For two decades, every power that wanted a military foothold in the Horn of Africa went to Djibouti. The United States leased Camp Lemonnier, France stationed 1,500 troops in Djibouti, and Japan established its only overseas base there, soon joined by Italy. Then China arrived. Djibouti—9,000 square miles of arid coastline at the confluence of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, bordering Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland—now hosts at least eight military bases commanding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which an estimated 10–12 percent of global trade passes annually.
The problem now is not geography, but architecture. The United States and China share a perimeter. Camp Lemonnier sits adjacent to a Chinese facility that cost $600 million to build, housing up to 2,000 People’s Liberation Army personnel, and features underground storage, helicopter hangars, armored vehicles, and a 1,300-foot runway. Beijing’s presence is an intelligence liability: Chinese military-grade lasers have temporarily blinded American pilots. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stressed the need to counter Chinese influence in Djibouti. But policy attention does not change the reality: Djibouti is full.
Djibouti ... now hosts at least eight military bases commanding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which an estimated 10–12 percent of global trade passes annually.
There is a deadline attached to that problem. In 2014, Presidents Barack Obama and Ismaïl Guelleh agreed on a 20-year lease extension for Camp Lemonnier at $63 million annually, with an option for a further ten-year renewal at a renegotiated rate. Guelleh, now 78 and in his sixth term after amending the constitution to remove any age limit, may not be the man who signs the renewal. His successor’s strategic orientation—toward Riyadh, Beijing, or Washington—is the variable no American planner has addressed. Eight years is not long to build an alternative.
While there is a great deal of speculation about Somaliland, Washington’s answer is for now Kenya. On January 29, 2026, the United States and Kenya broke ground on a $71 million overhaul of the Manda Bay airfield in Lamu County. The project includes a 10,000-foot runway expansion for American and Kenyan aircraft. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called it “a very tangible commitment to our common defense” and “a strong signal to those who would attack us that we are resolved to defend ourselves.” U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) commander General Dagvin Anderson attended.
Kenya has since raised the stakes further. On June 19, 2026, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, President William Ruto announced a preliminary critical minerals agreement granting a U.S.-backed consortium preferential access to the Mrima Hill deposit in Kwale County—rare earth reserves valued at $62.4 billion and covering niobium, lithium, graphite, copper and nickel. China had competed for the same access, but Kenya went West. Washington agreed to Nairobi’s non-negotiable condition that all processing take place within Kenya, rather than being exported raw. That concession is also a strategic calculation: It ties American industrial investment to Kenyan soil at the same moment Washington is expanding its military footprint there.
Turkey, which holds a defense agreement with Mogadishu and operates the largest overseas military training facility on Somali soil, has the most to lose from this realignment.
Manda Bay’s operational logic is proximity to Somalia. In 2025, U.S. forces conducted 126 operations against al-Shabaab and the Islamic State-Somalia, nearly double the 66 recorded in 2019. By January 2026, AFRICOM reported 23 further strikes. The base has absorbed direct attack: In January 2020, 30 al-Shabaab fighters breached Camp Simba’s perimeter with mortars and rocket propelled grenades, killing a soldier and two American contractors. Jamestown analysts assess the runway expansion as a deliberate shift, targeting Somalia from Kenya rather than Djibouti, while hedging against a Chinese presence that Washington no longer can manage by proximity alone.
Mogadishu read the map. In January 2026, the Somali Federal Government canceled all bilateral agreements with the United Arab Emirates, annulling Emirati access to its ports and banning Emirati military and cargo aircraft. Somaliland and Puntland rejected the cancellation as being without legal standing.
Turkey, which holds a defense agreement with Mogadishu and operates the largest overseas military training facility on Somali soil, has the most to lose from this realignment. Ankara’s Horn strategy runs through Mogadishu. A Kenyan airfield upgraded for sustained AFRICOM operations, a $62 billion minerals corridor locked to Washington, and a Congress inching toward Somaliland recognition is the scenario Turkish planners fear and seek to forestall.
