Decisive Point Podcast

his article provides background and context for regional trends and historic agreements focused on the Nile River Basin, offers a comprehensive assessment of security challenges, and presents focus areas for future investment and cooperation. The policy recommendations will serve American interests better and improve agricultural practices in the region. Without a marked alteration of existing aid from Western countries, the water scarcity situation will continue without producing the required infrastructure improvements.

Read the original article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/8/

Episode Transcript

Stephanie Crider (Host)

Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 Gerald J. Krieger)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Colonel Gerald J. Krieger, author of “Water Wars of the Future: Myth or Reality?,” featured in Parameters’ Spring 2022 issue. Krieger works at US Army Forces Command. Previously, he served as an associate dean of strategic studies at the National Defense University of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has published several articles on wide-ranging topics and is primarily interested in international relations, with a focus on the greater Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the South China Sea and US foreign policy in these regions.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

First, I really just want to thank you for joining me today. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m excited to talk about your article, “Water Wars of the Future: Myth or Reality?” It dials in on the Nile River basin and the security challenges there. It offers policy recommendations that will serve American interests better and improve agricultural practices in that region. Can you lay the groundwork for us? How do things like population growth and climate change affect this topic?

(Krieger)

Well, when most people think of the Nile River basin, or NRB, water scarcity is not something that comes to mind. It almost seems counterintuitive that there would be areas . . . and water is going to be an issue in the basin because it’s the second-longest river in the world. However, that’s not quite true.

Egypt, for example, is one of the most arid countries. And some around the region get very little—up to 10 millimeters a year—of rainfall. So, climate change is exacerbating water access issues in already-arid regions. In addition, population growth around the planet is going to approach nine billion by 2050, based on UN estimates. That Nile River basin is expected to double and approach nearly one billion people in that region alone. Egypt’s population, with 100 million people, is expected by 2030 to hit 128 million.

So all of these things are contributing factors. Just seven years ago, for instance, in sub-Sahara (sub-Saharan) Africa, not necessarily just the Nile River basin, there were 783 million people without access to clean drinking water, which adds to health and nutrition issues and things like that. And climate change, irregular rainfall patterns, can cause floods, which, obviously—loss of life and devastating consequences.

So then droughts, multiyear droughts in particular, in the Nile River basin alone, there’s 300 million people living on less than a dollar a day. So, they’re on that cusp of existence, you know, where little things kind of add up and make a huge difference over time. And, in particular, if you look at climate change and projected patterns and different models, temperature in Egypt . . . expected to increase about two degrees Celsius over the next century.

So there are patterns where people are living right now that it’s going to be more challenging in the future. And then, millions of tons of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere only contribute to these patterns, making things less predictable, impacting the level of the Nile River. These variability water levels impact the livelihoods of people. People up and down the river for generations have relied on fishing, for instance, and that’s gone away. If you look just from a holistic standpoint, there are rivers that are drying up.

And Africa, as things are changing . . . we’re talking about dams in this. And that’s one thing that impacts the water levels—sediment, things like that. We’ll talk about that. But these annual cycles and, you know, rainfall patterns that originate in Ethiopian Highlands—they generate about 80 percent of the Nile’s total flow.

The White Nile originates in Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile, in Ethiopia. And both meet in Khartoum. And 97 to 98 percent of Egypt’s water supplies come from the Nile. And we haven’t done enough studies about the silt that has come down for centuries that have kind of provided some fertilizers and things for some of the farming areas that’s been changed, right, because there are a number of dams.

(Host)

So there are some other things that kind of come into play here, maybe some historic agreements that play a part and shape what’s going on in the Nile River basin. Can you walk us through the most relevant of those?

(Krieger)

In 1929, they guaranteed a certain amount of water from the Nile for Egypt to use for cotton because cotton was a huge industry when the British controlled the region, and they fed the textile mills in London.

So the Nile water agreement of 1929, British-Egyptian treaty, stipulated no project would take water away from the Nile to prejudice the interests or reduce the quantity of water arriving into Egypt. And that’s key. However, when Sudan gained independence in 1956, it was concerned that Egypt’s second dam, the Aswan High Dam, wouldn’t abide by the agreement. So tensions between Egypt and Sudan escalated. In 1959, they resolved it, signing a full utilization of the Nile agreement, and they specified that Egypt would receive 5.5 billion cubic meters a year, and Sudan, 18.5.

More recently, in 1999, all of the riparian communities came together—Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (the Congo), Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya—and they created a Nile Basin Initiative to promote constructive dialogue, training, education for farmers, sustainable water practices, and they wanted to cooperate. But this is built on trust, and this broke down very quickly.

Egypt and Sudan never signed the agreement because they wanted a special veto to make sure international law was enforced. They want that veto power because they’re trying to protect their historic rights and things like that. So, they’re not going to sign. Although they still participate. But the key in all of this is trust. And I think that underpins both the NBI and then the use of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Sustainable practices impact the entire community. It’s not just one country. So the community does recognize that. They just get bogged down in some of these details and control. They do recognize the need for better water agricultural practices, but I think if we push the NBI, getting that foundation or springboard—and, again, Egypt and Sudan are kind of key—it can help us as we negotiate with Ethiopia. Sudan is kind of caught in the middle, but between Ethiopia and Egypt on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam about coordinating discharges during droughts because there are multiple dams.

And then, once you recover from a drought, obviously, you’ve got to fill, so you’re going to have to retain some of those waters, which is going to impact everyone else downstream.

(Host)

So you’ve mentioned the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam a couple times now. Explain it to us.

(Krieger)

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, was completed in July of 2020. It is significant for a couple reasons. It’s the tenth-largest dam in the world. Thirteen turbines can produce five gigawatts of electricity, which is 2.5 times larger than the US Hoover Dam, just by scale.

It’s a big project, it’s got a big impact. Egypt currently operates the Aswan Dam and the High Aswan Dam, and Sudan has six other dams on the Nile River basin. By far, obviously, this one is the largest. And one question that keeps coming up is: Will Ethiopia be willing to release enough water downstream to mitigate droughts in long term?

But on the other side of it, it’s going to be when they’re recovering after a multiyear drought, and they’ve got to get their water levels back up in the dams to produce electricity and things. You know, who’s going to have priority, and how is that process going to go? They’ve got to coordinate this, and now is the time to get the agreement before it’s too late, because it’s going to cause friction.

(Host)

The future and regional, strategic implications here: Is there anything else significant that we need to address about that?

(Krieger)

There are probably three key areas that could be instrumental for the next century. The first is the effective use of dams to control water during floods and provide electricity, but, more importantly, serve as an insurance policy against drought in times of climatic stress. The second is better agricultural practices. And the last includes stewardship policies and infrastructure to manage water as a resource.

Along with these changes, the US can encourage the riparian states to sign the Nile Basin Initiative to work on better use of, and management of, the water in the future. This can provide a springboard of trust between Egypt and Ethiopia that can help get an agreement between the GERD and, you know, establish a framework that can be used in the future.

Dams can provide water and security for people in the Nile River basin. It’s clean. We don’t have to worry about contributing to the environmental impact. Two hundred fifty-seven million people in 2016 didn’t have access to electricity, you know, and it’s going to grow to 650 million by 2030. Ninety percent of these are going to be in sub-Sahara (Sub-Saharan) Africa. So, we’ve got opportunities for green solutions. And I do think dams can be one way that they do that, but it’s just got to be part of a comprehensive system, coordinated among everyone impacted, which, in the Nile River basin, there are a number of countries.

(Host)

Do you have any final thoughts to wrap this up?

(Krieger)

I think that Africa has got so much land that’s not being utilized. They require rain, you know, to sustain so many of their crops. If we just flip that—I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I think probably 80 to 90 percent of their agriculture is all rain-fed, and if we can switch that and get some irrigation systems, I think we can get their yields up.

Once you have the yields up, you can produce more. But they have more land, agricultural land, that’s untapped, and it just could provide a number of countries with food sources. And you do know that there are different regions and countries, you know, you’ve got the (United Arab Emirates or) UAE and Saudi Arabia that are getting crops imported from there. But we’ve just got to look at the overall practice and make sure that we don’t use water-intensive crops in regions that can’t, where it’s not sustainable long-term. So, when we look at whatever we’re introducing, we’ve got to look at the next 10 to 20 years down the road as we introduce different agricultural products.

(Host)

We just really scratched the surface of such a broad and important topic. Thank you again for your time. Thanks for your contribution to Parameters. Listeners, if this topic interests you, I encourage you to check out the article.

(Krieger)

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

(Host)

If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or any other major podcasting platform.

The lessons of counterinsurgency have deeper implications for cyber conflict than previous research has identified. Two decades of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan provide insights into the cyber strategy of defending forward including treating major cybersecurity and technology companies as host-nation partners and focusing on winning the hearts and minds of global netizens.

Read the original article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol50/iss3/9/

Episode Transcript

Stephanie Crider (Host)

Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Jason Healey, author of “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict,” featured in the autumn 2020 issue of Parameters. Healey is a senior research scholar at Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs, specializing in cyber conflict, competition, and cooperation. This episode of Decisive Point reexamines Healey’s article through the lens of Russia and Ukraine.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1: Jason “Jay” Healey)

(Host)

Welcome back to Decisive Point, Jason. Let’s talk about your 2020 article “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict.” That is a bizarre pair. Can you lay the groundwork for us, please?

(Healey)

Sure, absolutely. Cyber has long been realized, back to at least the early 90s, as an interesting method of irregular warfare.

Some of the very first writing on this—people like John Arquilla and Dorothy Denning and Winn Schwartau—would write about how technology-dependent societies are going to be open to asymmetric attack because of these cyber vulnerabilities and cyber capabilities—especially the United States, which has historically had these oceans, and we didn’t have to worry about direct attack—that adversaries could use cyber as irregular warfare to affect us. In fact, we could use cyber as irregular warfare against them. We could have advantages by being a high-tech power.

And so that aspect had been relatively well written about. The effects of it were maybe exaggerated; we thought maybe cyber would have more impact then, in the 90s, than we do 20-odd years later. But the ideas were relatively well baked.

What I was trying to do with this article is to flip that around—to say, we’re 20-plus years into fighting irregular warfare ourselves, especially counterinsurgency and civil wars, so what can we take from those hard-won lessons? To think and apply them to fighting and winning in cyberspace.

(Host)

You laid out some pretty specific lessons. Can you walk us through those? What lessons can cyber take from counterinsurgency?

(Healey)

The lessons that I took—of saying, “Boy, what can we learn about how to win in cyberspace based on the lessons from irregular warfare”—really fit in three areas.

The least interesting, I thought, was on deception: For both cyber and irregular warfare, the attackers are relying on deception to succeed. That was a parallel, but I wasn’t quite sure what we take from that. The other two, I thought there were stronger recommendations.

First is that cyber conflict really depends on the host nation. Now, the host nation in this case isn’t an actual nation; it is the technology companies, the main cybersecurity companies that are out there. And they are creating and maintaining the terrain of cyberspace. I had helped set up the very first cyber command back in 1998. One of my friends from there went on to Verizon. And he said, “Jay, every day at Verizon and the other big tech companies and carriers, we are creating new cyberspace. We can bend cyberspace if we need to.” And governments and militaries can’t do that.

The US military is great at spying and shooting back and maybe sharing information that we’ve learned from spying. But that’s about it. Whereas these companies—the Verizons, the AT&Ts, Deutsche Telekom, PCCW, CrowdStrike, Mandiant, Microsoft, Google—they have this incredible role that they can play that is really—you could think about it as supported command, or, with a different mindset, as the host nation. They can do things. And it’s almost always better for them to do it than for the military to do it themselves.

So one lesson was on deception. The other was the role of the private sector as host nation. The third was to me less clear, but, I think, suggestive. And that’s the role of firepower.

In a normal military fight, such as in Ukraine in 2022, more firepower is a pretty good thing. For example, for the Ukrainians, more firepower leads to better battlefield outcomes. And yet we’ve learned over 20 years that’s not always true when you’re in a civil war or you’re in an insurgency. Applying more firepower might create more enemies than you’re taking off the battlefield. It’s not always true; we don’t always know where it’s true or not. And that may be true for cyber conflict.

It might be true that if we say, “Oh, look at what the Russians are doing; look at what the Chinese are doing. This is unacceptable”—our unleashing the military, our giving fewer rules or looser rules of engagement, fewer points and fewer reasons for them to have to check into the White House for oversight, less having to check back to say, “Hey boss, I’ve got this shot. Do you want me to take it?”—that might help us impose friction on our adversaries, which is the current military strategy. Defend forward, persistent engagement: That might be successful in winning particular tactical engagements. But it might not be correlated to actually winning in cyberspace. And in fact, past a certain point, it might be negatively correlated, and, by taking these shots, we are causing them to just build back better. Because in cyberspace, it looks like offense is relatively inexpensive. So by pushing back hard, it might just engender a reaction where they come back worse. Or we’re taking these shots, and the shots we’re taking are on allies. We’re taking down Russia, but they happen. Now, in the military, we call it gray space. But gray space means computers in Germany and Amsterdam and Thailand and Japan or in India—countries that we would like to be on our side. But by using the euphemism of gray space and applying military power, by taking these shots and by defending forward, we might not be convincing these countries that we have their best interests at heart.

(Host)

Thank you. You also offered several recommendations for going forward. Can you address those for us here?

(Healey)

The first one is a point that I’ve been making for a while.

I had written the first military history of cyberspace, the kind of thing I would have liked when I was a military officer. One of the ways we learn how to be good at what we do is by learning history. I mean, that’s what makes institutions like yours so great: We look back at history to teach officers today. What would you do if you were walking the fields of Gettysburg? How would you handle this?

So, I did this military history of cyber conflict, and it astounded me that almost zero cyber conflicts were ever decisively resolved by government—any government anywhere, much less by militaries. The only exceptions were where it was only the military or government itself that was being affected. Every other case where it was a larger cyber conflict, it was always the private sector—and I’ll stick by the word “always”—that was able to decisively resolve the issue.

So, to me, we’ve got a significant lesson to learn: How can the military, if it wants better solutions than this, how can it work with buy-in through the host nation of these technology companies that are in the position? To switch the metaphor, there are nine players on the field; when the ball is hit, it’s almost always going be a company in the private sector that’s in the position to make the play.

Now they might not be able to see the ball very well when it’s hit to them. We can help with intelligence. They might not have the skills to make the play. We can help with that. We can do exercises. We can help. They might not have a glove. That’s OK. We can help them with capabilities.

But what we shouldn’t do—and this is what (the National Security Agency or) NSA did for years and (United States) Cyber Command did for years—was trying to push them out of the way and say, “I’ve got it. I’ve got it. The US government, the US military is here. And we will make the play. This play will be made at Fort Meade, Maryland, and your job is just to share information with us and tell us about the problem.”

Now, that gets to a big civil-military relations issue. Because in the military we are not trained to think about civilians, the private sector, in a way that says they play a critical role in fixing this. It just doesn’t fit into that (Samuel P.) Huntington role of what a professional officer does and what the role of the military does. So we’ve got this substantial civil-military issue to try and get our enlisted, our officers, and especially our general officers to see this issue differently and to see the private sector as allies; to not denigrate them as just, “Well, they only want profit. But we in the military, our values are better because we’re out for national security, and they’re just out for profit.” It’s not a helpful attitude.

(Host)

Let’s apply your article and all the things that we’ve talked about to Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan. What are your thoughts on that?

(Healey)

The article, I think, is a bit less useful for Russia and Ukraine. Because there, it’s not irregular war; it’s real war. So, we have to switch to the mindset of saying, “OK, under what circumstances can cyber be effective on the battlefield? What missions is it able to do well, and what can we expect next?”

Many of my colleagues have been a bit mystified that cyber hasn’t played a better role, more of a role, on the Russian side. And for the most part, I think that mysticism of why the Russians haven’t been better at cyber is pretty similar to why they haven’t been effective at anything. It’s not like they’ve been so great in Ukraine, and their air forces work, and their armor is working. Well, no, they’ve been suboptimal—which is academic speak for “They stink”—across almost every single one of their missions. Maybe artillery would be an exception.

And so, perhaps it’s no surprise that cyber hasn’t been as effective as we would have thought. They didn’t do the preparation necessary for cyber capabilities to have the effect. They didn’t do that preparation because many of them didn’t know a war was coming. And even if they did think a war was coming, they thought it was going to be fast.

So now where I think you’re seeing many of the cyber experts looking is, “OK, we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” now that the sanctions are hitting, now that Russia’s economy is disentangled from that of the West. Beforehand, why would Putin ever want to disrupt the energy markets of the West or the financial system of the West? Well, now, he might as well do it. Because there’s not going to be any blowback on him.

So, I think if we don’t see those kinds of attacks in the next three to six months, we’re going to have to really question whether cyber has the potency that we thought it did—at least in 2022. Now, for those that argue cyber is irregular warfare or for cyber as irregular warfare, boy, there’s a ton to learn on this. The Ukrainian (information technology or) IT army, one of their digital ministers is daily coming out and nominating targets for Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians to attack. And many of those targets aren’t just Russian; they’re grocery stores that are still operating in Russia. Wow, a lot of lessons for people that want to study cyber as a tool for asymmetric warfare!

(Host)

What about China and Taiwan?

(Healey)

Well, I think the arguments that I make in that article are best under certain geopolitical conditions. Because whenever we look at “OK, is cyber escalatory or not? Is cyber effective or not? Does it help you coerce an adversary or not?” It comes down to “OK, well, are you in a state of crisis or a state of relative peace?” And I think we as scholars haven’t been good at analyzing those conditions. So I think there’s a lot of case there on how China has been using cyber as a tool of asymmetric warfare against Taiwan.

Are there lessons based on my article for can Taiwan succeed, you know, being informed by irregular warfare and how they respond? Possibly. I think the argument, for example, about the host nation—they have got a different relationship with their companies than we do. A lot of the companies that matter in this space are American and not Taiwanese, though the Taiwanese have a lot in that space. So yeah, I do think there would be quite a bit in the article to study that.

(Host)

Do you have any final thoughts before we go?

(Healey)

Yes, and this gets down to firepower. Remember I said, “I think it’s pretty definite, on the evidence, that we can see the private sector as the supported commander, as the host nation.” That’s pretty established. What’s less established is whether or not there’s a point where more firepower leads to worse national security results. And I think this really comes into how the White House and others can look at (United States) Cyber Command’s missions of defend forward, of persistent engagement. If I were back at the White House, I would have said, “OK, we’ll will give you these additional authorities. We’ll give you the agility you ask for so that you can defend forward. But you have to tell us, you have to be very clear, how will we know this is winning? If we give you these new authorities, this new agility, these looser rules of engagements, what are the results going to look like? And are we going to see the results in two years? Are we going to see the results in four years? Are we going to see the results in 20 years?”

Because it has been four years. This happened in 2018. I suspect they ought to have something to show for it by now and not just successful engagements, not just “We took this action, and we disrupted this adversary operation,” right? We’ve learned from 28 years of Iraq and Afghanistan, you can win all the tactical engagements you want; that doesn’t relate to the national security results that you promised the policymakers.

And so, I think we really need to do better. (United States) Cyber Command needs to do better, at least than it seems to be, about what’s the criteria for success. How long should we expect results? And that way, we can more definitively answer, “What’s this impact of firepower, of increased cyber capabilities, on the national security results of security and stability that we said we were going to do this for? We said we were going to do this to defend forward for persistent engagement.”

(Host)

Thanks so much, Jay, for your time and for sharing your insights on this topic. This was a real pleasure.

(Healey)

Hey, thank you.

(Host)

If you have enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and any other major podcast platform.

About the author: Jason Healey, senior research scholar and adjunct faculty at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, is the editor of A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986 to 2012.

If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or any other major podcasting platform.