Trump’s Latest Remarks About GERD Raise Questions About His Understanding Of This Dispute

Siding with Egypt signals support for its next proxy war on Ethiopia that could destabilize key US allies.

Trump scandalously predicted during his first term that Egypt might bomb the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) so it wasn’t surprising that he brought those two’s dispute up several time this year so far. The first was during his call with Sisi in February, he then posted on social media about it twice over the summer, and he finally mentioned it again during his meeting with NATO chief Rutte. Each time he described it as a regional problem that the US is helping to resolve in order to avert war.

His framing of that aforesaid problem, especially in his latest remarks where he lent credence to Egypt’s discredited fearmongering that GERD’s completion would cut off the Nile’s flow if its construction didn’t do so already, raise questions about his understanding of this dispute at the very least. GERD’s purpose is to help fully electrify what’s the second most populous country in Africa at around 130 million people and its fastest-growing economy, not blackmail Egypt for unknown reasons like Cairo speculates.

Only 55% of Ethiopians had electricity as of 2022, with the remainder mostly residing in the rural areas that are prone to foreign-exacerbated unrest and even terrorist insurgencies. Fully electrifying Ethiopia is therefore an economic and security imperative, the successful fulfilment of which stabilizes the region and beyond by reducing the risk of huge refugee outflows and new terrorist sanctuaries. Regrettably, Egypt has long aspired for hegemony in the Horn, to which end it’s sought to destabilize Ethiopia.

This has taken the form of supporting Eritrea (both its prior rebel-separatist cause and its recent anti-Ethiopian campaign since late 2022), the TPLF government-turned-rebels-turned-regional-government during the Northern Conflict from 2020-2022, and previously (and soon once again?) Somalia as proxies. Falsely fearmongering about GERD was always just a public means for falsely justifying the aforesaid meddling, both of which it still continues in pursuit of three interconnected hegemonic goals.

The first is to “Balkanize” Ethiopia along ethno-regional lines, which segues into the second goal of expanding Egypt’s sphere of influence over the divided-and-ruled remnants, with this facilitating the final one of exploiting the hydrological, mineral, and labor resources within Ethiopia’s then-former lands. Trump evidently doesn’t know that Egypt’s furtherance of these goals could destabilize his EU and Gulf allies by risking huge refugee outflows and leading to the creation of new terrorist sanctuaries.

Therefore, in order for the American dimension of the creative Ethiopian diplomacy that was proposed here in early July to bear fruit, Trump’s gross misunderstanding of the Egyptian-Ethiopian rivalry and the GERD dispute within it must first be corrected. This can most realistically be achieved via a forthcoming diplomatic campaign that engages the US and its two aforesaid partners with more direct stakes in Ethiopia’s stability, all three of whom have close ties with Egypt, and candidly discussing everything.

This is more urgent than ever after Ethiopia’s top diplomat warned earlier in the month about an impending Eritrean-TPLF offensive that would be Egyptian-backed given the regional context. If the proposed diplomatic campaign doesn’t achieve tangible results, namely all three but especially the US coercing Egypt into reconsidering this serious proxy war escalation then it would suggest that Trump has ulterior motives for supporting Egypt and thus doesn’t innocently misunderstand this regional dispute.