The Geopolitics of Egypt
or the Geopolitics of the Nile
Egypt is the Nile and the Nile is Egypt
Egypt, like many others, is a nation constrained by geography, yet no other state so influential has had such weakness as Egypt. The reason for this weakness? Most of Egypt is wasteland—Saharan wasteland. For this reason, Egypt and the Egyptians have been confined to the Nile.
As the longest river on Earth, the Nile needs no introduction. For Egyptians, their country starts at the Mediterranean coast, and ends at the Aswan Dam in the south. This portion of the country occupies ~35,000 km^2, out of a total 1 million. Around 99 percent of 100 million Egyptians live in this area. The capital, Cairo, is also situated along the Nile. More specifically, it is situated at the crossroads of the Nile delta, where the Nile spreads out and then drains into the Mediterranean.
Nile Be Dammed
The river is not an all-saving grace, however. The Nile is not practically navigable due to cataracts, basically rocks and other hazards blocking or impeding routes. The split at the Delta, as shown in the above diagram, does not in fact split into two as a look at a sattelite map would show. It splits into dozens of distributaries restricting further maritime traffic.
Land transport is far, far more expensive than maritime transport for its lower loading capacity. This does not include infrastructure costs either. As maritime trade is nigh impossible on the Nile, the Egyptians have to rely on land regardless, however. This requires huge infrastructure costs for construction and maintenance, made even worse by the fact that the areas along the Nile inhabited constitute a very thin and long strip of land. This means that a lot of land is occupied by infrastructure, land that could be used for agriculture or industry.
Making the infrastructure situation worse is that Egypt has to sustain this on both sides of the river. There is is much too much money needed to sustain this, money that doesn’t go to economic growth or social services, but maintenance.
The result is extreme poverty. Egypt has a lower GDP per capita than Iraq, a war torn nation, and even Iran, burdened by sanctions as it is.
The poverty is a feature. Population growth matching economic growth is unlikely to help. But infrastructure must go on.
And in order to keep infrastructure satisfactory, strong central governments have to rise up to better utilize the biggest resource Egypt has: abundant manpower. After all, building irrigation systems and roads is not an easy task. Corruption and inefficiency merely add to sky-high costs. In line with this, Egypt has never been a democracy. Its economic system has also, for millenia, been slavery.
While slavery had been abolished in 1877, Egypt’s population is still imprisoned. The “separated” Nile along with control of the thin infrastructure that connects it makes it easy to manage the population. He who controls the infrastructure controls the people—doubly so for Egypt.
As of now, Egypt is ruled by Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, who took control after ousting Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He claimed that Morsi threatened Egypt’s secular foundations. But that is just one excuse of a million he could have used. In reality, Sisi is just another authoritarian ruler in the Egyptian annals.
Isolation: A Brief History of Egypt
To further show how important the Nile is to Egypt, let’s examine a bit of its history.
Early human communities emerged under two conditions. First was water, to use for agriculture, while the second was isolation, isolation from human and animal predators.
The Nile exhibited both of these. To the east, west, and south, it was surrounded by desert, keeping foreign invaders away. Its vast desert’s lack of water and food also meant that it kept away animals. The Nile was also a stable river so, unlike Harappa, drought didn’t destroy Egyptian communities.
As these communities grew larger, they encountered one another and spread technology, mainly agricultural and steelworking. Then they formed city-states, kingdoms, and when those kingdoms were conquered by another, they formed the first Pharaonic dynasties.
After unification, the Egyptian’s were quite easily able to repel foreign invaders. This resulted in unprecedented stability and—pyramids. Yet these pyramids, and this stability, were also the harbingers of Egypt’s slow decline.
After the invention of satisfactory agriculture, tools, and weaponry strong enough to keep the invaders, already held up by the desert, away, Egypt’s technological edge slowly wisped away for lack of want and need. Symbolic of this, most of Egypt’s notable technologies were developed pre-Unification.
This truly destroyed the kingdom, for the riches of Egypt were alluring to all. As a result of technological development outside of the Nile, foreign invaders finally figured out how to conquer the deserts. And since then, save for two periods, Egypt has been dominated by foreign invaders, save for its modern era.
These invaders come through three routes. Through the Sinai and into the Nile Delta. Down the Nile from Sudan. Or from sea into the coast. The Sinai has been the main, and most successful, route. The Nubian invasion is the only one up the Nile that has succeeded. While the most notable naval invasion might be Napoleon’s campaign.
Modern Egypt and its Geostrategic Imperatives
After the first world war’s destruction and debt, the British withdrew their forces from Egypt. Soon, post-World War II, a coup in Egypt destroyed whatever influence was left. The coup was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. The father of Modern Egypt. Nasser also championed Nasserism, a pan-Arab ideology that sought to put Egypt, rightfully, at the head of the Arab world.
Soon after coming to power, Nasser was left with a dilemna—who would be King of the Mediterranean, or, who should he ally himself with? There was America, or the Soviet Union, two countries Egypt had no history with. The Suez Crisis, a British-French-Israeli invasion of the Suez Canal after its nationalization, chose for him. The Soviets it would be. It was too bad he chose wrongly.
Nasser had made a miscalculation. The Soviets were a land power, whereas the Mediterranean was meant to be dominated by naval powers. The result was two failed wars for Egypt, in 67 and 73. You can not fault him completely, however. The US had not made a mark on the mediterranean yet; its only operations so far were in the Atlantic and Pacific, but he was wrong nonetheless.
Further conflict with America was a fools move. Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s next dictator, realized this and recalibrated Egyptian foreign policy. Now, Egypt was able to utilize the Suez (with the help of the biggest navy on Earth), secure itself from Israeli interference, and got aid. But it gave up Nasserism.
There were further necessities along with the benefits of this recalibration. To make more money to fund infrastructure, Egypt had turned its food production into cotton production. This now meant that Egypt was a food importing country. This left it further indebted to the local naval power, America. It also signified the importance of maintaining the Suez.
The Suez was the route into and out of Africa, and thanks to the canal, was the route into and out of Asia. It connected two continents, one by land, other by sea. Fees from the Suez are an integral part of Egypt’s economy, and its control over the canal lets it become something more than the Nile. This is its second geostrategic imperative, the first being outlined above: maintaining good relations with the dominant mediterranean power.
The third imperative has come to the limelight very recently: maintain dominance upstream the Nile; into Sudan (and South Sudan), Ethiopia, and Eritrea, and as far further you can go. This is tough; the Nile extends thousands of miles. And Egypt has to control its own population too.
So far in its history, Egypt has, at most, extended its claws up to Sudan.
Contemporary Egypt
Egypt is mainly ruled by the military. This is by design. Nasser made the lives of dictators far easier during his reign as he sought to centralize power. Everything from banks to import/export firms to agricultural operations—already heavily influenced by the military under the system—was consolidated into a series of military oligarchies.
Hosni Mubarak, the third dictator of Egypt, allowed this to flourish, as did the two previous dictators. However, his son and would-be successor, Gamal Mubarak, wished to privatize instead. The military opposed this and so, when protestors rose up against rising prices, inequality, and a lack of freedoms, the military rose up as their protector.
Now, the military rules once more. But with increasing pressure from the West, its allies, to liberalize, the country still not having recovered from the economic effects of the Arab Spring, and the GERD issue, they have their plate full. Failure to achieve these might mean the deseating of the military forever, or the alienation of its western allies.
The Arab Spring has badly effected the tourism sector, a huge employer of millions, and left many in poverty and homelessness. Mismanagement has also resulted in heavy borrowing to artificially main the visage of a strong economy. Egypt’s $40 billion forex reserves are merely debt, used to show stability. All this is done with the help of the IMF. Growth posted is also debt-supported. While Sisi makes plans for a $58 billion dollar planned city, 60% of his population is vulnerable to, or in, poverty.
The military has further moved into the private sector, despsite its already large influence. This also coincides with the appointing “a military adviser [who] will be tasked with representing the Ministry of Defense in every governorate, as is the case with all other ministries”.
Sisi has also expended much over the last five years building Egypt’s arsenal. Egypt was the third largest importer of weapons in the world from 2015-2019.
Meanwhile, GERD, a planned dam in Ethiopia, has caused much turmoil over its effects on inflows of war upstream the Nile. The Nile is a matter of life and death for Egypt and Sisi has opaquely threatened war. But GERD presents immense opportunities for Ethiopia and it remains solid against Egyptian threats.
Sisi has now staked his public reputation on this whole issue as well. Letting it go through would be another large loss to public opinion of him.
The Muslim Brotherhood is also a threat. While the military is secular, the MB are Islamists, and this hostile relationship has resulted in them becoming bigger threats to each other by the day. The Muslim Brotherhood stands for everything the Military doesn’t, and vice versa. This leads into the other problem: Hamas.
Hamas wishes for an Islamist government in Egypt for support against Israel. This is the MB. So now the military has another threat, this time in its most volatile state, the Sinai. The military’s inaction against the terrorists operating there also annoys Israel. The resultant situation threatens the security the Egypt-Israeli peace sought to achieve.