How soft’ power shapes transboundary water interaction

June 3rd, 2013

Dr. Jeroen Warner, Dr. Mark Zeitoun & Dr. Naho Mirumachi

With monotonous regularity since the late 1980s NGOs, politicians or think tanks have predicted a water war could erupt any day now. Recently, a UK Minister predicted war in the middle run.1 No such thing has happened, though, and prominent water scholars have argued2,3 a war fought strictly over water is unlikely in the future.

That does not mean there is peace and harmony among co-riparians. Power differences and latent conflicts persist, usually under the radar of the basin hegemon but in full view of those who live their effects. The state of affairs in many transboundary basins can be characterised as a mix of cooperation and conflict4, with those benefitting from the status quo emphasising the former. Our first article, Transboundary Water Interaction 15, called this the ‘ugly’ side of cooperation.

A clue to understanding this situation, we argue in its sequel6, is to look at what lies beneath: how power is exercised. The ‘water wars’ discourse has simplistically focused on the exercise of hard power, predominantly violence and coercion. Both philosophical reasoning (Hannah Arendt) and empirically grounded hydropolitical work7 has shown, however, that rule based on fear and brute power has little hope in the long term. Some kind of legitimacy and consent is needed to perpetuate any unequal power relation. Empirically, we find relations between riparians to be governed by a wider spectrum of power instruments, from side payments and bribery to persuasion and inciting desire to emulating success. This wide range of nonviolent, co-optative power manifestations is collectively known as ‘soft power’: getting others to want what you want. Nye8 sought to explain how relations can be peaceful through the power of attraction without the need for a threat of violence. We find however that ‘soft’ power not only contains the positive power of attraction but also its negative, repellence, away from certain agendas and issues, and towards maintenance of a biased status quo.

Nye was reiterating Machiavelli’s understanding of power as a centaur, half man (arguably rational), half horse (based on strength). He is far more optimistic than Machiavelli about human progress towards eternal peace, buttressed by freedom and trade. Fragmented evidence to support this hope exists in transboundary water contexts; many treaties never really came off the ground, and even in highly integrated Europe, diplomatic crises over water are not unheard of.9

A ‘soft power’ perspective, then, is not yet sophisticated enough to explain power relations between riparians. Our framework of hydro-hegemony10 highlights how conflict, even if it is not open and visible, is structurally present between riparians (and groundwater users). In an integrated transboundary water configuration, interests between dominant and subaltern are harmonious; in a distributed power configuration, they are fundamentally at odds. Cooperation by the non-hegemonic actor, or its compliance to certain states of affairs, does not necessarily mean consensus. Successful framing by the stronger party as the common good (soft power), however, can result in power differences going uncontested and countries signing treaties that bring highly differential benefits. Unqualified calls for and claims to transboundary cooperation ‘of any sort, no matter how slight’11 are therefore as wrong-headed as are alarms over water wars. Policy and programmes promoting unqualified “cooperation” were criticised on the grounds that negative forms of cooperation need reform or resolution, not management or encouragement.

The Hydro-hegemony framework is indebted to the Gramscian concept of hegemony as ingrained in material and ideational structures pervading social systems.12,13 River negotiations are multi-level power games14 in which state representatives are the lynchpin. Representatives of hydro-hegemons can deny there being conflict and appear magnanimous, while knowing full well the odds are stacked in their favour. States frame their water interest in non-contestable security terms.15 Whether picked up, amplified and given material support, or purposely backgrounded, such discursive framing of issues matters.

An example may be helpful here. Egypt has long claimed a veto on any upstream ‘arrest’ of Nile waters for consumptive water use, through irrigation reservoirs, distribution systems and the like. Underpinned by one of the largest armies in the region, the national government has previously declared upstream dam-building to be a casus belli (a legitimate reason to start a war) should it lead to lower inflow into Egypt.16 It could be argued that this threat prevented Ethiopia, the Blue Nile upstream power, building dams in the past; alternatively there is also the material reality that the country could hardly fund and realise its own dam infrastructure. This penury is worsened by the stipulation of key multilateral funders that they will not fund transboundary projects that lack the endorsement of all riparian sates. The balance in favour of Egypt has also relied upon the moral and material support of the United States, to which it is one of the biggest allies in the region.

It’s not all about hard power. After Nasser’s 1953 revolution, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal and the building of the Aswan Dam, Egypt became a respected Southern leader. The government organised or condoned several cooperative, technical and political water fora on the river Nile (UNDUGU, TECCONILE, Nile 2002) on the unstated premise that these bodies would not tamper with Egypt’s self-ascribed water rights, laid down in treaties agreed with Sudan but none of the other Nile riparians in 1929 and 1959. The Sadat government’s signing of the Camp David treaty with Israel anointed the country as a ‘peacemaker’ in the eyes of influential superpowers, and the country has seen prominent nationals (Boutros-Ghali, Abu-Zeid) ascend to leadership positions in multilateral institutions, bestowing an aura of authority and legitimacy in the UN world order upon Egypt. In everyday interaction, upstream states have refrained from taking action against Egypt’s interest without prodding.

A recent shift in the Nilotic water-sharing status quo over the past (half-) decade however seems to reflect a shift in the hegemonic power balance. Egypt is arguably not as important to American interests as it used to be. Meanwhile China has used its own ‘soft power’ through the provision of upstream investment: buying oil in Sudan, supporting the giant Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (see The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Blue Nile: Implications for transboundary water governance) and investing in land in several Nile states. China’s non-interference in political relations and the persuasive example of its own economic success raises goodwill. Moreover, Egypt’s relative international standing as an ‘example’ has also seen a slide, following allegations of human rights violations, alienation from Israel, and failing megaprojects under Mubarak. Even before his overthrow, upstream states had taken the plunge and embarked on a Nile Treaty without Egypt.17 Egypt currently has little realistic alternative to joining the new arena of Nile negotiations and no longer holds defacto veto power over major upstream projects like the Grand Renaissance Dam.

Examination of this sub-text is important to understand what’s going on in basins around the world. Similar analyses are not only applicable to the familiarly contentious Euphrates/Tigris, Jordan, Ganges, Brahmaputra and Colorado basins, but also to seemingly peaceful European transboundary streams such as the Rhine and Scheldt.10 The incorporation of ‘soft’ power into the analysis of conflicts in hegemonic contexts provides insight into the choices riparian states (can) make or avoid in their transboundary water interaction; and into how negotiations and treaties can lead towards conflict management but not necessarily to conflict resolution. Power dynamics moreover show that no matter how hegemonic or even dominant a state, its hard and soft power are ultimately fluid.

References:

1. Harvey, F. (2012), “Water wars between countries could be just around the corner, Davey warns”, The Guardian, 22 March 2012.

2. Wolf, A. (1996) “Middle East Water Conflicts and Directions for Conflict Resolution.” Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (2020 Vision Initiative Monograph #12).

3. Allan, J, A (2001), The Middle East Water Question: Hydro-politics and the Global Economy. London: I.B. Tauris.

4. Mirumachi, N. and Allan, J.A. (2007). Revisiting Transboundary Water Governance: Power, Conflict, Cooperation and the Political Economy. CAIWA conference paper. http://www.newater.uni-osnabrueck.de/caiwa/data/papers%20session/F3/CAIWA-FullPaper-MirumachiAllan25Oct07submitted2.pdf

5. Zeitoun, M., Mirunmachi, N. (2008). “Transboundary water interaction I: reconsidering

conflict and cooperation”. International Environmental Agreements 8:297-316.

6. Zeitoun, M., Mirumachi, N. & Warner, J. (2011).”Transboundary water interaction II: Soft power underlying conflict and cooperation”. International Environmental Agreements 11:159-178.

7. Dinar, (2009). “Power asymmetry and negotiations in international river basins”. International Negotiation 14(2): 329-360.

8. Nye, J. (1990). Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New York: Basic Books.

9. Warner, J. and van Buuren, M.W, (2009). “Multi-Stakeholder Learning and Fighting on the River Scheldt”. International Negotiation 14(2) p. 419-440.

10. Zeitoun, M. and J. Warner. (2006). “Hydro-Hegemony: A Framework for Analysis of Transboundary Water Conflicts”, Water Policy 8: 435-460.

11. UNDP. (2006). Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis. Human Development Report 2006. New York, USA, United Nations Development Programme.

12. Selby, J. (2005), “Oil and water: the contrasting anatomies of resource conflicts”. Government and Opposition 40 (2): 200-224.

13. Davidson-Harden, A., Naidoo, A. and Harden, A. (2007), “The Geopolitics of the Water Justice Movement”, Peace, Conflict and Development 11 [Online]. http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org.uk/dl/PCD%20Issue%2011_Article_Water%20Justice%2Movement_Davidson%20Naidoo%20Harden.pdf

14. Warner, J. (2008), “Contested hydrohegemony: Hydraulic control and security in Turkey”, Water Alternatives 1(2): 271-288.

15. Buzan, B., Waever, O. and de Wilde, J. (1998), Security. A New Framework for Analysis. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

16. Warner, J., Sebastian, A. and V. Empinotti (2012), “Claiming (back) the land: The geopolitics of Egyptian and South African land and water grabs”, in Allan, J. A., Keulertz, M., Warner, J. and S. Sojamo (eds.), Handbook of Land and Water Grabs in Africa. London: Routledge.

17. Nicol, A. and A. Cascao (2011), “Against the flow – new power dynamics and upstream mobilisation in the Nile Basin”, Review of African Political Economy 38(128): 317 – 325.

Dr. Jeroen Warner is Assistant Professor of Disaster Studies at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He has written extensively on the politics of water. His most recent book is Making space for the river: Governance experiences with multifunctional river flood management in the US and Europe. Dr. Mark Zeitoun is Reader in Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. His primary research interests lie in the political economy of transboundary environmental governance in ‘development’ contexts. These interests have been cultivated by his role as co-lead in the London Water Research Group and the UEA Water Security Research Centre. Dr. Naho Mirumachi is Lecturer in Geography at the Department of Geography, King’s College London. Trained in political science, international studies and human geography, she has research interests in the politics of natural resources management, particularly water. She is Associate Editor of Water International.