Can you really trust Cairo when it talks about joining the talks?
Von Clausewitz often said that war is the continuation of politics by other means or by violent means. According to recent reports by some Arab sources, unless Ethiopia signs an agreement with it before starting to fill the GERD dam, Egypt will use all the tools available to it in order to stop the filling and by implication, the completion of the GERD project. This is obviously a thinly veiled threat of war or use of force on the part of Cairo, according to the report. The last nine years of the Nile and GERD disputes grew slowly taking a zigzag path now and then leading to speculations about a possible hot conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia. Will Egypt and Ethiopia go to war over the GERD? Despite grim predictions by some pessimistic media outlets and diplomatic gurus, this is unlikely to happen and it is not difficult to see why.
True, the dispute over the GERD is sometimes passing from a passive, verbal phase to an active and militaristic language. There is a fundamental question that will inevitably arise in due course: Why is warmongering increasingly becoming the language of diplomacy while all peaceful avenues are far from being used to diffuse the tension over the GERD dispute? What are the factors and actors that are pushing the dispute from the round table to the battlefield? What does the future scenario or scenarios will look like? Will war between the disputants help resolve their differences?
Arab media are always awash with pessimistic reports and analyses on the Nile waters, the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and issues related to them. The latest reports focus on the trilateral talks between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, the political game being played by the Egyptian side in connection with their strategy of aborting the filling of the dam as scheduled as well as warmongering as an alternative to what they often call Ethiopia’s “unilateral decision” to go ahead with the scheduled filling of the dam.
An online news outlet calling itself Al- Monitor for instance last week reported that Egypt is exploiting Sudan-Ethiopia tension to advance position on GERD talks. According to the same report, Egypt is leaving no stone unturned to take use the recent Sudan-Ethiopia border incident to win over Khartoum to its not so hidden cause of disrupting the filling of the GERD dam and if possible sabotage the entire project by any means available.
According to recent diplomatic developments, Egypt’s options on GERD are increasingly becoming not only limited but also dysfunctional. Cairo sought Washington’s assistance in its dispute with Ethiopia over the GERD and this has already proved a fiasco. It then sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council urging it to put pressure on Ethiopia to postpone if not
abandon its dam filling time table. Previously, Cairo tried and failed to rally the Arab League behind it in the same dispute. This is too has proved a failure. Both its regional and diplomatic efforts to sabotage Ethiopia’s legitimate quest have so far backfired.
Why did they backfire? One does not have to rack their brain in order to find an answer to this question. They backfired or failed simply because Egypt’s demands are not legitimate, truthful and its intentions have never been honest because it claims are always based on its anachronistic colonial time agreements that have outlived their time and should be kept in the museum of lost memories.
The first thing Egypt should have done when it started its dispute with Ethiopia was to abrogate all archaic agreements and start anew by draft new agreements based on 21 century regional and global realities. Egypt has obviously failed to do its homework not because it is a lazy student of history but because it cannot produce a new and rational argument to defend its position on the use of the Nile waters in general and the construction of the GERD dam in particular.
As it is unable to come up with fresh ideas, Cairo chose to hoodwink, threaten or cheat Ethiopia and mislead the international public opinion by sticking to a piece of document that has outlived its time. The colonial time agreements should be relegated to the scrap heap of history but Egypt chose to stick to it in the hope that the West or Great Britain would come to its rescue. This expectation has already been dashed. Had the Western world or the authors of the agreement inspired by the British colonialists were honest, they could have told their old colonial possession to abandon the agreement and write a new covenant that would reflect the best interests of the Egyptians themselves because colonial era agreements are generally drafted in the interest of the colonial powers.
Fast forward to the 21st century and Egypt’s intransigence and cunning diplomacy that it trying to find any pretext to dominate the arguments on the use the Nile waters as well as on the GERD is quite obvious. It is
generally agreed that diplomacy is the art of defending a country’s national interest by peaceful means. However, diplomacy has never lived up to the sacred principles of its founding fathers like Hans Morgenthau (i.e. Politics among Nations) according to whom “diplomacy must look at the situation from the point of view other nations and that nations must be willing to compromise on all issues that are not vital to them.”
Egyptians diplomacy neither looks at the situation from the point of view of other nations nor is it willing to compromise on all issues that are not vital to them. Instead of coming up with clear alternatives that would lead to compromise and mutual understanding, Egyptian diplomacy seems to have chosen the path of behind the door manipulations and backdoor dealings with one party to the dispute according to the report by Al-Monitor online news outlet.
“As tension increased between Sudan and Ethiopia, Egypt quickly intervened to push Khartoum to its side as trilateral negotiations on the Nile dam hit a wall over Addis Ababa’s insistence to start filling the dam in July.” Al-Monitor wrote. According to this report, Egypt is out to stop Ethiopia’s scheduled filling of GERD by any means even by luring one of the members of the triumvirate away from Ethiopia into the Egyptian fold which is assumed it could be on the side of the winning group.
Yet, Egypt’s overt and covert operations aspire to more serious objectives in view of the recent skirmishes along the Sudan- Ethiopia border that has obviously created a dangerous escalation in part due to Egypt’s behind the scene connections with the authorities in Khartoum.
Egyptian diplomacy on the Nile waters in general and on the GERD in particular is something like a knife that is sharpened to cut on both sides. On the one hand, Cairo is insisting on talks with Addis Ababa and on the other hand, and when conditions are permissive, it is trying to divide the negotiating team, and if possible pour oil on the incident that occurred along the
Sudan-Ethiopia border. This is nothing but a diplomacy of divide and rule (or divide and bully?), if there is anything like that at all.
In his definition of diplomacy, Morgenthau does not rule out the role of force in resolving disputes in relations among nations. He says that, “the objectives of foreign policy must be defined in terms of the national interest and must be supported with adequate power; and that the armed forces are the instrument of foreign policy…” What is important to note in this connection is that some of Morgenthau’s definitions of diplomacy and foreign policy are only relevant to the 20th century realities and like Egypt’s colonial-era agreements, some of them have outlived their time. This is the 21st century and any attempt to promote foreign policy through the instrument of power might not prove effective and might even be counterproductive. Foreign policy principles shaped during the colonial and imperialist era cannot be applicable in the age of globalization when diplomatic differences among nations cannot be resolved through the use of force.
This is actually why any attempt by Egypt to try to use anything other than peaceful negotiation to resolve its differences with the Nile riparian states is bound to boomerang or prove counterproductive. In this age of globalization, nations big or small, are capable of defending its national interest through peaceful diplomacy and if necessary, have the military capability to repel any attempt to impose power or use the threat of power to promote specific interests. In the final analysis however, the defining factor of any diplomatic outcome is not military power but peace and cooperation predicated on a win-win approach that is the essence of 21st century diplomacy.
So it is important for nations big or small to reevaluate their options before abandoning the peaceful diplomatic path and embark on an adventurist course of projecting or using military power to achieve a specific objective, and in the case of Egypt to torpedo the GERD project or delay the dam filling time table by creating all kinds of false pretexts.
As Morgenthau said some 70 or so years ago, a nation will best promote its interests in foreign policy by taking into account the interests of the other partner in the dispute and be willing to compromise even on all issues that are not vital to them. The recent decision by Egypt to join the talks on GERD filling process is worthy of encouragement because warmongering and the threat of conflict or division in the ranks of the participants at the walks are the worst alternatives course even Hans Morgenthau would not advise Egypt to take. The trouble is that Cairo is often changing gear in its diplomatic engagement and this time too, the fundamental question remains the following: Can you really trust Egypt when it talks about talks and join the round table?
The Ethiopian Herald June 21,2020
BY MULUGETAS GUDETA
