The Hollings Center’s session on the Red Sea maritime security theater examined challenges across the Middle East and North Africa. The discussion explored how conflict, commerce, illicit networks, and geopolitical competition now interact across the region. As part of the Center’s broader MENA maritime security initiative, participants focused on the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab as critical spaces where regional instability can affect global trade, energy flows, and international security.

Participants emphasized that the Red Sea can no longer be understood simply as a transit corridor. Instability in Yemen, Sudan, the Horn of Africa, and the wider Gulf now affects maritime risk. Disruptions at sea also shape commercial decisions, regional security calculations, and the priorities of states well beyond the Red Sea littoral. In this environment, maritime disruption does not require the full closure of a chokepoint. Uncertainty alone can alter shipping behavior, raise costs, and reduce confidence in key trade routes.

The discussion identified the Houthi campaign against commercial shipping as a central example of this shift. Land-based actors can now create strategic maritime effects without conventional naval power. Participants debated how best to understand the Houthis—as a non-state actor, a state-like authority, or something in between. However, they broadly agreed that naval tools alone cannot address the threat. Missiles, drones, unmanned systems, mines, electronic interference, ambiguous targeting, and affiliation-based threats have made commercial shipping risk more complex and harder to manage.

Participants also highlighted the role of illicit networks in sustaining maritime insecurity. Arms trafficking, oil smuggling, piracy, sanctions evasion, informal financial systems, and cross-border trade networks connect actors across Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, the Horn of Africa, and the wider Red Sea region. These networks often operate across both land and sea. They blend licit and illicit activity and create a permissive environment for armed groups and coercive actors.

Rather than propose a single regional solution, the dialogue pointed toward practical, incremental policy applications. These include strengthening littoral and coast guard capacity, improving maritime domain awareness, addressing illicit networks as a maritime security threat, and building cooperation around shared vulnerabilities. Such vulnerabilities include commercial shipping safety, port resilience, critical infrastructure, and search and rescue.