Egypt is a large country, occupying over 1 million square kilometers – over twice the size of
France. This simple statement is the most pernicious misunderstanding about Egypt; any
assessment of the country must begin with clarifying this misleading concept of the country’s
size. Yes, Egypt is physically large, but most of its territory is desert? wasteland. In fact, slightly
less than 35,000 of those 1 million square kilometers are actually inhabited – a land area roughly
the same size as the American state of Maryland or the European country of Belgium. This tiny
portion of massive Egypt is home to 80 million Egyptians.
Those 35,000 square kilometers, however, are not condensed into a convenient, easy-to-manage
Belgium-shaped chunk. Instead they are stretched out thinly, clinging to the banks of the Nile in
a strip that is almost always less than 30 kilometers wide. Only at the northern delta does this
zone of habitation finally widen and fan out into the Mediterranean. Cairo, the modern day
capital, sits at the point where the river transforms into the delta. Alexandria, Egypt’s premier
port and window on the world since the third century BC, sits near the western edge of the
alluvial fan.
Defining Characteristics
The Nile is hardly the perfect river. While its water flows are reliable -- so reliable that the rare
instances of drought are quite literally Biblical events -- the river is not actually navigable. At a
half dozen points along the Nile’s courses, water hazards -- called cataracts -- block navigation
by all but the smallest vessels. Navigation is possible between the cataracts, and this is where
Egypt’s tourist trade centers most of its activity, but there is very little commerce anywhere on
the river. At the delta the river splits – naturally as well as due to the hand of man -- into a
smattering of much smaller and shallower rivlets, largely eliminating maritime traffic on even
the river’s terminal course. Sightseeing barges on the Nile may be an indelible portion of Nile
culture going back to the pharaohs, but their impact is almost exclusively romantic and only
rarely economic.
Taken together these Nile characteristics – lack of navigability and its sinuous nature – deeply
impact Egyptian social, political and economic development.
Transport via water is cheaper than land transport by a minimum of an order of magnitude:
waterways are generally free, and the cost of fuel per unit of cargo is remarkably less. The lack
of navigable waterways in Egypt means that goods can only be transported by land, with all of
the added expenses and inefficiencies that entails. The very shape of Egypt’s populated lands
compound his problem. Since the population lives along the long thin stretch of the Nile’s course
-- as opposed to a more compact arable zone such as, say, Mesopotamia -- Egypt requires far
more infrastructure to link together the same amount of territory. The result is Egypt’s extreme
poverty. Slavery was the country’s economic system for millennia, and even in the modern day
its per capita GDP (nominal or PPP?) is but $2000 annually, the absolute lowest in the Arab
world save for civil war-torn Yemen. Are we sure about these figures? If you are going by
nominal figures, I think Iraq is slightly lower, making Egypt 3rd most.
The lack of a natural transport artery means that what scarce capital the Egyptians do have must
be concentrated in order to construct a limited artificial infrastructure. This infrastructure is
required for more than simply the transport of goods. Egypt – all of Egypt, even the Nile Valley
– is a desert. This is not the American Great Plains or the Volga region of Russia where
irrigation augments low rainfall to encourage crop growth. This is hard desert where agriculture
of any kind is impossible without omnipresent irrigation. These roads and irrigation canals do
not build themselves, and they are not something that a small political authority can manage.
They require planning and the pooling of capital and manpower on a national scale.
The result is that for all of recorded Egyptian history, central authorities have managed (critics
would say horded) what small amounts of capital they country has been able to scrape together.
As those authorities have controlled both the money and the infrastructure that flows from it,
they have found it a simple manner to dominate utterly the masses. Modern President Hosni
Mubarak make like to liken himself to the ancient pharaohs in order to bolster the legitimacy of
his rule, but in reality his method of managing the population is starkly similar to how Egypt’s
population has always been managed: directly.
If the Nile is the country’s dominant feature, and concentration (of population, resources and
power) is its dominant characteristic, then isolation and domination are the dominant themes in
Egypt’s foreign and military policy.
More than any other country in the Eurasian-African landmass, Egypt is alone. The sheer size of
the country’s surrounding deserts sharply limits interaction, much less invasion. During the
pharaonic period this was an all-important blessing as it limited Egypt’s interactions with the
outside world to the handful of intrepid travelers who were willing to cross the vast tracts of
desert to visit Egypt. \
The only interaction with the outside world that was a regular feature of Egyptian policy was
dominating the thin isthmus of land between Africa and Eurasia. By controlling the Suez route
the Egyptians regardless of government could tap the rest of the world utterly on their own
terms, allowing the pharaohs to exist in splendid wealth and isolation. Control of this zone
continues to be a central plank in Egyptian policy to the current day, with this tract of territory
better known in modern times as the Suez Canal.
But this splendid isolation had a chilling impact upon Egyptian society. When the weather is
always sunny, and the river always provides all the water you need, and no one invades you for a
couple of millennia, one’s view of existence becomes somewhat skewed. Innovation does not so
much as disappear as it is never generated in the first place. Throughout the three millennia of
pharaonic rule Egypt failed to advanced economically, socially, militarily or technologically. The
mindset of eternal stability was so deeply entrenched that when ancient Egyptian scholars
discovered that they had failed to account for the extra day in leap years, instead of adjusting
their calendars they decided it would be less disruptive to wait until the calendar’s 1461 year
long cycle completed to make the correction. When that day arrived the scholars changed their
mind, as no deleterious impacts had been felt in the past millennia and a half. It wasn’t until the
Greeks ruled Egypt in the third century BC (Ptolemy III) that the concept of the leap year was
initiated, and until the Romans controlled the Nile in the first century BC (Augustus) that it was
actually codified.
Such a blasé approach to life was all well and good while Egypt was isolated, but as the rest of
the world advanced economically, socially, militarily and technologically, Egypt was left behind.
By the time of the classical Greeks Egypt had stagnated sufficiently that anyone who could reach
them could conquer them. Foreign domination became such a regular feature of Egyptian life
that the last time before the 20th century that the Egyptians ruled themselves at all was 31 BC.
These invaders approached Egypt from one of three avenues of approach.
The first approach is down the Nile to the south. By the time the Nile reaches Khartoum – the
capital of modern-day Sudan and the point at which the Nile splits into its two major tributaries,
the White and Blue Niles – rainfall has increased to the point that limited agriculture is possible
without irrigation. With non-irrigated agriculture comes broader population bases and the
possibility of political entities that could challenge Egyptian control of the Nile. Such potential
challenges come in the form of a direct military assault, or sufficient diversion of the Nile’s
waterways that Egypt could die of thirst. Egypt has only been conquered once from this direction
– by the Nubians in the 7th century BC. In the modern era the presence of the Aswan High Dam
and the lake it forms (Lake Nasser) greatly limit north-south interactions on the Nile.
The second approach is from the east along the coastal plain, through the Sinai desert into from?
the Levant. With the exception of the Nubian invasion, all successful land-based attacks on
Egypt have come from this direction. (An approach from the west along the Mediterranean
coastal plain is largely impossible, as the coastal region actually becomes more arid as one
moves into Libya. Sizable populations cannot be supported again until modern-day Tunisia, the
site of ancient Carthage. As such no successful attack has ever been launched from this direction,
with Rommel’s World War II attack being the most recent, and most historically notable,
attempt). The African-Eurasian landbridge allows for sea support, and the distance to the
relatively well-watered Levant is “only” 400 kilometers.
However, foes attacking from the Levant are not actually from the Levant, simply using the
Levant as a jumping off point for forces that originated even further afield. Even assuming that
the fractious ethnic groups of modern-day Israel, Jordan, Syria and Beirut Lebanon could unite
themselves (as has never happened in human history), the Levant is simply incapable of
supporting a large enough population to project power across the Sinai Desert and dominate
densely populated Egypt. In fact, in the one period of Egyptian history where the pharaohs did
leave the Nile region, they conquered the Levant – not the other way around. The Persians,
Mongols and Ottoman Turks all attacked Egypt via this route. Did the Mongols get as far Egypt?
Thought they were stopped in modern day West Bank…
The final approach to the Egyptian core territory is from the sea. Since Egypt is entirely desert
and nearly all of its population lives inland on the Nile, there are neither trees available for
building ships nor a population with the sea in their blood. Consequently Egypt has always been
a land power. Anyone who can project force across the Mediterranean can quite easily dominate
Alexandria and use it to wrestle control of Egypt from whoever happens to be ruling it at the
time. The Greeks, Romans, French and British have all dominated Egypt in such a manner.
Egypt’s Geopolitical Imperatives
1: Secure the Nile from the delta to as far upstream as is feasible.
Pushing north to the Nile Delta is an obvious requirement for any successful Egyptian
government. The delta region is wide and flat, and eons of seasonal flooding have left it with
deep layers of fertile sediment. The delta’s compact shape allows for some degree of economies
of scale to be achieved in infrastructure development as well. But perhaps most importantly it
allows for contact with the outside world. Egypt is crushingly capital poor, and gaining even
indirect access to global capital markets is no small achievement. Extending Egyptian influence
downstream to the Mediterranean is absolutely critical.
The opposite is true when Egypt pushes upstream; it quickly encounters diminishing returns. The
Nile Valley narrows the further south one goes, increasing relative costs of development. In time
the valley does widen, but by the time it reaches Khartoum Egypt finds the area impossible to
control. That far south rainfall finally increases to the point that populations can exist beyond the
river. This places Egypt both in competition for the river’s water resources and robs it of the
insulation of the deserts. And there is always the tyranny of distance. Khartoum is fully 1600km
from Aswan, and 2600km from Cairo. The supply chains necessary to occupy these far southern
regions are at the extreme upper limit of what Egypt can sustain, and even that only when Egypt
is powerful and its southern neighbors are weak.
Such a balance of forces is not the situation today. In modern times Egyptian power stops cold at
the northern shore of Lake Nasser. The creation of the Aswan High Dam flooded the Nile Valley
north to and beyond the Sudanese border, drowning all connecting infrastructure with it. At
present there are no significant infrastructure links between Egypt and Sudan.
2: Absolutely command the Suez isthmus.
Egypt is poor. Crushingly so repetitive. Sustaining civilization of any type in Egypt requires
gathering together what scarce capital the region has, and then exploiting the captive Egyptian
labor pool to build and maintain omnipresent water management systems. Failure to do this
results in famine and civilization breakdown, the two overriding fears of Egyptian governments
in general and the pharaohs in particular.
The only means of accelerating the critical waterworks efforts is to find a reliable source of
supplemental income. In modern times Egypt has adapted its agricultural base to produce cotton,
a crop whose demand for high temperatures, high solar input and high water supplies are
uniquely suited to the Egypt. This has indeed supplied the country with additional income
streams that have stabilized the system, but the cotton income has a not-so-hidden cost. Every
hectare of land that is dedicated to cotton is one not dedicated to wheat. As cotton output
increased, Egypt found itself importing more and more wheat. Today roughly 60 percent of the
country’s wheat requirements are imported.
There is only one source of capital that the Egyptians have available that they can absolutely
control: the Suez crossing.
Most of the Middle East is as capital poor as Egypt. With the exceptions of the Ottomans and
modern day petroleum emirates, it has long been a region where commerce passes through – not
where it originates or terminates. There are three primary routes that connect capital-rich Europe
with capital-rich Asia.
The first is the long, dangerous and extremely expansive all-land route known as the Silk Road,
which requires its users to submit to Turkish authority and then travel by land through Central
Asia. Even if such brave traders survive the over six thousand continuous kilometers of
barbarian-infested steppes, this route ends in interior China. Another mix of relationships are
required to access other parts of Asia. In modern times there are precisely two railroad paths that
comprise the modern Silk Road, and reaching from Western Europe to China requires traversing
no fewer than four countries – and typically as many as ten.
The second route begins via the Mediterranean and requires transfer to land-based routes in the
Levant, a region known for its disharmony since well before Biblical times. Traders must choose
between the mountains of Anatolia, the political intrigues of Syria (considered a region rather
than a country until the modern era), or the security concerns of Palestine (modern day Israel)
before accessing Mesopotamia. Then – assuming that Mesopotamia is not at war with Persia,
some Levantine power, or both – one must reload his cargo on someone else’s ship at one of the
Persian Gulf’s extremely poor ports for a second, much longer, sail to or around India and South
East Asia.
Or one could use the third option, and simply cross the 160km isthmus where Africa meets the
Suez Peninsula. Yes, cargo loadings and unloading were required at both ends, but the short
distance greatly simplified logistics. Additionally, the Suez region lies just close enough to Egypt
that Egypt had an interest in facilitating trade with (un)loading infrastructure, but not so close
that one actually had to transverse Egypt’s densely populated territories. It wasn’t until 1990 that
the Egyptian population began to expand towards the region’s northern extremities. Most of the
route remains a passage through hard desert.
Then of course there is the issue of canals. Under a variety of governments, the Egyptians
endeavored to link the Nile region to the southern side of the Suez Isthmus where it joined the
Red Sea in order to better profit from this trade. Engineering difficulties and the vulgarities of
desert weather and Egyptian political changes (often including the disorganizing impacts of
being conquered) typically prevented the route from being open for more than a few decades at a
time. The modern day version of this route is the (French-built) Fresh Water Canal (aka the
Cairo-Ismailia Canal), although a multitude of low bridges make it useless for transport.
In the 1869 the French completed a north-south route now known famously as the Suez Canal.
Transport costs fell so drastically that choosing the Suez route for Europe-Asian trade shifted
from being the logical choice to the only choice. The Silk Road, in decline for centuries due to
the increasing popularity of deepwater navigation, died outright. Even in the modern post-Soviet
era it shows few meaningful signs of regenerating.
In 2009 Egypt earned approximately $5 billion in canal fees, or about 3 percent of GDP. That
may not sound like a large influx of funds, but bear in mind that total Egyptian exports during
that time were less than $35 billion, total government revenues were only $51 billion and a lockfree level-water canal like Suez requires minimal maintenance. The Suez isn’t the lifeblood of
the Egypt, that’s obviously the Nile, but control over Suez does let Egypt aspire to something
more promising than destitution WC. If there is something that the Egyptians of all eras will
fight for, it is control over this tiny sliver of land, and the canal that now comes with it.
3: Maintain friendly relations with the dominant sea power of the Mediterranean.
Egypt is an inveterate land power. Very little of its population has exposure to ocean, Egypt has
little of the materials required to build a navy regardless of historical era, and Egypt possess even
less of the capital necessary to fund the expensive of a navy. It is also an extremely weak power.
Egypt has always lacked the intellectual traditions and capital generation capacity required to
advance itself.
Once the ancient period ended around 1000 500? BC, the rest of the world had moved on with
new technologies that the Egyptians were only rarely able to absorb, much less develop
themselves. As such Egypt’s independence and even survival can easily be threatened by any
land power that can cross the desert, or any hostile sea power that can take over Alexandria or
even simply limit Egypt’s contact with the outside world.
These two characteristics require Egypt – regardless of government – to seek as friendly of a
relationship with the region’s dominant sea power, regardless of who that power happens to be.
Success in this insulates Egypt from any nearby land powers, guarantees Egypt’s ability to
export whatever products it wishes, and ensures a steady income stream from the Suez isthmus.
But perhaps the biggest benefit that Egypt gains from such a relationship is that the dominant
naval power will apply its own resources to protecting and strengthening Egypt. Whether the
dominant naval power allies with or occupies Egypt, it has a vested interest in maximizing its
activity across Suez. The most notable and long-lasting example of such interest was the French
construction of the Suez Canal, something that the Egyptians with their extremely low propensity
to incorporate – much less develop – technology could have never constructed themselves.
In the modern day readers will undoubtedly note what this document does not consider to be an
Egyptian imperative: conflict with Israel. It is one of the conventional wisdoms of the modern
world that while Egypt may have signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, that it is an awkward
peace only held together by the force of American military power.
In this case the conventional wisdom is incorrect. The misperception is rooted in the uncertain
geopolitical position of the region in the interregnum between the pre-World War II era when the
United Kingdom was the Middle East’s dominant power, and the post-World War II era when
the United States was.
Due to large-scale destruction in Europe during the two World Wars, the European empires
collapsed. Specifically to Egypt, the United Kingdom withdrew its forces in 1922 and its
influence was purged by a coup in 1953 led by General Nasser. It was a time of extreme flux as
the European powers were fading, while Soviet and American power rose.
Within Nasser’s government there was a belief that the United States would not succeed the
United Kingdom as the Mediterranean’s dominant naval power. Soviet influence was expanding
rapidly and in the late 1940s it appeared that Soviet-backed revolts in both Greece and Turkey
could lead to the Soviet navy entering the Eastern Mediterranean in force. The charisma of
Nasser combined with robust direct Soviet subsidization of Egypt – of which the Aswan High
Dam is the most visible example – enabled a normally sedate and reactionary Egypt to take the
offense against the one non-Nile region that it had ever attempted to conquer in its lengthy past:
the Levant. Attempts in 1948, 1967 and 1973 all failed, in part because Nasser had misread the
geopolitical tea leaves.
By the late-1970s Greece and Turkey had largely purged themselves of Soviet influence and
were committed NATO members. American naval power ruled the region and American military
and economic support for Israel made a continuation of Nasser’s policies incredibly dangerous.
American military domination of the region made Egypt’s continued access to global markets
dependent upon American largess. The wars with Israel had halted income from the often-mined
Suez Canal, and in 1956 the French, English and Israelis nearly deprived Egypt of the canal
outright in a military action that was only undone by the threat of direct intervention by the
Americans. And Israel’s threat during the 1973 Yom Kippur war to bomb the Aswan High Dam
– whose destruction could well have ended Egypt completely – made the concept of continuing
hostilities potentially suicidal.
And so Cairo – first under Sadat and then under Mubarak – changed Egypt’s alliance structure
from one deadly to Egyptian interests to a more ‘normal’ structure that reflected geopolitical
realities. A de facto alliance with the United States granted not only regular commerce, aid and a
reopening of the Suez Canal, but a guarantee that the Israelis would not push into – much less
past – the Sinai Peninsula.