The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Things I (Don't) Worry About: Water Wars || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

When people start talking about wars over water, everyone pictures tooth and nail, Mad Max-esqe fighting...but our imaginations might be getting away from us here. Allow me to paint a more realistic picture for you. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/things-i-dont-worry-about-water-wars

Everyone, Peter Zion here coming to you from Snowy, Colorado. Today, we're going to do another one in the ongoing open series of things I do and do not worry about. This is one that I do not, for the most part, worry about. And that's water wars. You got to admit, it's a sexy idea. The idea that a country that is dry and desperate for water is going to march on another country to take it. But a few things to keep in mind. You can't take the water with you. Water is very bulky and very dense and very difficult to move. And it, it clings to itself with friction, so pumping it is difficult. So you're not talking about just conquering a river basin and somehow redirecting it. You're talking about conquering the river basin and occupying it. And for most countries, that's a pretty heavy carry under any circumstances. So that's number one. The bar is high. Number two, the countries that have water are the world's major powers and the ones that do not have water are not major powers. Why? Well, they have water. Because if you have water, you can grow food. If you can grow food, you can industrialize yourself. If you can industrialize yourself, you can build your own military without having to import a lot of equipment.

And if you don't have water, you don't get to do any of those things. So there are very, very few places where you've got a dry country next to a wet country, where there's even a theoretical possibility of the dry country doing anything. There doesn't mean that there aren't any exceptions. There's just very, very few. Let me give you three, and really that's it. Number one, Egypt. country that's on the river needs the river to survive upstream Ethiopia has been building some dams I can see some scenarios where the Egyptians would spend special forces in to damage or destroy the dam the dam.

The problem with that strategy now though is that the dam's been built the lake behind it's being filled so if the dam were to go away so would Egypt so you know Number two, Central Asia. The glaciers of Central Asia have been desiccating for about 50 years ever since the Soviets built a series of water diversion systems in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to grow cotton in the desert because they didn't want to be dependent on American cotton or Egyptian cotton. You fast forward that 50 years, and the glaciers are pretty much gone, and the flow in the rivers that Amu and Sirdriya are falling precipitously,

and the whole area is desiccating. So I can see a scenario where a dry season. dry country Uzbekistan, which has the third largest post-Soviet military, marches in and just takes over to Jikistan and Kyrgyzstan so that its own people have something to drink. The third one involves the Middle East, and this is actually an issue of the wet countries taking issue with the dry countries. There have been issues in the past in the Jordan Valley where various countries, most notably Lebanon, have built dams on rivers that would impede the flow to the dry countries. Jordan, the Israelis have a problem with that, so they bomb the dams. Similarly, you've got a wet country Turkey and a dry country Iraq and Syria, where the Turks have built lots and lots and

lots of dams in Southeast Turkey called the Grand Anatolian Project in order to improve agricultural possibilities for the southeastern part of Turkey and provide an economic ballast to dissuades, say Kurdish separatism. However, if you happen to be downstream in Baghdad, this is a bit of a problem and your place is drying out. But again, you've got a wet country. Turkey doing things that are messing with the water table in a dry country, Iraq, and there's not a lot that Iraq can do about it. So, there are plenty of things that are worth fighting over in the world. Water is arguably one of them, but the countries that don't have it don't have the capacity to go get it. So, I don't worry about that one.