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THE GEOPOLITICS OF THIRST

11/07/2026

In June 2026, Pakistan’s defense minister explicitly stated that water is part of his country’s national security and that, if it is threatened, “ we will go to war” with nuclear-armed India. At the same time, Egypt denounced Ethiopia’s unilateral control of the Nile to the UN Security Council as an existential threat, while China proceeded, on the “roof of the world”, with the construction of the largest dam in history. Three rivers, three regions, one common sense: water ceased to be a resource and became a weapon.

What is happening in 2026 is not a coincidence of local crises; it is the emergence of a new geopolitical constant. As climate change, population pressure, and water scarcity turn freshwater into a strategic commodity, the states that control the sources—those states located further up the river—are discovering that a valve in a dam can exert pressure more effectively than an army.

This is the phenomenon that international literature calls “hydro-hegemony”: the transformation of geographical position into structural power. It is, in essence, the instrumentalization of interdependence itself — what was supposed to bind states in a common interest of peace, the shared river, is turned into a lever of coercion. And, as will be seen, the international law that was supposed to prevent this instrumentalization has been rejected precisely by those who have the power to exercise it.

 The Indian: water as a casus belli

The most dangerous front is in South Asia. In April 2025, after the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, India suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty — an agreement that, brokered by the World Bank, had divided the waters of the basin (about 80% to Pakistan, 20% to India) for more than six decades and was considered one of the most successful in the world. This is a basin that is a vital space for more than 300 million people on both sides of the border.

The treaty remains suspended; in June 2026, New Delhi made it clear that it would remain “frozen” until Pakistan completely stopped cross-border terrorism, while the Minister of Water Resources stated that they were working to ensure that “not a single drop” reached Pakistan. The stakes are enormous: nine out of ten Pakistanis live within the Indus basin, its rivers irrigate over 90% of crops and supply almost all hydroelectric power generation.

The threat is not rhetoric. India does not even need to completely cut off the flow; it only needs to manipulate the timing of releases from dams like Baglihar—flooding fields at sowing time or drying them up during critical irrigation periods—to bring an already fragile economy to its knees. In May 2026, an international arbitration tribunal issued a ruling that upheld Pakistan’s position, placing “substantial limits” on India’s ability to control water; New Delhi rejected it as coming from an “illegally constituted” tribunal. The Indian government itself summed up its doctrine with the phrase that “blood and water cannot flow together.” Between two nuclear powers, water has become an open casus belli—and Islamabad has even taken the issue to the UN Security Council.

The Nile: The existential threat and water 

In Africa, the balance was tipped on September 9, 2025, when Ethiopia inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile — Africa’s largest hydroelectric project, worth $5 billion, with a capacity of 5.150 megawatts, with a reservoir of 74 billion cubic meters. For Egypt, which depends on the Nile for over 90% of its freshwater needs — and whose Blue Nile draws about 85% of its flow from the Ethiopian highlands — a dam operating during Addis Ababa’s crisis poses an existential threat.

Cairo was absent from the inauguration and sent a letter to the Security Council, stating that it “will not allow Ethiopia to impose unilateral control over shared water resources.” The criticality of the issue was also reflected in the American president’s attempt, in January 2026, to once again assume a mediating role between Cairo and Addis Ababa — without, so far, any tangible result.

Crucially, after more than a decade of negotiations, there is no binding agreement on how the dam will operate in times of drought or flood; the 2015 Declaration of Principles never specified such rules. The consequences were immediate: within weeks of the inauguration, uncoordinated outflows triggered floods that displaced more than 1.200 families in Sudan and inundated the Nile Delta, with Cairo denouncing “chaotic and reckless” management.

Ethiopia, moreover, has already announced the construction of three more dams on the Blue Nile, prompting Egypt to react in two ways: on the one hand, it is militarizing the conflict, concluding defense pacts in the Horn of Africa in an attempt to strategically “encircle” Ethiopia; on the other hand, it is hastily investing in desalination and wastewater treatment. Finally, the silence of China, which financed infrastructure linked to the GERD and is carefully keeping an equal distance, is noteworthy.

The Brahmaputra: The dam on the roof of the world

The third and most ambitious front is in Tibet. On July 19, 2025, China officially began construction of a complex of hydroelectric dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo River—which becomes the Brahmaputra in India and the Jamuna in Bangladesh—in one of the most earthquake-prone regions on the planet. With a capacity of about 60 gigawatts—three times that of the Three Gorges Dam—and a cost of about 1,2 trillion yuan (over $160 billion), it is set to become the largest and most expensive energy project in history.

Downstream, the Brahmaputra supplies some 130 million people and six million hectares of land in India, and over 160 million in Bangladesh, meeting 55% of its irrigation needs. There is no water-sharing treaty between China, India and Bangladesh. The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “Third Pole” for its vast ice reserves, feeds rivers on which over a billion people depend, from Pakistan to Vietnam; any intervention at the top of the system has knock-on effects.

The fear is twofold: that China will be able to regulate the timing of the outflows—withdrawal in the summer, sudden release in the monsoons—and that the dam will trap the sediments that fertilize the lower plains and feed the delta, with a direct threat to the food security of one of the world’s most densely populated regions—and, for Bangladesh, a delta country already on the front lines of the climate crisis, a matter not of development but of survival. To be fair, some experts believe the impacts are overstated, as most of the Brahmaputra’s water comes from the monsoons south of the Himalayas and the project is described as “run-of-river.”

But India is not waiting to see this: it is planning its own dam with a capacity of over 11 gigawatts on the Siang River, as a counterweight and as a negotiating lever against Beijing.

The legal vacuum

In all these cases, the pattern repeats itself: whoever controls the sources controls the tap, and whoever is downstream pays the price. There is, in theory, international law for just this. The United Nations Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, adopted on 21 May 1997 and entered into force in 2014, establishes two fundamental principles: “equitable and reasonable use” and the obligation “not to cause significant harm” to downstream states.

The problem? The Convention was adopted with 103 votes in favor and just three against — and those three were China, Turkey, and Burundi. India, Pakistan, Egypt, and Ethiopia abstained.* In other words, the very states that are currently exploiting water have refused to be bound by the rules that would prevent it. China has even openly stated that the “do no harm” principle places a disproportionate burden on states that control the sources and that the obligation to consult on planned projects infringes on its sovereignty.

It is no coincidence that the vast majority of states that eventually ratified the Convention are downstream countries or states without international watercourses; the rulers of the sources are absent, and without them there is no authority capable of imposing a rule. As at sea, so at rivers: power fills the vacuum left by law when the powerful refuse to ratify it.

And Greece?

All this seems far-fetched — it is not. Greece is, hydrologically, a country that is downstream. Most of the major rivers of Northern Greece originate in neighboring states: the Axios in North Macedonia, the Strymon, Nestos and Evros in Bulgaria (and the Evros also in Turkey). Thus, a significant part of the country’s water resources is in effect “imported”. The figures are revealing: approximately 50% to 75% of the waters of the Strymon and Nestos, and up to about 70% of the Evros, come from the upper reaches.

The picture is not entirely one-sided—in the Aoos, for example, Greece is higher up the river than Albania—but in the crucial northeastern arc, from the Axios to the Evros, its position is clearly disadvantaged. The most telling example is the Evros. The same river that constitutes the border and the bridgehead of migratory pressures is also a shared water system where Greece owns just 6% of the basin, compared to 66% for Bulgaria and 28% for Turkey.

And it is no coincidence that Turkey — which has turned control of the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, through the GAP program, into a tool for pressure against Syria and Iraq — was, along with China, one of the few states that voted against the 1997 Convention. The management of water by the source state, as has been pointed out, can directly affect the economy, the environment and the very national security of Greece as a state located downstream.

Here, a crucial asymmetry in Greece’s position also emerges. With Bulgaria, it shares not only rivers but also a common institutional framework: as EU member states, both are bound by the Water Framework Directive, which imposes coordinated management of transboundary basins and offers Athens institutional levers for cooperation and pressure. With Turkey, on the other hand, there is no corresponding binding framework; Ankara is not only not bound by European directives, but is also among the few states that voted against the 1997 Convention. Thus, the Evros is not just the most exposed Greek river; it is the point where the country’s water vulnerability meets the complete absence of rules.

The Greek response to date has been in the field of water diplomacy: in May 2025, Greece and Bulgaria signed a five-year agreement on the waters of Arda, with Bulgaria ensuring supply and Greece committing to modernizing its dams.

It is a positive step — but fragile, temporary and partial, at a time when the climate crisis is intensifying water scarcity across Southeastern Europe and when Turkey itself is now requesting more water from Bulgarian dams due to drought. Water, for Greece, is a silent but real dimension of national security.

Conclusion

The 20th century brought wars over oil; the 21st threatens to bring wars over water. With one crucial difference: water is not substitutable. There is no “alternative source” for a river that dries up or a plain that floods on command. For Greece, the lesson from the Indus, the Nile, and the Brahmaputra is twofold.

First, that water security is a matter of national security and must be treated as such — by systematically monitoring transboundary flows, by pursuing binding agreements, and by active water diplomacy within the EU — Athens’ most powerful tool at its disposal, as only within a binding, multilateral framework can a downstream state counterbalance the structural advantage of the one that holds the sources. Second, that the defense of international water law is not an abstract principle, but a concrete national interest of a country that drinks from rivers it does not control.

Because in the end, the geopolitics of water is not just about South Asia or the Nile Valley. It concerns every state that depends on a river that rises elsewhere. And in this slow, silent war of thirst, the greatest defeat is to realize it when the tap is already in someone else's hand.

* 103 in favor, 3 against – China-Turkey-Burundi – 27 abstentions, including India-Pakistan-Egypt-Ethiopia-Bulgaria.

 DR. GEORGE NIVEROGLOU IS A BRIGADIER OF THE E.A.