President Donald Trump chided the United International locations on Sept. 23, 2025, for failing to get to the bottom of bad global conflicts all over the world. “All they seem to do,” he groused all the way through his deal with to the Basic Meeting in New York, “is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”
By contrast, Trump, via his personal estimation, has ended a half-dozen critical global conflicts. Amongst them is the long-standing dispute over the Nile River waters that flared up when Ethiopia proposed to construct a large dam over the Blue Nile, threatening the water provide of Egypt and Sudan.
As a world family members pupil who has studied this dispute, alternatively, I to find it onerous to peer how Trump’s interventions have introduced it any nearer to a answer. In truth, they possibly made issues worse.
The supply of the dispute
Nile River water is very important to agriculture and public sanitation in each Egypt and Sudan. Distribution of that water has been regulated via an settlement drawn up in 1959 making sure Egypt and Sudan lots of the output of the Nile River basin. A frame of global regulation additionally enjoins upstream international locations – comparable to Ethiopia – towards manipulating the cross-border glide of rivers in ways in which hurt downstream international locations.
Ethiopia nevertheless declared in 2011 that it had the proper to milk any water assets that originate within its borders. It additional insisted that developing an electricity-generating dam around the Blue Nile would supply affordable energy to each impoverished Ethiopians and neighboring international locations.
Egypt and Sudan right away protested at the grounds that the mission would inflict critical harm on their populations and implored global organizations and exterior powers to intrude.
Ambiguous wording
Trump waded into the Nile dispute on the urging of Egypt. Cairo approached Washington to mediate in overdue October 2019, as Ethiopia used to be ramping up building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that might prohibit the glide of the Blue Nile. After talking individually with Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, Trump agreed to turn into without delay concerned.
He and then-Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin invited the overseas ministers of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to Washington for talks.
With the hole consultation of the following November 2019 assembly nonetheless ongoing, Trump tweeted: “The meeting went well and discussions will continue during the day!”
The talks, alternatively, ended without a growth being made. As a substitute, all 4 events, together with representatives of the International Financial institution, agreed to confer a dozen extra occasions over the following 3 months to hash out technical issues.
At those next conferences, Egypt and Ethiopia haggled over definitions and size standards regarding the dam’s conceivable have an effect on. Mnuchin and his personnel in large part stood apart, even if they reportedly expressed sympathy for Addis Ababa’s insistence that issues regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam be stored cut loose questions relating to water control within the Nile Basin as an entire.
Extra importantly, U.S. representatives allowed obscure wording to slide into the
remark launched on the shut of the December 2019 assembly.
The remark mandated that “the implementation of these technical rules and guidelines for the filling and operation of the dam will be undertaken by Ethiopia, and may be adjusted by the three countries.”
Cairo interpreted this to imply that every one laws and procedures could be drawn up collectively; Addis Ababa believed that it enshrined Ethiopia’s proper to make selections solely by itself.
Talks blow up
The overall spherical of talks in January 2020 produced a potential settlement that left Ethiopia unfastened to start out filling the massive reservoir in the back of the dam, and minimized the rustic’s tasks to lend a hand Egypt and Sudan all the way through drought sessions.
But, Ethiopia dragged its ft in accepting the draft report, claiming that a very powerful issues remained unsettled. Egypt and Sudan flatly refused to revisit issues they believed had already been addressed, however did settle for an be offering from U.S. Treasury officers to organize a revised textual content.
In February 2020, the U.S. Treasury Division circulated an amended model, and Trump telephoned al-Sissi to precise hope that “an agreement would be finalized soon.”
Ethiopia, feeling harassed via Egypt and the U.S. to endorse an incomplete textual content – and frightened in regards to the home political penalties of doing so – didn’t ship a consultant to Washington to simply accept the revision. Treasury officers then declared {that a} complete agreement to the dispute had now been reached and publicly referred to as on Addis Ababa to signal it.
Egypt’s overseas ministry issued a remark saying that “President Trump affirmed the U.S. administration’s continued efforts” to succeed in a suitable deal. However Ethiopia’s overseas minister described Washington’s abrupt declaration as “undiplomatic.”
Ethiopia stalled for any other two months, then circulated a provisional settlement of its personal, which Egypt and Sudan pushed aside out of hand.
Washington replied with insinuations that it might withhold financial the help of Ethiopia until Addis Ababa signed the settlement the Treasury Division had drafted in February 2020. In the meantime, building at the dam proceeded, and in July Ethiopia blocked the glide of the Blue Nile to start out filling its massive reservoir.
In September 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo adopted via at the U.S. risk and suspended US$130 million of assist to Ethiopia. Alternatively, the suspension had no have an effect on on negotiations.
Incensed on the proceeding deadlock, Trump in October 2020 remarked all the way through a phone name with Sudanese and Israeli diplomats that Egypt “will end up blowing up the dam.”
Ethiopian officers condemned the outburst. The high minister’s workplace complained that “these threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive and clear violations of international law.” Ethiopia put in anti-aircraft batteries across the dam and declared the airspace above it a no-fly zone.
Negotiations collapsed, and so they remained dormant for the following 3 years.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi meets Donald Trump all the way through the United International locations Basic Meeting in September 2019.
AP Picture/Evan Vucci
Assessing the have an effect on of US mediation
Analysts generally tend to agree that Trump’s preliminary involvement within the Nile River dispute made a nasty state of affairs worse. His admiration for authoritarian leaders brought about him to deal with Egypt’s al-Sissi and put U.S. credibility at the line.
In the meantime, Trump’s contempt for the pros within the U.S. State Division led him to sideline the diplomatic corps and entrust an advanced task to Mnuchin, a former financier and film manufacturer. And his loss of endurance and blunt language disrupted the negotiations, alienating Egypt and Ethiopia alike.
Addis Ababa continues to insist that it “has no obligation to request permission from anyone to fill the Renaissance Dam.” In September 2025, Top Minister Abiy Ahmed declared that paintings at the dam had completed and boasted of 2 different dams at the Blue Nile nearing finishing touch.
In the meantime, Egypt has opened a big naval base at the Purple Coastline and connected
its maximum complicated warships to a newly created Purple Sea squadron. In July 2025, Egypt International Minister Badr Abdelatty issued a veiled risk to make use of army approach to settle the Nile dispute.
Regardless of emerging tensions, and his first management’s failure to make growth at the factor, Trump continues to indicate to his 2019-2020 mediation as a luck.
In July 2025, he instructed NATO Secretary Basic Mark Rutte {that a} answer lay simply across the nook. President al-Sissi as soon as once more applauded the president’s involvement and voiced hope that it might produce a “just agreement.”
But there may be little indication that the present Trump management is in any higher place to resolve the Nile River dispute than used to be the former one. Since Trump’s 2nd inauguration, skilled State Division officers were fired or resigned, leaving delicate diplomatic missions within the palms of personal businesspeople with non-public ties to the president, slightly than diplomats professional within the artwork of negotiating intractable disputes amongst sovereign states.
This construction turns out not going to budge Trump from the conviction that he has already solved the war over the Nile River waters – and will by some means do it once more.
