken together, these cases suggest that the Horn of Africa is entering a new phase of regional transformation. Understanding that transformation requires moving beyond a purely territorial understanding of geopolitics towards a functional political economy of regional influence.

The concept of regional functions provides a different lens through which to understand the changing distribution of influence across the Horn of Africa. Conventional geopolitical analysis typically begins by comparing the material capabilities of states—their populations, military strength, territorial size, or natural resources. While these indicators remain important, they do not fully explain why certain states exercise influence that exceeds what their conventional capabilities alone would predict.

A functional perspective begins with a different question.

Rather than asking which state is the strongest, it asks which functions the region increasingly depends upon.

Large and expanding economies generate demand for transport, finance, energy, labour, logistics, and access to international markets. Maritime trade requires ports, customs systems, shipping infrastructure, and reliable commercial services. Regional commerce depends upon financial institutions, regulatory certainty, digital platforms, and efficient logistics capable of reducing transaction costs. Infrastructure requires investment, while investment depends upon institutions that generate confidence, predictability, and long-term stability.

No single state performs all of these functions.

Instead, they are progressively distributed across the region.

This distribution is neither centrally planned nor politically negotiated. It emerges through geography, economic incentives, institutional development, infrastructure investment, and long-term structural change. As regional integration deepens, states become increasingly significant according to the functions they perform within the wider regional system rather than simply according to the resources they possess.

The recent evolution of the Horn of Africa illustrates this transformation.

Ethiopia demonstrates how demographic expansion and sustained economic growth generate regional demand. Expanding industrial production, urbanisation, infrastructure development, and rising consumption create increasing requirements for transport corridors, energy interconnections, logistics networks, and maritime access. Ethiopia’s significance therefore extends beyond its own economy. Its growth reshapes the incentives facing neighbouring states.

Djibouti demonstrates a different functional logic.

Its influence does not derive primarily from demographic scale or extensive natural resources. Rather, it stems from its ability to transform strategic geography into a regional logistics platform. Ports, maritime services, free trade zones, transport infrastructure, and international commercial connectivity have enabled Djibouti to perform functions upon which neighbouring economies increasingly rely. Geography became strategically valuable because it was organised into a system of regional connectivity.

Kenya illustrates yet another dimension of regional influence.

Its strategic importance increasingly reflects the development of institutions rather than physical geography alone. Nairobi has evolved into one of Africa’s leading centres for finance, diplomacy, technology, corporate management, and regional governance. Financial markets, regulatory institutions, commercial services, and digital innovation increasingly organise economic activity extending well beyond Kenya’s borders. Institutional capacity has therefore become a geopolitical asset in its own right.

Sudan illustrates a fourth and distinct function.

Unlike its neighbours, Sudan’s greatest strategic opportunity does not lie in performing a single dominant regional role. Its comparative advantage lies in its capacity to connect the functions performed by others. Situated between the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Sahel, Central Africa, the Nile Basin, and the Red Sea, Sudan occupies one of the few geographic positions capable of integrating multiple regional systems simultaneously. Its future influence therefore depends less upon replacing the specialised roles of neighbouring states than upon enabling interaction between them.

Taken individually, each case study explains only one dimension of regional transformation.

Taken together, however, they reveal a broader structural pattern. The Horn of Africa is becoming progressively organised through complementary regional functions rather than isolated national capabilities.

This observation suggests a broader analytical proposition. States do not become regionally influential simply because they possess strategic assets. They become influential because they perform functions that neighbouring economies, governments, and markets increasingly depend upon. Power therefore becomes progressively relational. Its value derives not only from ownership, but from interaction. Strategic influence belongs increasingly to states that organise movement rather than merely control territory, reduce uncertainty rather than simply accumulate resources, and facilitate  regional exchange rather than remain economically isolated.

Seen from this perspective, the preceding case studies are not independent national analyses. They represent complementary components of a broader regional framework. Ethiopia illustrates the generation of demand. Djibouti demonstrates the organisation of geography. Kenya explains the strategic value of institutions. Sudan reveals the importance of connecting these functions into a more integrated regional system. Together, they suggest that the Horn of Africa is increasingly organised through complementary regional functions rather than isolated national capabilities.

Understanding the Horn of Africa through the lens of regional functions does not imply that conflict, sovereignty, or military competition have become obsolete. Nor does it suggest that every state will naturally acquire a complementary role within the regional system. Political instability, institutional weakness, violent conflict, and external intervention continue to shape the strategic landscape in profound ways. A functional political economy is therefore not an alternative to geopolitics. It is an additional analytical layer that helps explain transformations which conventional security analysis alone cannot fully capture.

This distinction is particularly important because regional functions are neither permanent nor guaranteed. States acquire them through long-term investment, institutional development, infrastructure, policy choices, and economic adaptation. They can equally lose them through conflict, political fragmentation, institutional decline, or strategic mismanagement. Functional influence must therefore be continuously constructed rather than assumed.

The framework proposed here also carries broader policy implications. Governments seeking greater regional influence may achieve more by strengthening the functions they perform than by relying upon traditional competition alone. Investment in transport infrastructure, ports, customs systems, financial institutions, digital connectivity, energy interconnections, regulatory reform, and regional trade can generate forms of strategic influence that military capability by itself cannot produce. Functional capacity increasingly complements material power rather than replacing it.

The framework also offers a different perspective on regional cooperation. The future stability of the Horn of Africa is unlikely to depend solely upon diplomatic agreements or temporary security arrangements. It may depend increasingly upon the degree to which regional economies become interconnected through mutually beneficial systems of trade, infrastructure, investment, finance, energy, and institutional cooperation. As these connections deepen, the incentives for cooperation may gradually expand alongside the costs of prolonged fragmentation.

Equally significant, future geopolitical competition may increasingly centre on organising regional systems rather than controlling territory alone. Competition over ports, transport corridors, digital infrastructure, energy networks, logistics platforms, financial services, and investment flows is becoming strategically important because these assets organise the relationships upon which regional economies increasingly depend. The central geopolitical question is therefore gradually shifting from Who controls the most territory? to Who organises the systems through which the region increasingly functions?

The Horn of Africa should therefore no longer be understood simply as a region divided by borders, conflicts, and competing sovereignties. It should increasingly be understood as a regional system composed of complementary functions.

Within that system, Ethiopia generates regional demand. Djibouti organises maritime connectivity. Kenya organises institutional capacity. Sudan possesses the potential to connect these complementary functions into a more coherent regional architecture.

These case studies do not constitute a complete explanation of the Horn of Africa, nor do they suggest that every state can be reduced to a single function. Rather, they illustrate a broader analytical proposition: regional influence increasingly emerges from the interaction of specialised functions performed within an interconnected regional system.

The future distribution of power in the Horn of Africa will therefore depend less upon which state possesses the greatest material capabilities than upon which states perform the functions upon which the region increasingly depends.

The Horn of Africa is not simply experiencing a redistribution of power. It is witnessing a transformation in the mechanisms through which regional influence is acquired.

As economic integration deepens and regional systems become increasingly interconnected, influence will depend less upon the possession of strategic assets alone than upon the capacity to organise indispensable regional functions.

The Functional Geopolitics Framework proposed in this article does not replace conventional geopolitics.

It complements it by offering a different analytical lens through which to understand how regional influence is increasingly organised.

Recognising that transformation is essential not only for interpreting the Horn of Africa today, but also for anticipating the political economy that is likely to shape its future.

Conventional explanations often attribute Somalia’s prolonged instability to state fragility, internal conflict, terrorism, or weak institutions. These factors undoubtedly remain important. Yet they explain only part of a larger strategic puzzle.

Somalia possesses many of the characteristics that conventional geopolitics associates with regional importance. It has the longest coastline on mainland Africa. It occupies a position connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. It overlooks maritime routes through which a significant share of global commerce passes. It lies at the intersection of the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and the wider Indian Ocean.

Its geography alone would appear to position it as one of the Horn of Africa’s most consequential states. Yet this expectation has not been fully realised. Somalia’s strategic opportunities have frequently exceeded its sustained regional influence.

This apparent contradiction raises a broader analytical question. Why do some states possess exceptional strategic opportunities without becoming central organisers of the regional systems around them?

The answer proposed here differs from many conventional explanations. This article does not argue that Somalia lacks strategic geography. Nor does it suggest that Somalia lacks economic opportunity. Rather, it argues that possessing opportunity is fundamentally different from possessing the capacity to organise that opportunity into enduring regional functions.

This distinction introduces two closely related concepts within the Functional Geopolitics Framework developed throughout this series.

Functional potential refers to the opportunities created by a state’s geography, economy, demographics, natural resources, or strategic position. These opportunities exist independently of whether they are fully utilised.

Functional capacity, by contrast, refers to a state’s ability to organise its geographic, economic, institutional, and infrastructural assets into stable regional functions that become embedded within wider systems of interaction. It is not simply a measure of state strength. It is the practical capacity to organise opportunity into enduring regional relevance.

The distinction is subtle but fundamental. Potential describes what a state could contribute. Capacity explains what a state is able to organise.

Somalia illustrates the difference between these two concepts more clearly than perhaps any other country in the Horn of Africa. Its coastline offers exceptional maritime opportunities. Its geographic position connects multiple regional systems. Its proximity to the Gulf States, East Africa, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean provides opportunities that few countries possess simultaneously.

These characteristics represent substantial functional potential. Potential alone, however, does not reorganise regional political economy. Opportunities do not automatically become regional functions.

Throughout this series, the Functional Geopolitics Framework has demonstrated that regional influence increasingly depends upon the roles states perform within interconnected systems rather than upon geography, population, or legal status alone.

Ethiopia illustrates expanding regional demand. Djibouti demonstrates how geography acquires greater functional value when organised into logistics and maritime connectivity. Kenya shows how institutional capacity extends influence beyond national borders. Sudan highlights the importance of connecting complementary regional functions. Somaliland demonstrates that functional relevance and international recognition need not evolve simultaneously. Eritrea distinguishes between strategic geography and the functional value of that geography.

Somalia introduces the final conceptual element of the framework. A state may possess considerable functional potential while lacking sufficient functional capacity to organise that potential into sustained regional influence.

Understanding this distinction helps explain not only Somalia’s own trajectory, but also a broader characteristic of regional political economy. The distribution of opportunity and the distribution of influence are not necessarily the same. Between them lies functional capacity.

And it is functional capacity that increasingly determines whether opportunity remains unrealised or becomes an enduring source of regional significance.

Understanding Somalia’s strategic trajectory therefore requires examining not only the opportunities it possesses, but also the conditions that enable those opportunities to become stable regional functions.

Functional capacity should not be understood simply as administrative competence or the overall strength of the state. It is more specific than that. It refers to the ability to organise geography, infrastructure, institutions, security, investment, regulation, and economic policy into systems that neighbouring states, markets, investors, and regional organisations increasingly incorporate into their own activities.

Regional influence becomes durable when these systems reinforce one another over time.

Somalia possesses considerable functional potential across multiple dimensions. Its coastline extends for more than 3,300 kilometres, providing access to major maritime routes linking the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, East Africa, and the wider global economy. Its location places it at the intersection of several regional systems. Its fisheries, offshore resource potential, demographic profile, and proximity to rapidly expanding Gulf and East African markets provide opportunities that relatively few states possess simultaneously.

Taken individually, these characteristics represent significant strategic assets. Taken together, they constitute one of the largest concentrations of functional potential in the Horn of Africa.

Yet potential alone does not organise regional interaction. Ports require effective administration. Trade depends upon predictable regulation. Infrastructure requires sustained investment. Commercial activity depends upon security, financial services, legal certainty, and institutional continuity. Without these conditions, strategic opportunities remain only partially translated into enduring regional functions.

This distinction also explains why Somalia’s strategic importance has frequently attracted sustained international attention while its influence within the everyday political economy of the region has remained more limited. External engagement has often centred upon maritime security, piracy, counterterrorism, humanitarian assistance, and regional stabilisation. These concerns reflect Somalia’s strategic importance. They do not necessarily indicate that Somalia has become a central organiser of regional economic interaction.

Functional capacity develops when geographic opportunity becomes embedded within routine regional activity. Commercial shipping, port services, cross-border investment, integrated transport networks, energy cooperation, financial linkages, and institutional coordination gradually strengthen regional interdependence. As these interactions deepen, neighbouring actors increasingly rely upon them, allowing opportunity to evolve into durable regional influence.

From this perspective, Somalia’s principal challenge is not a shortage of strategic assets. It is the incomplete organisation of those assets into stable regional functions.

Functional capacity therefore depends upon the coordination of multiple systems rather than upon any single variable. Infrastructure alone is insufficient. Security alone is insufficient. Institutions alone are insufficient. Regional influence emerges when these elements reinforce one another and enable geography to support wider regional interaction.

Somalia therefore contributes an important proposition to the Functional Geopolitics Framework. The gap between opportunity and influence is frequently explained not by the absence of strategic assets, but by differences in functional capacity.

Where functional capacity expands, opportunity becomes progressively embedded within regional political economy. Where it remains constrained, even substantial strategic opportunities may continue to exist without fundamentally reshaping the wider regional system.

The central analytical question is therefore not whether Somalia possesses strategic potential. It clearly does.

The more significant question is how, and under what conditions, functional capacity can progressively organise that potential into enduring regional functions upon which neighbouring economies, investors, transport networks, and regional institutions increasingly depend.

Somalia’s experience extends the Functional Geopolitics Framework in an important direction. Previous studies in this series have examined how states acquire regional influence through specialised functions. Somalia introduces a different analytical proposition.

A state may possess abundant functional potential while lacking the functional capacity required to organise that potential into stable regional functions.

This distinction carries implications that extend well beyond Somalia itself. Across the developing world, many countries possess favourable geography, abundant natural resources, expanding populations, or strategically advantageous locations. Conventional geopolitical analysis often assumes that these characteristics should naturally translate into regional influence.

Experience suggests a different conclusion.

Opportunity alone is insufficient.

Between opportunity and influence lies functional capacity.

It is functional capacity that determines whether strategic opportunities become enduring components of regional political economy or remain largely unrealised.

This perspective also offers a different way of understanding Somalia. The country should not be viewed solely through the language of fragility, conflict, or state weakness. Nor should it be understood simply as a state of unrealised opportunity. Rather, Somalia represents a case that demonstrates why functional capacity has become an increasingly important determinant of regional influence.

The article therefore completes an important dimension of the Functional Geopolitics Framework.

Ethiopia illustrates how expanding economic scale reshapes regional demand.

Djibouti demonstrates how geography acquires functional value through logistics and maritime connectivity.

Kenya shows how institutional capacity extends influence beyond national borders.

Sudan highlights the strategic importance of connecting complementary regional functions.

Somaliland demonstrates that functional relevance and international recognition do not necessarily evolve together.

Eritrea distinguishes between strategic geography and the functional value of that geography.

Somalia introduces the final proposition.

Functional potential and functional capacity are distinct concepts.

One reflects the opportunities available to a state.

The other determines whether those opportunities become stable regional functions embedded within wider systems of interaction.

Recognising this distinction helps explain why states possessing comparable strategic assets frequently follow very different regional trajectories. It also suggests that the future balance of influence within the Horn of Africa will depend not only upon geography, resources, or demographics, but increasingly upon the capacity of states to organise those advantages into functions that neighbouring economies, investors, and institutions routinely incorporate into their own activities.

The emerging political economy of the Horn of Africa is therefore organised around more than territory alone.

It is increasingly organised around function. Where opportunity exists without functional capacity, strategic potential may remain considerable while regional influence falls short of what geography alone might suggest.

Somalia reminds us of a broader lesson. Geography creates opportunity. Functional capacity determines whether that opportunity becomes an enduring regional function.

Conventional geopolitics has long suggested that strategic location is among the most enduring sources of national power. States situated along major maritime routes, adjacent to critical chokepoints, or at the intersection of important regions are generally expected to occupy positions of lasting geopolitical significance.

Eritrea appears to exemplify this expectation. Stretching along the western shore of the Red Sea, overlooking one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors, and positioned near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Eritrea occupies a location that many states would regard as an exceptional strategic asset. Its coastline, proximity to the Arabian Peninsula, and borders with Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti place it at the centre of one of the world’s most sensitive geopolitical regions.

Yet the relationship between geography and influence is more complex than conventional analysis often assumes. Strategic geography does not automatically translate into sustained regional influence. Nor does strategic isolation erase the importance of geography itself. Instead, isolation can reduce the functional value that strategic geography contributes to the wider regional system.

This distinction lies at the centre of Eritrea’s strategic trajectory. Throughout much of the past three decades, Eritrea’s geographic position has remained unchanged. Its coastline has not moved. Its proximity to major maritime routes has remained constant, and its location within the Red Sea has continued to attract the attention of regional and international powers.

What has changed is not Eritrea’s geography. It is the extent to which that geography has been integrated into the region’s expanding systems of trade, logistics, investment, infrastructure, and institutional cooperation.

The central argument advanced here is therefore different from conventional geopolitical analysis. The question is not whether Eritrea possesses strategic geography. It unquestionably does. The question is whether strategic geography, under conditions of prolonged political and economic isolation, can realise its full regional potential.

This article argues that geography creates opportunity. Functional value determines how much of that opportunity is ultimately realised. Strategic geography acquires its greatest significance when it becomes embedded within the economic, institutional, logistical, and commercial relationships that organise regional interaction. Where those relationships remain limited, geography may retain considerable strategic importance while contributing less to the everyday political economy of the wider region.

Viewed through the Functional Geopolitics Framework developed throughout this series, Eritrea represents neither a failure of geography nor a contradiction of geopolitics. It represents a refinement of both.

Its experience suggests that the strategic importance of geography and the functional value of geography are related, but not identical. The former is largely determined by location. The latter depends upon the degree to which that location becomes integrated into the wider regional system.

Understanding this distinction helps explain not only Eritrea’s own trajectory, but also a broader transformation taking place across the Horn of Africa. Across the region, influence is increasingly shaped not simply by where states are located, but by the functions their geography enables them to perform within an increasingly interconnected regional political economy.

Eritrea’s experience demonstrates why it is necessary to distinguish between strategic geography and the functional value of strategic geography. The two concepts are closely related. They are not, however, synonymous.

Strategic geography refers to physical location. Functional value refers to the contribution that location makes to the operation of wider regional systems. A strategically located state may therefore possess considerable geopolitical importance while contributing only limited functional value to regional political economy. Conversely, a state with fewer geographical advantages may acquire greater regional influence if it successfully embeds its geography within trade, logistics, investment, infrastructure, and institutional networks.

This distinction becomes particularly evident when Eritrea is compared with Djibouti. Both occupy advantageous positions along the Red Sea. Both lie adjacent to Ethiopia. Both stand near one of the world’s most strategically significant maritime chokepoints. Yet the regional roles performed by the two countries have evolved differently.

Djibouti progressively integrated its ports, logistics services, transport infrastructure, commercial partnerships, and investment environment into wider regional and global networks. Its geography consequently acquired increasing functional value because it became embedded within everyday patterns of trade and connectivity.

Eritrea followed a different trajectory. For extended periods, political isolation, limited regional economic integration, constrained external investment, and relatively closed institutional structures reduced the extent to which its geographic advantages became incorporated into those same regional systems. Eritrea’s location retained its strategic significance, but the functional value derived from that location expanded more slowly because fewer regional activities became organised through it.

This distinction should not be misunderstood. The argument is not that Eritrea lacks strategic importance, nor is it that its geography has ceased to matter. Rather, strategic importance and functional value operate through different mechanisms.

Strategic geography continues to influence military planning, maritime security, regional diplomacy, and the calculations of external powers. Functional value, by contrast, grows when geography becomes increasingly useful to the routine operation of regional political economy through commercial exchange, transport corridors, logistics services, infrastructure connectivity, and institutional cooperation.

The difference between these two forms of value also explains why geography may become more or less influential over time without physically changing. Location remains constant. Functional value evolves. It expands when geography becomes more deeply integrated into regional systems. It contracts when those connections weaken or remain underdeveloped.

Eritrea therefore illustrates an important proposition within the Functional Geopolitics Framework. Strategic geography provides enduring opportunity. The functional value of that geography depends upon the extent to which states organise it into practical regional functions that neighbouring economies, investors, transport networks, and institutions increasingly utilise.

From this perspective, isolation does not diminish the geographic significance of a state. It limits the degree to which that geography contributes to the wider regional system. The consequence is not the disappearance of strategic importance. It is a reduction in the functional value that strategic geography can provide to an increasingly interconnected region.

Eritrea’s experience carries implications that extend well beyond its own national trajectory. For decades, geopolitical analysis has tended to assume that strategic location is itself a durable source of regional influence. Control of coastlines, proximity to maritime chokepoints, and favourable geography have often been treated as sufficient explanations for long-term strategic relevance.

The contemporary Horn of Africa points to a more nuanced reality. Strategic geography remains indispensable. It is not, however, sufficient on its own. The region is increasingly organised through transport corridors, maritime logistics, ports, commercial networks, institutional capacity, energy interconnections, digital infrastructure, and cross-border investment. Within this evolving regional political economy, geography acquires its greatest significance when it becomes embedded within systems that neighbouring states and markets routinely depend upon.

The Eritrean case therefore refines an important proposition within the Functional Geopolitics Framework. Strategic geography creates enduring opportunity. Functional value determines the extent to which that opportunity contributes to sustained regional influence.

This observation should not be interpreted as a judgement on Eritrea’s future prospects. Functional value is neither fixed nor irreversible. As regional dynamics evolve, investment patterns change, institutions adapt, and economic integration deepens, the contribution that geography makes to the wider regional system may also expand or contract.

The central analytical lesson is therefore broader than Eritrea itself. States possessing similar geographic advantages may occupy very different positions within the regional order because they organise those advantages in different ways. Geography provides the foundation. Function determines how that foundation contributes to the wider regional system.

Seen alongside the preceding studies in this series, Eritrea contributes an additional dimension to the Functional Geopolitics Framework. Ethiopia illustrates how expanding economic scale reshapes regional demand. Djibouti demonstrates how geography acquires greater functional value when organised into logistics and maritime connectivity. Kenya shows how institutional capacity extends influence beyond national borders. Sudan illustrates the strategic importance of connecting complementary regional functions. Somaliland demonstrates that functional relevance and legal recognition do not necessarily evolve together.

Eritrea introduces a sixth proposition.

Strategic geography and the functional value of strategic geography are not identical.

One is determined primarily by location. The other depends upon the extent to which that location becomes integrated into the economic, logistical, institutional, and commercial relationships that organise the wider region.

Recognising this distinction helps explain not only Eritrea’s experience, but also the changing political economy of the Horn of Africa. The region’s future will be shaped not simply by where states are located, but by how effectively they integrate geographic opportunity into wider regional systems.

In the emerging political economy of the Horn of Africa, geography remains the starting point.

Function increasingly determines regional significance.

Conventional international relations would appear to offer a straightforward answer. Since the emergence of the modern state system, international recognition has generally been regarded as the principal gateway to diplomatic legitimacy, formal participation in international institutions, and the exercise of sovereign authority. Recognition has traditionally been treated as the dividing line between political entities that possess international agency and those that remain outside the recognised international order.

Yet the contemporary political economy of the Horn of Africa raises a more complicated question. What if strategic relevance increasingly depends not only upon legal status, but also upon the regional functions an actor performs? This question lies at the centre of Somaliland’s evolving position within the Horn of Africa. For more than three decades, Somaliland has maintained its own governing institutions, security apparatus, currency, electoral processes, and administrative structures while remaining without widespread international recognition as a sovereign state. Throughout this period, debate has overwhelmingly focused on one issue: whether Somaliland should eventually receive formal diplomatic recognition. That debate remains important. It is not, however, the question addressed in this article. Recognition and strategic relevance are not necessarily identical concepts.

An actor may possess full legal recognition while contributing relatively little to the organisation of regional systems. Recognition establishes legal personality within the international system. It does not, by itself, determine the degree of regional dependence that an actor generate. Conversely, an entity with contested legal status may perform functions upon which neighbouring states, international investors, commercial actors, or regional security arrangements increasingly depend.

The argument advanced here is therefore deliberately narrower than the recognition debate itself. This article does not argue that Somaliland should or should not be recognised as an independent state. Instead, it asks a different analytical question. Can an unrecognised political entity acquire growing regional influence by performing functions that become increasingly valuable to the wider political economy of the Horn of Africa? The distinction is significant. Recognition belongs primarily to international law and diplomacy. Function belongs to political economy and regional interaction. Although the two frequently reinforce one another, they do not always evolve at the same pace.

History demonstrates that legal recognition does not automatically generate strategic importance. Nor does the absence of recognition necessarily prevent an actor from performing economically or strategically significant regional roles. In this article, functional relevance refers to the practical contribution an actor makes to the operation of wider regional systems. It reflects the extent to which neighbouring economies, governments, investors, or security arrangements increasingly depend upon the functions that actor performs, irrespective of its formal legal status. Functional relevance should not be understood as a substitute for legal recognition. Rather, it measures the extent to which an actor contributes to the operation of wider regional systems irrespective of its formal international status.

The Horn of Africa provides an especially appropriate setting in which to examine this distinction. Across the region, influence is becoming progressively organised through transport corridors, maritime connectivity, ports, logistics networks, infrastructure investment, institutional capacity, and regional trade. These systems increasingly connect states, markets, and external actors through relationships that cannot always be understood solely through questions of sovereignty or diplomatic status.

Within this changing regional environment, Somaliland represents an unusually revealing case study. Its importance derives less from unresolved constitutional questions than from the practical roles it may increasingly perform within emerging regional networks. Viewed through the Functional Geopolitics Framework developed in the preceding articles of this series, Somaliland becomes more than an unresolved diplomatic question. It becomes a test of a broader proposition. If regional influence increasingly derives from specialised functions rather than legal status alone, then Somaliland offers an opportunity to examine whether functional relevance can develop independently of formal recognition. The answer to that question may prove important not only for understanding Somaliland itself, but also for understanding how power is being reorganised across the Horn of Africa.

To understand Somaliland’s emerging strategic relevance, it is necessary to move beyond the recognition debate and examine the regional functions it increasingly performs.

The first of these is geography. Situated along the Gulf of Aden near one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors, Somaliland occupies a location that connects the Red Sea with the wider Indian Ocean. Geography alone, however, does not generate strategic influence.

As argued throughout this series, geography becomes strategically valuable only when it is organised into functions that neighbouring economies increasingly depend upon. This is where Somaliland’s trajectory becomes analytically significant.

The development of Berbera Port, associated transport infrastructure, and expanding commercial investment has gradually strengthened Somaliland’s role within regional logistics. Rather than serving only its domestic economy, Berbera is increasingly positioned as part of a wider network linking maritime trade with inland markets across the Horn of Africa. The port’s strategic importance therefore derives not simply from its physical location, but from the regional function it is capable of performing.

A second function concerns Ethiopia. As one of Africa’s largest and fastest-growing economies, Ethiopia continues to seek diversified and resilient access to international markets. Reducing excessive dependence on a single maritime corridor has become an important component of its long-term economic strategy.

Within this broader context, Somaliland’s coastline represents not merely a neighbouring territory, but a potential element within Ethiopia’s wider logistics architecture.

Importantly, Somaliland’s significance does not depend upon replacing existing corridors. This distinction is critical.

Functional relevance does not require monopoly. Regional logistics systems rarely depend indefinitely upon a single corridor, port, or transport route. Expanding economies generally seek redundancy, flexibility, competition, and resilience.

Somaliland therefore derives strategic value not because it replaces existing infrastructure, but because it expands the range of regional options available.

A third function concerns regional investment.

Infrastructure investment increasingly follows locations capable of organising movement. Ports, transport corridors, logistics platforms, industrial zones, customs systems, and digital trade infrastructure attract investment because they reduce transaction costs and improve regional connectivity.

Somaliland’s experience demonstrates that international commercial actors frequently respond to practical functionality alongside questions of diplomatic recognition. Investment decisions increasingly reflect economic utility as well as legal status.

A fourth function concerns maritime security. The Gulf of Aden remains one of the world’s most strategically significant waterways, connecting the Red Sea to the wider Indian Ocean and carrying a substantial share of global maritime commerce. Piracy, illicit trafficking, terrorism, and maritime insecurity have long drawn sustained international attention.

Within this environment, functioning local institutions, effective port administration, and practical cooperation on maritime security acquire strategic significance regardless of unresolved constitutional questions.

Functional cooperation may therefore emerge even where formal diplomatic recognition remains absent.

Taken together, these developments reveal a broader analytical point.

Somaliland’s evolving importance cannot be explained adequately through the language of recognition alone.

Its growing relevance increasingly derives from the functions it performs within interconnected regional systems.

This observation also reinforces a broader pattern identified throughout this series.

Ethiopia generates regional demand.

Djibouti transforms geography into maritime connectivity.

Kenya organises institutions. Sudan connects complementary regional functions. Somaliland introduces a different dimension. It demonstrates that functional relevance and legal recognition do not necessarily evolve in parallel.

An actor may remain outside the formally recognised state system while simultaneously becoming more significant within the region’s evolving political economy.

This does not imply that legal recognition has become less important. It suggests something more precise.

Strategic relevance increasingly depends not only upon formal diplomatic status, but also upon the functions political actors perform within the wider regional system.

Functional influence and legal sovereignty should therefore be understood as related—but analytically distinct—dimensions of regional power.

The distinction developed throughout this article carries implications that extend well beyond Somaliland itself.

For decades, much of the international debate has implicitly assumed that legal recognition and strategic relevance evolve together. Yet the contemporary Horn of Africa suggests a more complex reality. Political entities may acquire growing regional importance through the functions they perform even when their legal status remains contested. Equally, internationally recognised states may fail to translate formal sovereignty into meaningful regional influence if they perform few functions upon which neighbouring economies increasingly depend.

This observation should not be interpreted as an argument against the importance of international law. Recognition remains fundamental to diplomatic representation, treaty-making, membership of international organisations, and the exercise of sovereign rights. Nor does functional relevance create a legal entitlement to statehood.

The two concepts simply belong to different analytical categories.

Recognition determines legal status. Function helps explain strategic relevance.

The Somaliland case therefore refines the Functional Geopolitics Framework developed throughout this series.

Ethiopia demonstrates how demographic scale generates regional demand.

Djibouti illustrates how geography becomes strategically valuable when organised into logistics and maritime connectivity.

Kenya shows how institutional capacity itself becomes a source of regional influence.

Sudan demonstrates the strategic value of connecting complementary regional functions.

Somaliland contributes a fifth proposition.

It suggests that functional relevance may, under certain conditions, develop independently of widespread international recognition.

This does not overturn the principles of the international system.

It demonstrates that regional political economy and international legal status do not always evolve at the same pace.

Seen through this perspective, Somaliland is more than an unresolved constitutional question.

It is a critical analytical case for understanding how influence is increasingly generated across the Horn of Africa.

The region is no longer organised solely through borders, sovereignty, military balances, or diplomatic recognition.

It is progressively organised through the functions that political actors perform within interconnected regional systems.

Understanding those functions does not answer the legal question of recognition.

It answers a different—and increasingly important—strategic question:

Why do some political entities become regionally significant before they become universally recognised?

The answer lies not primarily in their constitutional status, but in the practical value of the functions they perform.

As the Horn of Africa becomes more deeply integrated through trade, transport corridors, maritime connectivity, infrastructure, investment, and institutional cooperation, functional relevance is likely to become an increasingly important dimension of regional influence alongside the formal institutions of statehood.

Somaliland’s future will continue to be shaped by diplomacy, regional politics, domestic governance, and international law.

Its strategic significance, however, will increasingly depend upon something different.

Not simply what Somaliland is.

But what Somaliland does within the evolving regional system of the Horn of Africa.

To site this article:

Al-Saeed, Sara. 2026. Somaliland: When Function Challenges Recognition: Can Regional Relevance Exist Without International Recognition? The Marshal.

Conventional geopolitics would suggest that such a position should naturally translate into substantial regional influence. Yet Sudan’s modern history presents a striking paradox.

Despite possessing one of Africa’s most advantageous geographic locations, Sudan has struggled to establish itself as a central organising power within its wider region. While neighbouring states have progressively developed distinct regional functions—Ethiopia through economic scale, Djibouti through maritime connectivity, and Kenya through institutional coordination—Sudan has remained largely unable to transform its strategic location into sustained geopolitical influence. This raises a more fundamental question than is usually asked.

The issue is not whether Sudan possesses strategic geography. It unquestionably does. The real question is why one of Africa’s most strategically located countries has consistently failed to organise that geography into a system capable of translating lasting regional influence.

 The answer lies not in geography itself, but in the distinction between possessing geography and organising it. For decades, Sudan’s strategic value has been interpreted primarily through traditional geopolitical concepts. Debate has centred on territorial depth, military security, border management, agricultural resources, access to the Red Sea, and the waters of the Nile. These considerations remain important and continue to shape Sudan’s external relations. Yet they explain only part of the country’s unrealised strategic potential.

Across the Horn of Africa, the foundations of regional influence are changing. Economic integration, transport corridors, logistics systems, energy interconnections, digital infrastructure, financial networks, and institutional cooperation are progressively reorganising the political economy of the region. Under these conditions, geography no longer derives its value simply from where a country is located. It derives value from the regional functions that geography enables.

Sudan’s challenge, therefore, is not the absence of strategic assets. It is the absence of a strategy capable of integrating those assets into wider regional systems. The distinction is critical. Geography creates opportunity. Organisation creates influence.

Countries no longer become strategically indispensable merely because they occupy important locations. They become indispensable when they organise those locations into systems through which neighbouring economies increasingly move goods, capital, energy, technology, and investment.

This article argues that Sudan’s greatest unrealised strategic asset is not simply its territory, its coastline, or its natural resources. It is its potential to become the indispensable connector within the Horn of Africa’s emerging regional system. The future strategic relevance of Sudan will depend less on the geography it inherited than on its ability to organise that geography into a platform that connects demand, institutions, infrastructure, and markets across the wider region.

Sudan’s strategic future, in other words, will not be determined by the advantages it possesses, but by the regional functions it chooses to perform. Sudan’s geography is exceptional not simply because of its size, but because of the number of regional systems that intersect within it. Few countries simultaneously connect the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Sahel, Central Africa, the Nile Basin, and the Red Sea. This position offers opportunities that extend well beyond conventional notions of strategic depth. Properly organised, it has the potential to integrate markets, transport corridors, energy systems, agricultural production, maritime trade, and commercial networks that today remain only partially connected.

Yet geography alone has never generated strategic influence. History repeatedly demonstrates that advantageous location is only the starting point. Some states transform geography into regional function. Others merely possess it.

For much of its modern history, Sudan has belonged to the latter category. This outcome reflects more than prolonged conflict alone. For decades, Sudanese strategic thinking has largely interpreted geography as a boundary to be defended rather than as a platform through which regional systems could be connected. Security competition understandably dominated strategic planning, while economic connectivity remained secondary. As neighbouring states progressively organised trade, logistics, institutions, and infrastructure into regional networks, Sudan remained primarily concerned with preserving territory rather than organising movement across it.

The experience of neighbouring states illustrates what Sudan has yet to achieve. Ethiopia demonstrates that demographic scale and economic expansion generate regional demand. Growing markets require transport corridors, energy interconnections, logistics services, and reliable access to global trade. Djibouti demonstrates that geography becomes strategically valuable when it performs a regional function. By transforming its coastline into an indispensable logistics platform, it converted physical location into geopolitical relevance. Kenya illustrates a third dimension. Institutions, financial systems, commercial services, technological ecosystems, and regulatory capacity can organise regional economic activity in ways that generate influence extending far beyond national borders.

Sudan occupies a unique position because it possesses the potential to connect all three dynamics. It borders Ethiopia, one of Africa’s largest and most dynamic economies. It possesses direct access to the Red Sea, one of the world’s most strategically significant maritime corridors. It shares frontiers with South Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, and Libya, linking multiple regional economies with distinct commercial, political, and security interests. Few countries are positioned to connect such a diverse range of regional systems.

This is where Sudan’s unrealised strategic opportunity lies. Its greatest comparative advantage is not simply that it possesses strategic geography. It is that its geography has the potential to connect expanding regional demand with maritime access, inland transport, energy infrastructure, agricultural production, and continental trade routes. Sudan is uniquely positioned to function not merely as a transit state, but as a connecting state whose value derives from integrating regional systems that would otherwise remain fragmented.

Sudan’s strategic opportunity therefore lies not in performing a single regional function more effectively than its neighbours. Ethiopia will continue to generate demand. Djibouti will remain the Horn’s principal maritime gateway. Kenya will continue organising finance, services, innovation, and institutional networks. Sudan’s comparative advantage lies elsewhere. It is the only state geographically positioned to connect these complementary functions into a more coherent regional system. Sudan’s strategic value therefore derives not from replacing the roles performed by its neighbours, but from connecting them.

This is the central strategic distinction.

Sudan’s comparative advantage does not lie in competing to become the Horn of Africa’s largest economy, busiest port, or leading financial centre. Its comparative advantage lies in connecting the complementary functions that are already emerging across the region.

The strategic value of Sudan therefore lies not simply in occupying the geographical centre of the Horn of Africa, but in its potential to organise the relationships between the region’s principal economic, logistical, and institutional systems.

One important qualification should nevertheless be made. Strategic geography does not automatically produce regional influence. History offers numerous examples of states occupying valuable locations without becoming indispensable regional actors because they failed to build the institutions, infrastructure, and long-term strategies necessary to translate location into function. Sudan is therefore not exceptional because it possesses strategic geography. It is exceptional because few countries combine such geography with the unrealised potential to connect so many regional systems simultaneously.

Achieving this role, however, requires more than infrastructure alone.

Transport corridors without efficient institutions remain underutilised. Ports without competitive logistics struggle to attract trade. Railways without integrated customs systems fail to maximise economic value. Investment without regulatory certainty rarely produces long-term transformation. Connectivity is created through the interaction of physical infrastructure, institutional capacity, and strategic vision rather than through engineering projects alone.

This distinction explains why Sudan’s strategic challenge is fundamentally organisational rather than geographical. The country does not lack corridors. It lacks an integrated corridor strategy. It does not lack ports. It lacks a comprehensive maritime strategy linked to regional markets. It does not lack agricultural resources, energy potential, or access to neighbouring economies. It lacks the institutional framework capable of integrating these assets into a coherent regional vision.

Potential without organisation rarely generates influence.

Regional power increasingly belongs to the states that organise systems rather than merely occupy strategic geography.

Sudan’s experience ultimately illustrates a broader transformation taking place across the Horn of Africa. Much of the region’s strategic debate continues to revolve around conflict, sovereignty, border disputes, and military balances. These issues remain important, but they no longer provide a complete explanation of how regional influence is being generated. Alongside traditional geopolitics, a new regional political economy is emerging—one organised around demand, connectivity, institutions, and the movement of goods, capital, energy, technology, and investment across increasingly integrated systems.

Taken together, the preceding case studies reveal a coherent regional pattern. Ethiopia generates demand through demographic scale, industrial expansion, and economic growth. Djibouti transforms geography into maritime connectivity. Kenya organises finance, services, innovation, and institutional networks. Sudan occupies a different strategic position. It possesses the geography capable of connecting these complementary functions into a more integrated regional architecture.

This is Sudan’s unrealised strategic role.

The country has the potential to become the principal connecting state of the Horn of Africa—not because it dominates its neighbours, but because it enables interaction between them. It can connect Ethiopian production with maritime trade. It can link the economies of the Sahel and Central Africa to the Red Sea. It can integrate transport corridors, agricultural supply chains, energy infrastructure, and commercial networks that today remain fragmented. Properly organised, Sudan’s influence would derive less from controlling regional systems than from making those systems work together.

This possibility should not be mistaken for geographic determinism. Strategic location alone does not guarantee strategic relevance. Other countries possess valuable geography yet remain regionally marginal because they have failed to develop the institutions, infrastructure, and long-term policy frameworks necessary to convert location into function. Sudan faces the same challenge. Its future influence will depend not upon the geography it inherited, but upon the strategy it chooses to pursue.

The implications are profound. If Sudan continues to interpret its strategic position primarily through the language of security competition and territorial defence, it risks remaining peripheral to the region’s economic transformation. As neighbouring states deepen their integration through transport, logistics, investment, energy cooperation, and institutional coordination, the opportunity costs of remaining disconnected will continue to increase.

Conversely, a stable Sudan equipped with modern ports, integrated transport corridors, efficient customs systems, competitive logistics, reliable infrastructure, effective public institutions, and a long-term strategy for regional connectivity could emerge as one of the indispensable organising states of the Horn of Africa. Such influence would not depend upon coercion or military predominance. It would arise from performing regional functions that neighbouring economies increasingly require.

The emerging political economy of the Horn of Africa is unlikely to be organised around a single dominant state. It is more likely to evolve through complementary regional functions. Ethiopia generates demand. Djibouti transforms geography into connectivity. Kenya organises institutions. Sudan possesses a different opportunity. It can become the state that organises the interaction between these complementary regional functions, transforming separate sources of influence into a more coherent regional system.

Its future therefore depends not upon competing with its neighbours, but upon enabling their interaction. The twenty-first century will reward states that organise systems rather than merely defend territory.

Sudan’s greatest unrealised strategic asset is not simply its geography. It is its capacity to organise the geography, institutions, and economic dynamism of the wider Horn of Africa into a functioning regional system.

The future strategic importance of Sudan will therefore be determined not by the geography it possesses, but by its ability to organise the geography of the wider Horn of Africa into a coherent regional system.

East Africa increasingly challenges that assumption.

Over the past three decades, Kenya has emerged as one of the region’s most influential states despite possessing neither the largest population nor the strongest military in East Africa. Its growing regional importance cannot be explained solely by demographic weight, territorial scale, or natural resource endowment. Rather, Kenya has acquired influence because it performs a set of economic and institutional functions upon which much of the wider region has gradually come to depend.

This raises an important analytical question. Why has Kenya become one of East Africa’s principal centres of regional influence while a number of states possessing comparable—or in some cases greater—material advantages have not?

The answer lies not simply in economic growth, but in the changing foundations of regional power.

Across much of the world, geopolitical influence is becoming increasingly embedded within systems rather than individual assets. Ports matter because they connect supply chains. Financial centres matter because they allocate capital. Digital infrastructure matters because it organises information and commerce. Transport corridors matter because they integrate markets. States therefore derive influence not merely from what they possess, but from the functions they perform within wider regional networks.

Kenya represents one of the clearest examples of this transformation in Africa.

Unlike traditional resource economies, Kenya has progressively constructed what may be described as an institutionally connected economy. Its regional influence does not rest upon a single strategic asset, but upon the interaction of financial institutions, logistics networks, commercial services, transport infrastructure, technology ecosystems, diplomatic engagement, and private-sector integration. Individually, none of these sectors fully explains Kenya’s regional position. Collectively, they form an interconnected institutional architecture that increasingly organises economic activity across East Africa.

This reflects a broader principle that extends well beyond Kenya itself. Geography creates opportunities for connectivity, but institutions determine whether connectivity becomes influence. Roads, ports, financial markets, digital platforms, regulatory systems, commercial law, and public administration are no longer merely instruments of economic development. Increasingly, they constitute strategic assets capable of generating geopolitical leverage because they organise the interactions upon which regional economies depend.

This transformation may be understood as institutional connectivity. Under this emerging logic, states accumulate influence by constructing institutions that encourage neighbouring economies to organise investment, trade, finance, technology, and decision-making around them. Power therefore derives not simply from controlling territory, but from becoming increasingly indispensable to the operation of wider regional systems.

If Ethiopia illustrates how demographic scale generates regional demand, and Djibouti demonstrates how geography can be transformed into strategic connectivity, Kenya reveals a third dimension of the Horn of Africa’s changing political economy. Regional influence increasingly depends upon institutions capable of organising economic networks rather than merely participating within them.

The argument advanced here therefore extends well beyond Kenya itself. It is that East Africa is entering a period in which the hierarchy of regional power will increasingly reflect the organisation of economic systems rather than the simple distribution of territory, population, or military capability. Kenya’s experience suggests that in the twenty-first century, institutions may become as strategically significant as geography itself.

Kenya’s emergence as a regional hub was neither inevitable nor accidental. Many states possess favourable geography, access to the sea, sizeable domestic markets, or abundant natural resources without acquiring comparable regional influence. What distinguishes Kenya is not simply its location on the Indian Ocean, but the long-term development of institutions capable of organising economic activity beyond its own national borders.

The clearest expression of this transformation is Nairobi. More than a political capital, Nairobi has evolved into one of Africa’s principal centres for finance, diplomacy, technology, and corporate decision-making. It hosts the regional headquarters of numerous multinational corporations, international organisations, development finance institutions, diplomatic missions, and humanitarian agencies operating across Eastern Africa. As a result, many of the commercial, financial, and development decisions shaping the wider region are increasingly negotiated, financed, coordinated, or managed from Nairobi rather than from the capitals where they are ultimately implemented.

This concentration of institutional capacity generates a form of influence that conventional geopolitical indicators rarely capture. Strategic influence often emerges not where goods are produced, but where investment is allocated, regulations are interpreted, commercial disputes are resolved, financial risks are assessed, and corporate decisions are made. A city that performs these functions for an entire region exercises influence extending far beyond the size of its domestic economy. Nairobi has gradually become one of East Africa’s principal decision-making hubs, allowing Kenya to shape regional economic activity not through political dominance, but through institutional centrality.

The same logic is visible along Kenya’s coastline. The Port of Mombasa is frequently described as one of East Africa’s busiest ports, yet its true strategic significance lies not in the volume of cargo it handles but in the regional systems it sustains. Mombasa functions as the principal maritime gateway for several neighbouring economies, including Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, and parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its importance therefore derives from the dependence created by the commercial networks it supports rather than from maritime traffic alone.

Transport infrastructure reinforces this role. Roads, railways, inland container depots, and regional transport corridors linking Mombasa to the interior have progressively integrated multiple national economies into a shared logistical system. These investments do more than facilitate the movement of goods. They influence industrial location, reduce commercial risk, attract investment, and reshape regional patterns of production and trade. Infrastructure therefore becomes more than an instrument of development; it becomes an instrument through which regional geography is reorganised.

Kenya’s influence extends even further through sectors that conventional geopolitics has often underestimated. Its leadership in digital innovation, mobile financial services, financial technology, and entrepreneurship has produced platforms whose economic impact extends well beyond Kenya’s borders. Increasingly, businesses process payments, access financial services, exchange information, and build technological partnerships through systems developed in Kenya. Digital infrastructure has consequently become another layer of regional connectivity.

Equally significant has been the relationship between public institutions and private enterprise. Kenya’s regional influence has not been constructed by the state acting alone, nor by markets operating independently. Rather, it has emerged through the interaction of government policy, financial institutions, private investment, technological innovation, regulatory reform, and entrepreneurial ecosystems. This partnership has enabled Kenya to construct institutions that neighbouring economies increasingly utilise rather than merely observe, reinforcing its position as one of East Africa’s central organising economies.

Together, these developments reveal a broader transformation. Kenya has not simply built infrastructure; it has built institutions around infrastructure. Nor has it merely expanded its economy; it has constructed an ecosystem within which neighbouring economies increasingly operate. Regional influence increasingly belongs to the states that organise institutions, not simply infrastructure. Infrastructure moves goods. Institutions organise economies. Together they create the conditions upon which durable geopolitical influence increasingly depends.

Kenya’s rise therefore illustrates a broader principle extending far beyond East Africa. States become strategically significant not only because they accumulate physical assets, but because they build institutional systems around which regional economic activity increasingly organises itself.

Kenya’s experience carries implications that extend well beyond its own national development. Much of the strategic debate surrounding East Africa continues to focus on elections, security crises, diplomatic competition, and military balances. These issues remain important, yet they provide only a partial explanation of how regional influence is evolving. Alongside conventional geopolitics, a deeper structural transformation is reshaping the region’s political economy. Increasingly, power is generated through the ability to organise systems of finance, trade, logistics, technology, and institutional cooperation.

This transformation suggests that East Africa is becoming progressively organised around complementary economic functions rather than isolated national economies. Ethiopia has emerged as one of the region’s principal generators of demand through its demographic scale and expanding industrial economy. Djibouti has positioned itself as the Horn’s leading maritime and logistics gateway. Kenya, meanwhile, has become one of the region’s primary centres for finance, services, innovation, and institutional coordination. Their sources of influence differ, yet they reflect the same structural principle: regional power is increasingly embedded within networks rather than borders.

This emerging pattern also demonstrates that no single state performs every strategic function. Modern regional economies operate through interdependence. Expanding markets require transport corridors. Maritime gateways require financial services. Infrastructure requires investment. Commercial integration requires regulatory institutions. Digital economies require trusted technological platforms. Influence therefore arises not from self-sufficiency, but from occupying indispensable positions within wider regional systems.

Kenya’s experience should not, however, be interpreted as a universally applicable model. Not every country can become a regional financial centre or a technological hub. Kenya’s position reflects decades of institutional development, investment in education and human capital, regulatory adaptation, private-sector expansion, and relatively consistent integration into regional markets. Nevertheless, its experience illustrates a broader principle that extends well beyond East Africa: institutions have become strategic assets. States that organise regional economic activity through trusted institutions frequently acquire influence disproportionate to their demographic or military weight.

For Sudan, this lesson is particularly significant. Sudan possesses strategic geography, abundant natural resources, and access to the Red Sea, yet these assets alone cannot generate lasting regional influence. Geography may attract attention, but institutions sustain relevance. If Sudan is to convert its geographic advantages into geopolitical influence, it must build the institutional architecture that enables regional commerce, investment, logistics, finance, and cross-border economic integration. Geography creates opportunity; institutions transform opportunity into durable power.

Taken together, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya illustrate three complementary dimensions of the Horn of Africa’s emerging political economy. Ethiopia generates demand. Djibouti organises connectivity. Kenya organises institutions. None of these functions is sufficient on its own. Together, they demonstrate that regional influence is increasingly produced through interconnected systems rather than isolated national capabilities.

The future balance of power in the Horn of Africa and East Africa is therefore unlikely to be determined solely by military capability, demographic scale, or natural resources. Increasingly, it will depend upon which states succeed in organising the networks through which trade, investment, technology, finance, and regional cooperation flow.

Kenya’s greatest strategic achievement is not simply that it has built one of Africa’s most dynamic economies.

It is that it has demonstrated how institutional connectivity can become a source of geopolitical influence.

If Ethiopia illustrates the strategic importance of demand, and Djibouti demonstrates the power of functional geography, Kenya shows that institutions constitute a third pillar of regional influence. Together, these cases suggest that the political economy of the Horn of Africa is no longer organised primarily around borders, but around the complementary functions that states perform within an increasingly interconnected regional system.

In the emerging political economy of East Africa, power belongs increasingly not to the states that possess the greatest quantity of territory, but to those that build the institutions around which the region increasingly organises itself.

Despite its small population, limited territory, and modest domestic economy, Djibouti has become one of the most strategically significant states in the Horn of Africa. It hosts military facilities belonging to several major powers, serves as the principal maritime gateway for Ethiopia’s international trade, has developed one of Africa’s most sophisticated logistics sectors, and occupies a pivotal position along one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. Few countries of comparable size exercise strategic influence that extends so far beyond what their demographic and economic weight would ordinarily suggest.

This transformation is reflected in measurable structural realities. More than 90% of Ethiopia’s international trade passes through Djibouti’s ports, while the Addis Ababa–Djibouti railway has become one of the region’s most significant transport corridors. Successive investments in container terminals, free trade zones, logistics facilities, submarine cable landings, and port infrastructure have further consolidated Djibouti’s position as a regional gateway linking the Horn of Africa to global markets.

This apparent contradiction raises a broader analytical question. Why has Djibouti become strategically indispensable while many larger African states, possessing greater territory, larger populations, and richer natural resources, have struggled to translate their geographic advantages into comparable regional influence? The answer lies not simply in geography itself, but in a changing understanding of how geography generates power.

For much of the twentieth century, geography was interpreted primarily through a territorial lens. Strategic value was associated with controlling land, defending borders, securing natural resources, and maintaining military superiority over neighbouring states. Territory was understood principally as something to be protected, while political geography was largely defined by sovereign boundaries inherited from the colonial era.

That framework remains important. Borders continue to matter, sovereignty remains fundamental, and military capabilities continue to shape interstate relations. Yet these traditional measures no longer provide a sufficient explanation of how influence is distributed within an increasingly interconnected regional economy.

Across much of the world, power is becoming progressively embedded within networks rather than territories alone. Ports, transport corridors, logistics systems, railways, electricity grids, digital infrastructure, financial connectivity, and maritime routes increasingly determine how states acquire strategic relevance. Geography continues to matter, but its value is derived less from what it contains than from what it connects.

This broader transformation reflects the emergence of what may be described as a networked geography, in which strategic influence is increasingly determined by a state’s position within interconnected regional systems rather than by territorial size alone. Within this evolving framework, functional geography represents the operational expression of networked geography. It explains how particular locations acquire strategic significance through the economic and political functions they perform within wider regional networks. Geography becomes strategically valuable when it facilitates movement, reduces transaction costs, supports regional integration, and links multiple markets together. Influence therefore depends increasingly upon connectivity rather than territory alone.

Djibouti represents perhaps the clearest illustration of this transformation anywhere in the Horn of Africa. Its strategic importance cannot be understood solely through its territory, population, or military capabilities. Rather, it reflects the country’s success in transforming geographic position into regional function. Instead of remaining a small coastal state defined primarily by its physical characteristics, Djibouti has progressively established itself as an indispensable node within the Horn’s evolving architecture of trade, logistics, maritime connectivity, and regional commerce.

In doing so, Djibouti illustrates one of the defining principles of twenty-first-century geopolitics: geography does not automatically generate power; it generates opportunity. Whether that opportunity becomes lasting strategic influence depends upon the institutions, infrastructure, policies, and regional networks capable of transforming physical location into economic and geopolitical function.

The argument advanced here therefore extends well beyond Djibouti itself. It suggests that the Horn of Africa is entering a new strategic era in which connectivity is becoming an increasingly important source of influence alongside territory, sovereignty, and military capability. Djibouti is not simply an exceptional small state. It demonstrates a broader structural transformation in which geography creates opportunity, networks generate value, and function increasingly shapes power. As the political economy of the Horn continues to evolve, the strategic importance of states will depend less on what they possess than on the roles they perform within the Horn of Africa’s emerging architecture of connectivity.

The Horn is not merely experiencing political change. It is undergoing a profound reorganisation of its economic and strategic geography. For much of the post-colonial era, regional politics was structured around borders. States sought to defend territory, deter external threats, and preserve sovereignty within boundaries largely inherited from the colonial period. Strategic influence was measured primarily through military capability, political alliances, and territorial control.

That framework has not disappeared. Yet it is becoming progressively less sufficient for understanding how power is evolving across the region. Today, influence increasingly flows through networks rather than borders. The emerging strategic geography of the Horn is no longer defined solely by territorial control, but by what may be described as networked geography—a regional landscape in which ports, transport corridors, railways, electricity grids, digital infrastructure, logistics systems, and maritime routes increasingly shape the distribution of economic and political influence. Territory continues to matter. Increasingly, however, the ability to connect systems is becoming as consequential as the ability to defend borders.

The strategic map inherited from the twentieth century therefore explains only part of the region’s reality. The geography of the twenty-first century is being organised less by political boundaries than by the networks that move goods, capital, energy, information, and people across them.

This transformation is not unique to the Horn of Africa. It reflects a broader shift in the global political economy. Supply chains have become strategic assets. Energy security increasingly depends upon cross-border infrastructure. Competition among major powers is now expressed not only through military deployments and diplomatic alliances, but through ports, transport corridors, logistics platforms, digital infrastructure, and maritime connectivity. Economic resilience increasingly depends upon participation in regional networks rather than national self-sufficiency alone.

The Horn of Africa is increasingly being drawn into this wider transformation. Across much of the world, states derive influence not simply from their size, military strength, or natural resources, but from the positions they occupy within interconnected economic systems. Countries that facilitate movement increasingly acquire strategic importance that exceeds what conventional measures of power might predict.

The same logic is beginning to reshape the Horn. Perhaps the clearest illustration can be found in Ethiopia. Much commentary surrounding Ethiopia focuses on domestic politics, ethnic tensions, periodic conflict, or diplomatic disputes. These developments remain important and deserve careful attention. Yet they do not fully explain Ethiopia’s growing regional significance.

With a population exceeding 130 million people and one of Africa’s largest economies, Ethiopia has become one of the continent’s principal centres of demographic and economic gravity. Its long-term importance lies less in individual political events than in the structural forces that continue to reshape its economy.

Growing populations require food, housing, electricity, transport systems, industrial inputs, financial services, and access to international markets. Expanding cities generate demand for infrastructure, logistics, and regional connectivity. Economic expansion creates pressures that extend well beyond national borders.

The implications therefore reach far beyond Ethiopia itself. Large economies rarely transform only themselves. They reshape the economic geography around them. Their expansion generates sustained demand for ports, transport corridors, energy interconnections, logistics networks, and commercial gateways that neighbouring states may either facilitate or fail to capture.

This is why debates about Ethiopia often overlook the larger regional transformation. The most important consequence of Ethiopia’s rise may not be Ethiopia itself. It may be the gradual reorganisation of the Horn of Africa around the demands generated by an expanding economic centre.

At the centre of this emerging networked geography lies the Red Sea. For much of modern history, the Red Sea was viewed primarily as a maritime passage linking Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Today, it is increasingly functioning as the principal maritime infrastructure of the Horn of Africa’s economic transformation. Ports, shipping lanes, energy terminals, submarine data cables, logistics hubs, and maritime trade routes are becoming integral components of a wider regional system rather than isolated national assets.

This helps explain why investment by Gulf states in maritime infrastructure has accelerated, why international naval deployments have expanded, and why competition over ports has intensified across the region. The Red Sea is not becoming more important simply because geopolitical rivalry has increased. It is becoming more important because the Horn’s expanding economic networks increasingly converge upon it.

The relationship between the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea has therefore become progressively more integrated. What happens within the Horn increasingly shapes maritime security, commercial flows, and regional connectivity. Equally, developments in the Red Sea increasingly influence investment patterns, infrastructure development, energy cooperation, and economic opportunities throughout the Horn. The distinction between continental and maritime geopolitics is becoming steadily less meaningful.

The Horn of Africa is no longer merely adjacent to the Red Sea. It is increasingly organised around it. This transformation creates both opportunities and strategic risks for the states of the region.

Countries capable of positioning themselves within these emerging networks stand to acquire influence that extends well beyond their traditional military or economic weight. Strategic relevance increasingly derives from facilitating movement rather than restricting it. Ports create value because they connect markets. Corridors matter because they integrate production, trade, and logistics. Infrastructure is no longer simply an instrument of economic development; it has become an instrument of geopolitical influence. Connectivity itself is becoming a strategic resource.

Conversely, states that remain confined to purely territorial conceptions of strategy risk finding themselves progressively marginalised as regional economic systems evolve around them. Geography alone no longer guarantees strategic relevance. Increasingly, what matters is the ability to transform geography into connectivity.

Few countries illustrate this challenge more clearly than Sudan. Located between the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Sahel, Central Africa, and the Red Sea, Sudan occupies one of the most strategically significant geographic positions on the African continent. Yet much of Sudanese strategic thinking has historically interpreted this geography primarily through the lenses of territorial security, military competition, and political rivalry.

Those concerns remain legitimate. Increasingly, however, they explain only part of Sudan’s strategic environment. In the emerging networked geography of the Horn, Sudan’s greatest comparative advantage may lie less in military power, natural resources, or demographic size than in its capacity to function as a connecting state—linking regional markets, transport systems, maritime infrastructure, and cross-border economic networks.

Transport corridors, logistics hubs, railways, electricity interconnections, modern ports, digital infrastructure, and efficient customs systems may ultimately prove more important to Sudan’s long-term strategic influence than many of the traditional rivalries that have dominated regional politics for decades This is because geography does not generate influence automatically. It creates opportunities.

Whether those opportunities translate into geopolitical leverage depends upon political stability, institutional capacity, infrastructure investment, regulatory efficiency, and strategic vision. A favourable geographic position can remain economically marginal for generations if it is not integrated into wider regional systems. Conversely, states that successfully position themselves within emerging networks often acquire influence disproportionate to their conventional measures of power.

The emerging geography of the Horn is therefore less about where states are located than about how effectively they connect. Whether Sudan succeeds in capturing this opportunity remains uncertain. Prolonged conflict, institutional fragmentation, deteriorating infrastructure, and economic instability threaten to exclude the country from regional transformations that are already underway. While neighbouring states continue investing in transport networks, ports, energy interconnections, and regional trade, Sudan risks becoming increasingly disconnected from the very systems that could enhance its long-term strategic relevance.

Yet the underlying structural reality remains unchanged. Sudan’s geography has not become less important. Rather, the way geography generates influence is changing.

For decades, strategic thinking across the region largely equated power with territorial control. Today, power increasingly derives from the ability to facilitate economic flows across territories rather than simply govern them.

The central strategic question facing the Horn of Africa is therefore no longer confined to who controls territory. Increasingly, it concerns who controls the networks that connect territory to wider regional and global systems.

This represents a profound shift in the political economy of regional power. The future’s most influential states may not necessarily be those with the largest armies, the strongest political rhetoric, or even the greatest natural resources. They may instead be those that recognise first that connectivity has become one of the defining strategic assets of the twenty-first century.

For Sudan, this transformation presents both a warning and an opportunity. If the country remains trapped in cycles of conflict and institutional weakness, its strategic location alone will not prevent marginalisation. However, if Sudan succeeds in modernising its infrastructure, strengthening its institutions, expanding regional connectivity, and integrating itself into the emerging economic architecture of the Horn, its geography could become one of its greatest sources of long-term influence.

Few assumptions are more deeply embedded in Sudanese strategic thinking than the belief that Ethiopia’s rise necessarily represents a strategic threat to Sudan. From the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) dispute to border tensions and competing regional ambitions, Ethiopian growth is frequently interpreted through the language of strategic anxiety. The larger Ethiopia becomes, the argument goes, the more vulnerable Sudan will be.

Yet this assumption rests on a questionable analytical premise: that the rise of a neighbouring state must automatically diminish one’s own strategic value. This is not to suggest that Sudan’s longstanding disputes with Ethiopia have disappeared. The GERD, the al-Fashaga border dispute, and recurring security concerns remain genuine strategic issues that require careful management. The argument advanced here is different. These

disputes should not obscure the larger structural transformation reshaping the political economy of the Horn of Africa. Strategy requires addressing immediate challenges without losing sight of longer-term structural change.

History suggests something rather different. Large economies rarely transform only themselves. They reshape the economic geography around them, generating new demands for transport corridors, logistics networks, energy interconnections, commercial gateways, and regional infrastructure. In many cases, neighbouring states increase in strategic importance not because they rival the rising power, but because they occupy positions that the rising power cannot avoid.

Large economies generate demand. Geography determines who captures it. This pattern is already visible across the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia’s expanding economy has encouraged sustained international investment in regional transport infrastructure centred on the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Corridor, which remains the country’s principal commercial gateway.

According to the World Bank, more than 95 per cent of Ethiopia’s international trade by volume moves through this corridor, making it one of the most strategically significant pieces of infrastructure in the region.¹ Nor is this dynamic unique to the Horn of Africa. Mexico’s industrial integration with the United States, Vietnam’s growing role alongside China’s manufacturing economy, and Poland’s emergence as a logistical gateway within the European market all illustrate the same structural principle.

The expansion of a large economy often increases the strategic importance of neighbouring states that provide connectivity rather than competition. This is the possibility Sudan should be debating.

For decades, Sudanese strategic discussions have been dominated by questions of water security, territorial disputes, and military competition. These issues remain important. Yet they increasingly belong to a regional framework whose explanatory power is gradually weakening. Across the Horn of Africa, demographic expansion, urbanisation, infrastructure investment, regional trade, and economic connectivity are steadily reorganising the region’s political economy.

The more relevant question is therefore no longer how Sudan manages Ethiopia. It is how Sudan positions itself in a region increasingly shaped by Ethiopia’s growth.

With a population exceeding 130 million people, Ethiopia has become the largest demographic centre in the Horn of Africa and one of Africa’s largest economies. Despite episodes of conflict and political instability, its long- term structural characteristics remain intact.

Urbanisation continues. Infrastructure investment continues. Electricity generation has expanded substantially over the past two decades, while international financial institutions continue financing projects designed to strengthen Ethiopia’s integration into regional transport and energy networks. These investments reflect confidence in Ethiopia’s long-term structural importance rather than expectations of short-term political stability.²

These are not temporary political developments. They are structural drivers of regional change. Large economies generate demand that extends beyond their own borders. Expanding markets require transport corridors, efficient ports, integrated supply chains, electricity interconnections, financial services, and reliable access to global markets. Their expansion reshapes the incentives facing neighbouring states and gradually reorganises regional economic geography.

This dynamic is particularly significant in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia’s principal structural constraint has remained remarkably consistent despite its economic transformation: it is landlocked. The overwhelming majority of its international trade continues to depend on access through neighbouring ports, making reliable and diversified maritime access a structural necessity rather than a policy preference.

As the Ethiopian economy expands, demand for resilient transport corridors and access to global markets is therefore likely to increase rather than diminish. Recognising this reality, the World Bank has continued investing in regional corridor infrastructure, describing connectivity as a central driver of economic integration across the Horn of Africa rather than merely a transport objective.¹This is where Sudan’s strategic geography becomes increasingly relevant.

Positioned between the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Sahel, Central Africa, and the Red Sea, Sudan occupies one of the few locations capable of connecting multiple regional systems. Yet for decades this geography has been viewed primarily through the lenses of security and territorial defence rather than economic connectivity.

That perspective is becoming increasingly incomplete. Sudan’s comparative advantage is therefore not simply its location. It is its position at the intersection of multiple regional systems. Geography becomes strategically valuable not because it separates political borders, but because it connects expanding markets.

If the strategic logic underpinning the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Corridor is that expanding economies require multiple, resilient connections to global markets, then the long-term significance of Sudan’s geography becomes easier to understand. Large economies rarely depend indefinitely on a single corridor. They seek redundancy, resilience, competition, and flexibility. Geography therefore becomes a source of strategic opportunity for neighbouring states capable of providing complementary connections.

Across much of the world, strategic influence is becoming progressively linked to connectivity. Ports, transport corridors, logistics hubs, railways, energy interconnections, digital infrastructure, and maritime gateways are emerging as critical sources of geopolitical leverage. Geography derives value not simply from what it contains, but increasingly from what it connects.

This transformation is increasingly reflected in international development priorities. The African Development Bank’s Regional Integration Strategy identifies cross-border infrastructure and regional connectivity as essential foundations for long-term economic transformation across Eastern Africa. Likewise, the African Union’s Agenda 2063 places transport corridors, integrated infrastructure, and continental connectivity at the centre of Africa’s development agenda.³ ⁴The same logic increasingly applies to energy. Cross-border electricity interconnection projects linking Ethiopia with neighbouring states demonstrate that regional integration is no longer driven solely by roads and ports, but also by shared infrastructure systems that bind national economies more closely together.²

For Sudan, this transformation creates a strategic opportunity. Ethiopia’s continued expansion is unlikely to generate demand for a single transport corridor or a single maritime outlet. Large and growing economies typically seek diversified access to global markets in order to improve resilience, reduce costs, and minimise strategic vulnerability. A stable Sudan with modern transport infrastructure, efficient ports, integrated logistics networks, competitive customs systems, and reliable institutions would therefore not compete against Ethiopia’s rise. It would be positioned to benefit from it.

Seen from this perspective, Ethiopia’s rise does not automatically reduce Sudan’s strategic relevance. It may increase it. The argument is therefore not that Ethiopia’s growth guarantees Sudan’s success. Rather, it creates a structural opportunity that Sudan may either capture or squander.

Large economies generate demand. Geography determines who captures it. The greater strategic risk facing Sudan is therefore not Ethiopia’s growth itself. It is the possibility that Sudan remains trapped in cycles of conflict, institutional fragmentation, and underinvestment while the region’s economic geography is reorganised around emerging corridors from which it is absent.

History repeatedly demonstrates that countries rarely become marginal because their neighbours grow. They become marginal because they fail to adapt to changing regional structures.

Ultimately, the debate about Ethiopia is not fundamentally about Ethiopia. It is about Sudan. The strategic mistake is not recognising that Ethiopia is becoming more important. The strategic mistake is assuming that Ethiopia’s growing importance must come at Sudan’s expense.

As the Horn of Africa enters a new phase of economic and geopolitical transformation, the defining question is no longer whether Ethiopia will continue to grow. Demographic momentum, urbanisation, expanding infrastructure, and regional economic integration suggest that it will remain one of the principal drivers of change in the Horn for decades to come.

The more consequential question is whether Sudan can reposition itself within this changing regional landscape. States do not choose the geography of their neighbourhoods. They choose how they interpret it.

For too long, Sudan’s strategic debate has been dominated by the language of rivalry. Yet rivalry alone provides an incomplete framework for understanding a region increasingly organised around connectivity, infrastructure, logistics, and economic interdependence.

Recognising opportunity does not require ignoring competition. Nor does acknowledging structural change require overlooking legitimate security concerns.The challenge is to think strategically at two levels simultaneously: to manage immediate disputes while preparing for longer-term regional transformation.

Geography alone cannot generate power.Nor does strategic opportunity automatically translate into strategic influence. What geography offers is potential. Whether that potential is realised depends on political stability, institutional capacity, infrastructure investment, regulatory reform, and strategic vision.

A favourable location can remain economically marginal for decades if governments fail to translate geography into connectivity. Conversely, states that successfully integrate themselves into regional networks often acquire influence that exceeds what traditional measures of power would predict. This is the strategic choice facing Sudan.

If the country succeeds in modernising its ports, expanding transport infrastructure, strengthening regional logistics, and creating a stable investment environment, Ethiopia’s rise may prove not to be a strategic liability but one of Sudan’s greatest strategic opportunities.

Ultimately, this is not an argument about Ethiopia. It is an argument about Sudan’s strategic imagination. Large economies generate demand. Geography determines who captures it.

The question is no longer whether Ethiopia’s rise will reshape the Horn of Africa. It already is. The question is whether Sudan will position itself to benefit from that transformation—or allow the opportunity to pass.

For decades, Ethiopia featured in Sudanese strategic thinking primarily as a source of security concerns. Border disputes, Nile politics, and recurring diplomatic tensions framed the relationship and, in many respects, continue to do so. Yet the Horn of Africa is changing in ways that increasingly render these familiar frameworks insufficient.

The region’s political economy is being reorganised by forces that extend beyond diplomacy: demographic expansion, urbanisation, infrastructure development, and the growing importance of regional connectivity. At the centre of this shift stands Ethiopia.

With a population exceeding 130 million people, Ethiopia is not only the largest state in the Horn of Africa by population but one of the continent’s largest demographic concentrations. Despite civil conflict, political tensions, and periodic instability, the broader trajectory remains intact. Population growth continues. Cities expand. Electricity generation has increased dramatically over the past two decades. Addis Ababa has emerged as one of Africa’s principal diplomatic capitals, while Ethiopian Airlines has become the continent’s leading aviation network.

Whether one views this trajectory favourably is ultimately beside the point. The significance of Ethiopia lies less in political rhetoric than in economic gravity.

Economic gravity rarely remains confined within political borders. As centres of production and consumption expand, they alter the strategic value of the territories around them. Markets generate demand. Demand creates movement. Movement reshapes geography.

This is the reality Sudan now confronts.

The prevailing assumption in much of the regional debate is that Ethiopian power and Sudanese relevance exist in inverse proportion. That assumption reflects the logic of an earlier regional order.

In reality, the relationship may be far more complex.

The strategic value of states is not determined solely by their internal capabilities. It is also shaped by the demands generated by the systems around them. As Ethiopia’s population expands, its economy grows, and its external trade increases, the demand for transport infrastructure, logistics networks, energy interconnections, and maritime access will grow accordingly.

Under such conditions, Sudan’s geography acquires greater relevance, not less.

The more Ethiopia matters, the more the routes connecting Ethiopia to wider regional and global systems matter. Sudan sits astride several of those potential connections.

The implications become particularly clear when viewed from the Red Sea.

Since Eritrea’s independence in 1993, Ethiopia has relied overwhelmingly on Djibouti as its principal gateway to international trade. More than 90 percent of Ethiopian seaborne trade continues to pass through Djiboutian ports. For a country of Ethiopia’s demographic and economic scale, such dependence creates both economic costs and strategic vulnerabilities.

This is why maritime access continues to occupy such a prominent place in Ethiopian strategic thinking. The issue is often portrayed as the product of political ambition or the preference of a particular government. In reality, it reflects pressures generated by geography, scale, and economic growth.

Much discussion has therefore focused on Ethiopia’s search for additional maritime access. Yet the more revealing question concerns Sudan.

The point is not that Sudan will inevitably become Ethiopia’s principal outlet to the sea. Geography rarely produces inevitabilities. What it produces are incentives.

Consider the alternatives. Djibouti remains indispensable but highly concentrated. The Somaliland option remains politically contested. Eritrean access remains vulnerable to fluctuations in bilateral relations. In contrast, Sudan occupies a position that combines geographic proximity, substantial coastline, agricultural potential, and direct access to the Red Sea.

For that reason alone, Sudan will remain part of any serious long-term conversation about the future economic geography of the Horn.

Every serious discussion about future trade corridors, logistics hubs, transport infrastructure, energy interconnections, and Red Sea commerce inevitably elevates the relevance of Sudanese geography. Sudan possesses nearly 850 kilometres of Red Sea coastline and occupies a position linking the Nile Valley, the Horn of Africa, and maritime routes connecting Europe, the Gulf, and Asia.

Indeed, one of the less appreciated consequences of Ethiopia’s search for greater connectivity is that it may enhance Sudan’s strategic leverage rather than reduce it.

For much of the post-colonial period, Sudan was frequently described as a buffer state positioned between competing spheres of influence. That description captured an important aspect of regional politics, but it may be becoming less useful.

The emerging geography of the Horn suggests a different possibility.

Rather than serving primarily as a buffer, Sudan possesses the attributes of a connector state. Its territory links the interior of Africa to the Red Sea. Its coastline provides access to global trade routes. Its agricultural resources, transport potential, and geographic position place it at the intersection of several regional systems simultaneously.

In an era increasingly defined by corridors, ports, energy grids, supply chains, and infrastructure networks, such characteristics carry growing strategic weight.

This does not require political alignment with Addis Ababa, nor does it imply that disagreements between the two countries have disappeared. States routinely compete in some areas while cooperating in others. Strategy is rarely a choice between partnership and rivalry. More often, it is a question of recognising structural realities and adapting to them.

For much of the past half-century, Sudan’s strategic thinking has been shaped by concerns over what Ethiopia might do.

The more important question today is what Ethiopia’s rise does to Sudan.

That distinction matters.

The Horn of Africa is entering a period in which economic geography is becoming increasingly important to political influence. Population centres, trade corridors, logistics networks, energy systems, and maritime infrastructure are beginning to shape regional power as profoundly as armies and alliances.

Within that emerging landscape, Ethiopia’s rise is not merely an Ethiopian story. It is a regional transformation.

The strategic mistake for Sudan would be to continue viewing that transformation solely through the language of rivalry.

The more difficult—and more consequential—task is recognising how a changing Horn of Africa is altering Sudan’s own strategic position.

The future of Sudan may depend less on whether Ethiopia rises than on whether Sudan understands what that rise means.

The central question confronting contemporary international analysis is no longer what kind of global order will emerge next, but why the existing international system appears structurally incapable of producing one at all. Narratives that continue to frame the current moment as a transitional phase towards multipolarity or a rebalanced order rest on a fragile assumption: that fragmentation is temporary and self-correcting. The accumulated evidence of the past two decades suggests otherwise. The international system is not moving towards reconstitution; it is stabilising within fragmentation.

This analysis is grounded in Systemic Collapse Theory (SCT), which holds that today’s crises are no longer episodic disruptions within a reformable system, but indicators of a deeper functional failure. From this perspective, fragmentation is not a passage towards a new equilibrium, but an operational condition in its own right—one in which power is exercised through the disruption and management of systems rather than their construction.

The Institute for Economics & Peace’s report, The Great Fragmentation, provides one of the most empirically rigorous mappings of this condition. Drawing on economic, military, and relational indicators, the report documents the erosion of cumulative great-power capacity, the plateauing of US and Chinese influence since the mid-2010s, and the simultaneous rise of middle powers expanding their regional reach without possessing either the capacity or the intent to build an alternative international order. Yet the report’s analytical value lies not only in what it measures, but in what it reveals without fully theorising: the loss of the international system’s ability to reproduce systemic stability  .

Despite remaining the system’s dominant actors, both the United States and China appear to have reached a point of strategic saturation. Since approximately 2015, neither has succeeded in meaningfully expanding its sphere of influence or imposing universally accepted rules. This plateau does not indicate balance or equilibrium, but rather a condition of mutual systemic veto, in which great powers retain sufficient capacity to block alternatives, yet lack the ability to construct viable orders of their own. What emerges is not classical multipolarity, but proliferating zones of strategic vacuum within a system that has lost its organising centre.

Within this context, the rise of so-called “middle powers” should be understood as a symptom rather than a cause of fragmentation. These actors do not ascend within a coherent system; they manoeuvre within the gaps created by great-power incapacity. States such as the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Türkiye exercise influence not through comprehensive alliance-building or rule-making, but through control over specific systemic nodes: supply chains, maritime corridors, logistics hubs, finance, energy flows, and strategic resources. While the report frames this as a broadening distribution of power, a structural reading reveals it to be a redistribution within collapse rather than a transition towards a new equilibrium  .

Crucially, The Great Fragmentation also—perhaps unintentionally—demonstrates the displacement of power from the state to the system. Its reliance on relational influence, resource control, and non-military leverage underscores a fundamental shift in how sovereignty operates. Political authority is no longer exercised primarily through territorial control or institutional dominance, but through the capacity to disrupt, reroute, or condition the operation of global systems. This logic sits at the core of Systemic Collapse Theory: power today is less about governance and more about managing fragility.

Yet the report retains an implicit assumption characteristic of late liberal institutionalism—that fragmentation may still be mitigated through flexible governance arrangements, minilateral coalitions, or a stabilising role for middle powers. Such assumptions underestimate a key structural reality: increasing the number of influential actors within a non-integrable system does not generate balance; it intensifies obstruction. The multiplication of veto points deepens fragmentation and further erodes the system’s capacity to generate shared rules or effective institutions.

This helps explain a contradiction the report itself identifies but does not resolve theoretically: the unprecedented rise in the number of conflicts alongside a marked decline in the ability to terminate or contain them through traditional diplomatic mechanisms. Fragmentation has ceased to be a temporary coordination failure. It has become a structural condition shaping actor behaviour and reproducing conflict as a persistent state rather than an exception amenable to resolution  .

Viewed through this lens, The Great Fragmentation does not document an international transition. It provides empirical confirmation of fragmentation as a durable systemic condition. Where the report stops at description and retains cautious optimism regarding governance adaptation, Systemic Collapse Theory advances a more radical conclusion: the problem is no longer the distribution of power, but the collapse of the framework through which power once produced order.

The world is not entering a phase of reordering, but one of allocation within collapse—a process in which risks are redistributed rather than rules constructed, and instability is managed rather than resolved. In such a system, stability is no longer a realistic objective of international politics. The management of collapse has become its central strategy.

Energy remains the core of this strategic positioning. Despite accelerating investment in renewables, hydrocarbons continue to anchor global economic resilience. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates wield a degree of discretion over supply that no other producers can match. Their adjustments to output—particularly in periods of market volatility—have systemic implications that extend well beyond the region. The energy shock following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated how dependent major economies remain on the Gulf’s ability to regulate the global market. Rather than diminishing in relevance, energy has reinforced the Gulf’s role as a stabilising force in a world marked by growing uncertainty.

In parallel, the region has consolidated itself as a central hub for logistical and infrastructural connectivity. Emirati and Saudi port assets link Europe, Asia and Africa through networks that are commercial in function but strategic in consequence. Ports such as Jebel Ali, Khalifa and Jeddah form part of a wider maritime architecture in which the continuity of global trade depends on intermediaries capable of absorbing geopolitical shocks. This infrastructure-heavy strategy enables the Gulf to operate across multiple geographies without becoming structurally entangled in any single one.

Financial power deepens this position. Sovereign wealth funds—including the Public Investment Fund, Mubadala and the Qatar Investment Authority—shape sectors ranging from advanced technology to critical minerals. Their investments create leverage that transcends traditional forms of diplomatic alignment. The Gulf’s capital is embedded in major financial centres and in industries central to the emerging digital economy. This provides the region with access to decision-making ecosystems across Washington, Beijing, London and Silicon Valley, but without the obligations that typically accompany security alliances.

This multi-vector autonomy has allowed Gulf states to navigate intensifying US–China competition with unusual flexibility. They maintain long-standing security partnerships with the United States while expanding technological, commercial and energy relationships with Beijing. They invest in American artificial intelligence firms while cooperating with Chinese entities on digital infrastructure and data centres. This is not hedging for its own sake; it is an adaptation to a global environment in which aligning too closely with any single pole may impose significant constraints. The Gulf’s strategic posture reflects the logic of an era in which power flows through networks rather than blocs.

Regional engagement follows similar principles. In the Horn of Africa, Yemen, the Red Sea and the Sahel, Gulf states intervene selectively to protect maritime access, secure port interests, stabilise logistical corridors or manage cross-border risks. Their approach is functional rather than ideological, calibrated rather than maximalist. It seeks influence without responsibility for comprehensive political outcomes. This produces a pattern of involvement that avoids the liabilities associated with long-term intervention while maintaining leverage over critical points of regional disruption.

The Red Sea illustrates this dynamic particularly clearly. As the waterway becomes one of the most contested maritime spaces globally, Gulf states have sought to protect their economic diversification strategies and maritime lifelines without assuming custodianship of the broader security framework. They operate in an environment shaped by overlapping interests of the United States, China, Russia, Iran, Egypt, Israel and regional actors, each pursuing distinct objectives. Gulf engagement therefore prioritises access, continuity and corridor resilience rather than the construction of a unified security regime that no major actor currently supports.

This pattern positions the Gulf at the centre of a shifting global architecture. In an international system where strategic vacuums are increasingly managed rather than resolved, the Gulf’s infrastructural, financial and logistical capabilities confer an autonomy disproportionate to its geographic scale. Its influence derives not from imposing regional order but from operating effectively within the structural gaps created by global competition. The region’s ability to convert systemic fragmentation into strategic leverage has become one of its defining characteristics.

The trajectory of Gulf states reflects a broader transformation in international politics. Influence now belongs to actors capable of shaping networks, corridors, and flows, rather than those reliant on territorial projection or ideological alignment. In a world moving through phases of controlled instability, the Gulf’s role is unlikely to diminish. Its significance lies not in its ambition to design the system, but in its capacity to function where the system itself is unsettled.

As fragmentation continues to structure global affairs, the Gulf will remain a consequential actor—not because it seeks to define the next international order, but because others increasingly depend on its ability to navigate the space left by the erosion of the current one.

The shifting dynamics across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa reveal a region in which competition is no longer episodic but structural, driven by interlocking pressures that extend far beyond traditional disputes. The renewed friction between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the calibrated diplomatic activism of Egypt, the expanding port strategies of Gulf states, and the persistence of asymmetric maritime disruption point to a corridor whose stability is no longer determined by political settlements alone but by the collision of external interests layered onto fragile national systems.

Ethiopia’s renewed pursuit of access to the sea has sharpened the geopolitical fault lines. With more than ninety per cent of its trade routed through neighbouring states, Addis Ababa’s logistical vulnerability is not rhetorical—it is existential. Eritrea’s resistance to any arrangement that diminishes its maritime leverage reflects not merely national pride but the recognition that coastal access is the country’s core strategic asset. Egypt’s diplomatic re-engagement with Djibouti and Eritrea underscores its determination to prevent a reconfiguration of Red Sea access that could dilute Cairo’s influence over both maritime corridors and the Nile basin. The policies of all three actors reveal a shared realisation: in an era where ports and logistics corridors define strategic leverage, maritime denial can be as consequential as territorial control.

The likelihood of a large-scale interstate war remains contained for now. However, the structural incentives for confrontation are persistent. Border demarcation, port sovereignty, and security anxieties are not transient sources of tension, and regional institutions have proved unable to absorb sustained pressure. Eritrea’s withdrawal from regional frameworks and Ethiopia’s explicit articulation of maritime aims signal that the dispute has evolved beyond tactical disagreements. Under these conditions، limited coercive incidents, whether along the frontier or through diplomatic brinkmanship, risk generating cascading disruption across the wider maritime system.

External engagement has intensified rather than stabilised the theatre. Gulf states seek to secure logistical corridors linking energy exports, trade routes, and investment networks. Global actors view the Red Sea less as a regional waterway and more as a strategic artery: a narrow passage through which close to 12 percent of global seaborne trade flows, and whose disruption immediately reverberates through freight pricing, insurance markets, and naval deployment patterns. Long-term port concessions, naval access agreements, and logistical partnerships are therefore not peripheral developments—they are indicators of a shift in power from territorial control to infrastructural influence.

The fragility of this environment has already been demonstrated. Maritime disruptions in recent years showed that small, low-cost actors can compel global rerouting, trigger insurance spikes, and force naval coalitions to intervene—even without altering territorial control. The lesson is unambiguous: in a corridor where state capacity is uneven and external interests are dense, volatility does not remain local. It propagates rapidly along trade and security networks.

The period through 2026 is unlikely to yield structural resolution. Ethiopia’s logistical imperative will not dissipate, Eritrea’s maritime leverage ensures negotiation costs remain high, and Egypt views any shift in Red Sea access through the prism of national security rather than regional cooperation. External actors are unlikely to resolve the contest; their priority is to prevent decisive outcomes that diminish their ability to shape maritime flows. The foreseeable result is sustained volatility—contained, but enduring.

The implications for global trade are no longer abstract. Even without major conflict, risk premia have already risen in parallel maritime disruptions, supply chains have demonstrated low tolerance for chokepoint instability, and shipping firms have shown readiness to reroute via longer passages when risk thresholds are crossed. The emerging trend is not temporary turbulence but recalibration: commercial and security planning increasingly incorporates the assumption that the Red Sea cannot be insulated from geopolitical pressures.

Taken together, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa exemplify the transformation of strategic corridors into systemic arenas—spaces where fragile state structures intersect with external competition to produce volatility with global consequences. The contest unfolding here does not merely foreshadow regional instability; it illustrates the evolving logic of international politics, in which influence is exercised through control of systems rather than territory, and where the capacity to manage and exploit volatility becomes as significant as traditional power.

The international system has entered a phase defined not by transition but by structural exhaustion. The mechanisms that once absorbed shocks and rebalanced power—hegemonic leadership, institutional coherence, and economic redundancy—have eroded beyond repair. No major power possesses the resources or legitimacy to rebuild order, and none is prepared to let the system collapse completely. What emerges is a non-systemic condition: a global environment in which the system can no longer regenerate stability or correct its own failures.

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The erosion of stabilising capabilities is visible across all major centres of power. The United States retains unmatched military and technological depth but lacks both the political cohesion and the strategic incentive to underwrite a system-wide architecture. China has achieved scale but remains structurally constrained by technological dependencies and maritime vulnerabilities that limit its systemic reach. Europe’s fragmentation prevents strategic autonomy. Russia’s ambitions exceed its structural depth. And while emerging powers across the Gulf, Africa, and Asia are increasingly influential, their capabilities remain situational rather than systemic. No state or coalition can assume the role once played by the United States during the post–Cold War era.

Stability is further undermined by the migration of power from states to infrastructures. The decisive arenas of global politics now lie in semiconductor ecosystems, satellite constellations, maritime chokepoints, energy corridors, and data architectures. These systems are tightly coupled but politically unanchored. Their fragility produces systemic disproportionality: local disruptions generate global consequences. A cyberattack can immobilise production networks across multiple continents. A militia positioned near a strategic waterway can redirect global shipping flows. The concentration of advanced microchip manufacturing in a single jurisdiction produces a structural dependency no state can secure through classical deterrence. States remain central to international politics, but they no longer command the systems that determine their resilience.

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Great-power competition reinforces this fragility rather than resolving it. The United States and China are locked in a rivalry that neither can conclude decisively nor transform into a coherent alternative order. Washington’s strategy centres on constraining China’s technological rise, while Beijing aims to limit American dominance without assuming responsibility for systemic management. Both operate through strategic denial: preventing the other from shaping the system rather than constructing a new one. This dynamic guarantees that competition will persist without producing an institutional or normative framework capable of stabilisation.

Regional theatres replicate this pattern with growing intensity. In the Red Sea, overlapping interventions by global and regional actors—U.S. naval operations, China’s logistical expansion, Gulf port investments, Russian basing initiatives, and Iranian proxy activity—have created a corridor too congested for meaningful stabilisation. In the Sahel, external counterinsurgency efforts have produced layered vacuums that no authority can fill. In East Asia, geopolitical friction surrounding Taiwan interacts with concentrated semiconductor dependencies to generate systemic risk that diplomacy and deterrence cannot adequately manage. These are not isolated crises; they are symptoms of a system that can no longer orchestrate coherence across regions.

Institutional mechanisms provide little relief. The United Nations is paralysed by veto politics. The WTO is unable to regulate weaponised interdependence. International financial institutions confront crises rooted in supply-chain fragility rather than monetary imbalance—problems they were never designed to address. Cooperation, when it occurs, is narrow and temporary. Institutions respond to events; they do not correct the structural sources of instability. The system’s capacity for self-correction—the essential prerequisite for any functioning order—has collapsed.

Comment

The implications are profound. Global politics is moving toward a form of infrastructural sovereignty, in which states derive resilience not from territorial control but from their position within systems they cannot fully command. Collapse is no longer a dramatic event but a gradual process of functional erosion. The international order is not transitioning to a new equilibrium; it is dissolving into a landscape in which order is neither achievable nor strategically advantageous for the actors who once sustained it.

This non-systemic era constitutes the defining condition of the twenty-first century. The structural foundations that supported order—material concentration, technological asymmetry, institutional leadership—have fragmented beyond recovery. No major power has the capacity or incentive to reconstruct them, and rising powers cannot supply what the system lacks. The central strategic question is no longer how to build a new order but how to operate in a world where the system no longer performs its essential functions.

The challenge ahead is not the management of transition but the management of absence. Stability can no longer be expected from the system as a whole, only from the ability of individual actors to navigate a global environment where coherence is episodic, institutions are reactive, and the architecture of order has ceased to exist. This is not a temporary disruption. It is the new strategic reality.

Ethiopia’s need for a secure maritime outlet is no longer a distant strategic ambition but a pressing geopolitical necessity shaped by accelerating demographic pressures, cumulative economic constraints, and structural dependence on Djibouti. The Red Sea is now undergoing a decisive shift from state-centred security to corridor-based security, where control over infrastructural assets increasingly outweighs the traditional logic of territorial sovereignty. The Ethiopian maritime imperative has become a key catalyst in this shift, amplified by the fact that it coincides with Sudan’s deep institutional and territorial disintegration, which has removed the constraints that once governed the reconfiguration of maritime routes and regional security arrangements.

Sudan’s internal collapse has done more than weaken its state institutions; it has dismantled the very structures that previously limited Ethiopia’s room for manoeuvre. Instead of negotiating with a coherent central authority, Addis Ababa now confronts a dispersed political landscape shaped by overlapping centres of military, local, and external influence. This fragmentation does not merely reduce Sudan’s capacity to resist external pressure; it transforms the country into a fragmented sovereign environment open to external structuring, allowing Ethiopia to negotiate maritime, logistical, and security arrangements that would have been unattainable under a unified state with centralised political will. In an environment where infrastructural sovereignty increasingly eclipses classical sovereignty, this fluidity becomes a driver of deeper regional transformation.

The pressures pulling Ethiopia toward the sea are multi-layered. With a population exceeding 120 million and among the highest growth rates in Africa, Ethiopia requires diversified and secure commercial routes. Over 95% of its imports pass through Djibouti. OSINT data from 2023–2024 shows marked signs of systemic strain: container dwell times increased by 17%, and vessel queues became recurrent during peak periods. While technical on the surface, these indicators are interpreted by Ethiopian policymakers as structural warning signs. Neither the economy nor political stability can rely indefinitely on a single, increasingly congested gateway.

Ethiopia has therefore moved beyond traditional diplomacy. It has expanded its toolkit gradually: constructing parallel dry-port networks; exploring multimodal corridors across Benishangul–Blue Nile; dispatching technical teams to survey potential landing sites in eastern Sudan; monitoring tribal-militia control patterns along key routes; and experimenting with limited security-logistical arrangements with local authorities capable of granting territorial access without the need for formal state-level recognition. This marks a shift from inter-state negotiation to multi-level engagement with the actors who genuinely control the geography that matters.

Sudan, meanwhile, is experiencing deep institutional and territorial fragmentation. Large parts of the west and centre lie outside the control of the central state, while Port Sudan has become a complex convergence point for competing military, political, and external actors. Satellite imagery and logistical pattern analysis reveal recurring bottlenecks, irregular handling cycles, and the emergence of alternative supply routes financed by Gulf investments. These trends point to a maritime system no longer governed by a unified state but by an evolving network of actors with shifting interests.

In eastern Sudan, Ethiopia’s potential negotiating counterparts now include local Beja-linked groups, municipal authorities in Suakin and Tokar, and newly emergent economic-militia networks operating around coastal logistics. The vertical depth of this ecology is crucial: these groups do not simply act as local gatekeepers, but as territorial intermediaries capable of controlling flows, pricing passage, and redistributing economic rents — making them pivotal to any Ethiopian calculation related to maritime access.

Further inland, armed actors aligned with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) control routes linking Ethiopia to central Sudan. Along border-crossing regions, tribal networks monopolising movement and security function both as enablers and as major risk factors. Ethiopia has not overlooked these shifts. Despite maintaining a cautious diplomatic tone, its behavioural patterns clearly indicate a deeper strategic repositioning.

The Memorandum of Understanding signed with Somaliland in 2024 — offering Ethiopia maritime access in exchange for political recognition — represents only one track in a broader multi-path strategy. OSINT reporting shows increased Ethiopian logistical activity along the Sudanese border and sightings of exploratory delegations in eastern Sudan, suggesting that Ethiopia’s calculations extend well beyond the Somaliland option.

For Sudan, this creates a stark paradox. Fragmentation heightens vulnerability to external pressure but simultaneously makes the country an attractive negotiation space due to the absence of centralised authority — or more precisely, due to its transformation into a fragmented sovereign environment where actors hold effective control but lack international recognition.

Regional powers are recalibrating accordingly. Saudi Arabia and the UAE view Ethiopian–Sudanese dynamics through the lens of competition over corridors and ports. Investment records, concession talks, and logistical infrastructure projects indicate growing Gulf involvement driven not by coordination but by intersecting ambitions that intensify the density of the Red Sea system. These are not episodic moves but part of a wider contest over the infrastructural reconfiguration of the basin.

For Egypt, Ethiopia’s maritime push is an extension of the strategic struggle over the Nile and regional influence. A diversified Ethiopian maritime posture enhances its bargaining power and reduces its exposure to external pressure. A Sudan that drifts closer to Ethiopia — or becomes open to Ethiopian penetration — unsettles Egypt’s long-held assumptions about Red Sea security and the southern entry point to the Nile Basin.

Western powers observe these shifts with caution. The United States and the European Union remain concerned with safeguarding Red Sea navigation and averting vacuums that could attract destabilising actors. Yet their structural leverage is limited: they lack the demographic-strategic footprint of the Gulf and do not possess the internal compulsion driving Ethiopia. OSINT data on infrastructure deployment and shipping rerouting during the 2024–2025 escalation suggests that Western responses increasingly resemble delayed reactions rather than proactive stabilisation efforts.

Thus, Ethiopia’s maritime ambition should not be understood as a logistical pursuit alone but as a regional reconfiguration force. It intersects with Sudan’s fragmentation, Gulf competition, Egyptian security anxieties, and the widening fluidity of the Red Sea system. The risks do not lie in Ethiopia’s desire for maritime access per se but in its pursuit of that access within an environment lacking the institutional structures capable of sustaining durable arrangements.

The central question, then, is whether Sudan’s fragmentation constitutes a temporary opening or a long-term structural opportunity. If current divisions solidify into an enduring system, Ethiopia will find itself negotiating with actors who exercise effective control yet lack international legitimacy. Such arrangements may deliver rapid gains but at the cost of chronic instability. If external powers impose a form of material unity on Sudan, Ethiopian maritime negotiations will become part of a broader political settlement rather than a bilateral deal. In both scenarios, the maritime file remains inseparable from the region’s wider systemic reconfiguration.

Ethiopia’s drive toward the sea will continue, because its structural incentives are permanent. Sudan’s future will be shaped more by the pressures exerted upon it than by its internal agency, as its strategic value rises precisely when its political cohesion declines. What is forming now is not a competition over routes but a recalibration of power in a region where infrastructural systems increasingly define strategic units more than political borders.

The present moment reveals a region acting under the pressure of necessity: Ethiopia advances because it must; Sudan is reshaped because it cannot resist; external actors intervene because the cost of absence has risen. And if Ethiopia secures even a limited maritime foothold before any form of Sudanese central authority re-emerges, the Red Sea map will shift irreversibly. In that scenario, access corridors — not national borders — will become the primary units of strategic competition, with Ethiopia emerging as the actor most capable of redrawing this new maritime architecture.

For decades, the study of international relations rested on a single assumption: that the state was the fundamental unit through which the world could be understood. This assumption made sense in an era when power was measured through armies, influence travelled through alliances, and stability depended on the management of borders.

But the twenty-first century has moved decisively beyond this frame.

The state is no longer the centre of international politics because the systems on which it relies have grown more powerful than the authorities meant to govern them.

Power has migrated from political institutions to the infrastructures that sustain global movement: the maritime corridors through which trade flows, the undersea cables that carry the internet, the semiconductors that run the world’s economies, the algorithms that shape perception and decision-making, and the minerals that anchor the future of energy and industry.

These are not technical details. They are new forms of sovereignty — structural forces that now define the limits of national agency.

• Whoever controls the corridor controls the state.

• Whoever commands the logistical network shapes its politics.

• Whoever governs the cable determines its security long before the military does.

This is why the defining crises of our time cannot be understood through state-centred reasoning alone. Sudan did not collapse from within but under the weight of external pressures it could no longer absorb. Ethiopia’s search for a maritime outlet is driven not by diplomacy but by systemic and geographic constraint. The transformations in the Red Sea arise from the collision of external architectures, not local balances. And the U.S.–China confrontation rests on technological infrastructures rather than ideological rivalry.

In this emerging landscape, the state does not shape the system; the system shapes the state. The central question is no longer what governments want, but which infrastructures determine their capacity to act.

Conclusion

The contemporary world is not governed from capitals but from the nodes that reconfigure global behaviour beyond their borders.

As power moves from institutions to systems, the idea of the state as the centre of international politics becomes a theoretical relic — a memory of a world that has already disappeared, even if we have not yet admitted it.