Realist Perspectives on Nile Politics: Conflict and Cooperation between Ethiopia and Egypt

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Northeast Africa, great power interests have often impeded local capabilities for effective statecraft in anarchy. However, construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Nile presents a revealing case study of evolving domestic constraints on foreign policy. Three realist perspectives may be drawn upon to analyze Nile Politics and the GERD through the prism of statecraft and statebuilding in contemporary Ethiopia. In the neoclassical realism analysis, Nile policymaking emerges as a murky outcome of elite preferences and threat constructions. In the subaltern realism analysis, Ethiopia’s construction of the GERD, in defiance of Egypt, is the culmination of a decade-long statebuilding project resulting in improved capabilities for statecraft. In the constructivist realism analysis, Nile politics reveal Ethiopia’s evolving interests and ideational constraints informing variations in preferences for assertive foreign policy orientation. Notably, and in contrast to the association of mainstream constructivist approaches with optimistic outcomes in international politics, analysis of the Nile conflict through constructivist realism reveals the most pessimistic outlook on peaceful resolution, compared to other approaches. Subaltern realism reveals the most optimistic outlook on the outcome of this conflict, due to greater incentives for cooperation introduced by statebuilding constraints in Ethiopia’s increasingly unstable contemporary polity.