The Red Sea Security Complex

Coined by Jens Heibach, the term Red Sea Security Complex (RSSC) captures maritime and trans-regional logics that labels such as “Horn of Africa,” “Greater Horn,” “East Africa,” or “Middle East” only partly reflect. The RSSC foregrounds linkages—trade corridors, naval footprints, cross-shore alliances, migration patterns, and financial flows—that connect actors from the Sahel to the Gulf and from Europe to East Asia.

Created by Eduardo Valencia, this collection of visualizations assembles comparable datasets and indices on governance, organized violence, trade, international organizations, climate, population, democracy, migration, development finance, among others. Read together, they reveal patterns that this regional lens makes visible: the expansion of Gulf commercial ties, the overlay of Chinese and United States military presence, and how disturbances at Bab el-Mandeb reverberate through trade-dependent economies far beyond the littoral. The same framing keeps domestic conflict in view, showing how violence within countries intersects with regional rivalries and with cooperation pursued through diplomacy and economic forums.