Egypt’s Foreign Policy Paradox on the River Nile (First Published in 2014, still relevant)

#Itsmydam

One can boldly argue that Egypt’s foreign policy orientation towards the Nile has always been proactive. Given the determinants of foreign policy – ranging from the composition of foreign policy decision-making units to the contemporary balance of power configuration at the global or regional level – one can easily find as many variables as one wishes to justify or defend the vigorous foreign policy orientation of the Republic. Accordingly, Egypt has intensified diplomatic warfare against the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), aiming at neutralising many of Ethiopia’s perceived allies and resurrecting the age-old fault lines to direct considerable pressure on Ethiopia.

Egyptian foreign policy orientation emanates from the perception that the Nile River stretches beyond their geographic boundary. Considering that 85pc of their population resides across the basin, the Nile River constitutes the cognitive behaviour of Egyptian foreign policymakers.

Generally, the prime objective of foreign policy for Egyptians is to secure the uninterrupted flow of the water using whichever alternative is possible. Their options include complete control of the basin, cooperative diplomacy, threatening to use force and undermining the sovereignty of riparian states, especially Ethiopia. Be this as it may, securing the waters from potential threats has always been the centre of their foreign policy, while securitisation remains its primary pillar.

If one is to go by the constructivist stance, a security issue is a threat to the survival of a nation. Taking this stance, Egypt declared that any interruption to the flow of water into the Aswan High Dam is an existential threat to Egypt. It seems valid if one considers the Egyptian situation alone.

A country whose average rainfall is close to zero and where almost 85pc of the entire population resides in the basin is believed to do anything possible to secure the only source of life – the Nile River. On the other hands, agriculture, which uses 86pc of the available water, accounts for only 14pc of Egypt’s gross domestic product (GDP) and Egypt imports more than half of its food consumption annually, though it inefficiently uses the water.

Therefore, the securitisation of the Nile River by Egypt is mostly a political process rather than a survivalist one. According to the securitisation division of labour along the Nile Basin, Egypt securitises the water and Ethiopia ‘de-securitises’. Accordingly, the 1959 agreement can best be understood as the peculiar measure Egypt has taken to ensure its security, forcing Ethiopia to re-write this agreement by the CFA.

Development of trans-boundary water resources has complexities brought by tension in riparian relations and snags regarding institutional arrangements. Dams, with all the criticisms against them, are the triumph of human civilisations. They provide opportunities, such as energy to power industries, irrigation to produce food and facilitate the growth and development of cities even in deserts.

Dams are also symbols of national pride, as in the case of Aswan High Dam of Egypt and the GERD of Ethiopia. President Nasser’s speech about the Aswan High Dam in Egypt and the all-time resource mobilisation for the GERD project in the Ethiopian case provides a vivid explanation for the above assertion.

The GERD is hailed as the patron of the Growth & Transformation Plan (GTP) in the Ethiopian context and the architect for regional integration, as far as the Eastern Nile Basin is concerned. If David Ricardo’s comparative advantage principle still rules global economics, Ethiopia must engage in producing electricity, not only to supply energy for its ever-growing economy but also to support its neighbours in solving their energy insecurity (poverty). For instance, the energy insecurity in Egypt has forced the government to allocate millions of dollars annually to electricity production using petroleum, though it is still not adequate.

Despite many studies, indicating the full range of benefits, downstream countries will obtain from GERD, Egypt, unlike Sudan, is waging diplomatic warfare against the dam. This irrational behaviour of Egyptian foreign policy can be explained by the nexus between regional and domestic variables.

At the regional level, the self-portrayed ‘master of the Nile’ – Egypt – has been trying to dominate the hydropolitics of the Nile Basin and keep their perceived hegemony intact. The Aswan High Dam and the 1959 agreement between Sudan and Egypt are the core measures Egypt took to sustain its dominance over the basin. Consequently, Egypt opposes any development that they think might erode its hegemony – even if it involves re-writing the International Panel of Experts (IPoE) report, which Egypt signed by establishing another panel of experts.

On the other hand, Egypt’s unfounded behaviour can be elucidated based on how Egypt writes its identity through its national interest and vice versa. In many cases, political identities are the ‘without sets’ of otherness. Otherness makes boundaries visible.

Such difference over core matters entailing a conflict of interests, such as the Nile River, increases the possibility of transforming differences into a threat. Thus, a state’s survival as a primary unit in contemporary international relations is determined by how effectively it capitalises on discourses of danger and how it crafts its foreign policy to serve this interest.

Governments feed on a discourse of threat to endure and rule, and their foreign policy provides the means. Accordingly, consecutive Egyptian governments lived on the discourse of threat they composed on the Nile River. Given the current instability in the Egyptian Republic, the government may use the Nile card to arouse as much discourse of threat as possible, to direct the attention of Egyptians towards their political identity constructed at the expense of Ethiopia.

It is palpable that Egypt will try to connect the GERD with Israel and Turkey so that Egypt can get moral and financial support from the Arab League countries. If one simply observes superficially, the Egyptian strategy appears valid.

Will Egypt get the same moral and financial support as Palestine?

No, they will not mainly because the Palestinian people are fighting for their occupied territories given unjustly to Israel by the British. The Ethiopian people are fighting for the ‘right to use the Nile River’ given unfairly to Egypt by the British.

Egypt is Britain’s Israel in the Nile Basin. Therefore, it is irrational, if not delusional, to expect countries with a reputation for fighting injustice to fight for the other side.

Egypt must come to its senses and start to reconcile reality. The GERD has benefits for all Nile Basin countries and the ‘old school’ that has been promulgating unilateralism, and a desire to remain the ‘masters of the Nile’ must give way to the ‘new school’ aiming at basin-wide cooperation – energy cooperation, to be specific.

The future of energy cooperation relies on the ability to move away from the traditional conception of foreign policy orientation that resulted in the securitisation of relations along the Nile River towards pragmatic reconciliation of the prevailing energy insecurity. Only then can the riparian countries of the Nile River embrace energy cooperation. The Sudanese have shown their readiness to cooperate on mutually benefiting projects, such as the GERD.

Egypt, however, seems locked in traditional narratives of dictating terms on matters of the Nile River under the disguise that Egypt is nothing but the Nile.