Competing horizons: External actors in the Middle East and Africa
christian.diet…
Wed, 09/16/2026 – 13:34
7 minutes
Competing Horizons in Africa and the Middle East and the Gulf maps how 16 external actors engage through diplomacy, soft power, economic ties and military cooperation in two regions of strategic importance to the EU: Africa, and the Middle East and the Gulf. The picture is neither one of Western retreat nor a wholesale shift from West to East. Although trade is gradually tilting towards Asia – most clearly in the Middle East and the Gulf – no single rising challenger is displacing established partners across the board. Instead, external influence is crowded and layered. Actors specialise by dimension, subregion and, often, a small set of partner countries. No single actor leads across all four dimensions, while formal partnerships, diplomatic activity, trade, finance, military presence and voting alignment often point in different directions. Headline rivalries therefore capture only part of how external influence is distributed.
The EU remains an incumbent heavyweight, but it is largely holding its ground …read more