abstract:"The Tinderbox" () is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a soldier who acquires a magic tinderbox capable of summoning three powerful dogs to do his bidding. When the soldier has one of the dogs transport a sleeping princess to his room, he is sentenced to death but cunningly summons the dogs to save his life.
All of the conflicts in this tinderbox, which controls shipping lanes from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, can potentially give rise to regional, and indeed global conflagrations between competing regional actors and global powers.