Photo: Tyler A. McNeil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Djibouti is one of Africa’s smallest countries, with a population of about one million. Yet it hosts military facilities belonging to the United States, France, China, Japan and Italy, with other European forces operating from the French base. Few places on Earth have so many foreign militaries within a few miles of one another.
Location, location, location
Djibouti sits on the Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow strait between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Ships traveling between Asia and Europe through the Suez Canal must pass through it. Protecting that route, responding to piracy off Somalia and operating across East Africa and the Middle East all favor a base nearby. Djibouti has also been politically stable compared with many of its neighbors, and its government earns substantial revenue from leasing land.
Who is there
- France, the former colonial power, has kept forces in Djibouti since independence in 1977.
- The United States operates Camp Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion post near the international airport. It is the only permanent U.S. military base in Africa and hosts thousands of personnel.
- Japan opened a facility in 2011 to support anti-piracy operations, its first overseas base since World War II.
- China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017, near the Doraleh port.
- Italy maintains a support base, and other countries have used Djiboutian facilities for counter-piracy missions.
The Red Sea in the headlines
The strategic value of the strait was underlined from late 2023, when Houthi forces in Yemen launched attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, leading many shipping companies to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope and drawing naval deployments from the United States and European countries. Djibouti’s ports and bases were central to the response.
A Capital Region footnote
Overseas basing decisions ripple back to defense communities at home. The Capital Region is home to the Watervliet Arsenal, established in 1813 and the oldest continuously operating arsenal in the United States, which manufactures large-caliber cannon tubes for the Army, and to the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing at Stratton Air National Guard Base in Scotia, known for its ski-equipped LC-130 aircraft that support polar research. Congressional defense budgets, debated each year, set the work and staffing at both.
