WHEN RIVERS BECOME RED LINES / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

When Rivers Become Red Lines

Scale and urgency have heightened the importance of certain water resources.

By: Andrew Davidson

Societies have tried to control resources as long as there have been resources to control. 

Whether precious metals, arable lands or hydrocarbon deposits, access to resources shapes military postures, influences political alliances and sets foreign policies – even in 2025. 

If anything, the scale and urgency of modern operations have made resources all the more critical: The scale of new projects means that the competition over certain resources is often a global rather than a local affair, and the urgency with which some countries need resources is often a matter of national interest.

Such is the case with inland water systems. 

At the core is a fixed reality: Rivers lock states into upstream and downstream positions. 

Control of headwaters confers leverage; dependence on their flow creates vulnerability. 

Mega-dams and diversions amplify this disparity, giving upstream states tools of control and leaving downstream states exposed to decisions made beyond their borders. 

Geography only makes matters worse, for basins cannot be redrawn, and survival strategies must adapt to fixed upstream-downstream positions.

Military strategy follows a similar logic. 

Water infrastructure is openly treated as strategic terrain. 

Dams and diversions are defended with garrisons, air defenses and forward deployments, yet remain exposed targets. 

Unlike mobile assets, dams are fixed. 

River diversions cannot be hidden. 

Their very permanence makes them at once strategic assets and liabilities. 

In Ukraine, for example, the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in 2023 showed how rivers can be weaponized by flooding terrain, cutting supply and destabilizing civilian populations.

The United States Institute of Peace notes that out of all the recorded incidents targeting water infrastructure over the last 2,000 years, 41 percent have occurred since 2020. 

The surge reflects two converging dynamics: the long-range strike capabilities of modern militaries and the multifaceted nature of infrastructure. 

This elevates dams and diversions to high-value military targets. 

Militaries now integrate their defense directly into operational planning, from air defense rings and cyber hardening to contingency plans for rapid strikes. 

As a result, water control isn’t just a factor in development policy; it’s fundamentally embedded into military deterrence and force posture.

Military application reinforces the geographic divide. 

Upstream countries are compelled to secure water and electricity for growing populations, and they can wield control of flows as a coercive tool. 

Upstream states typically reinforce control with military assets, securing headwaters and guarding major dam complexes. 

For downstream states, water is often framed as an existential issue. 

Agriculture, food supply and electricity depend on water they cannot control. 

This dependency drives them to seek outside allies, deploy troops to vulnerable borders and frame interference with river flows as a red line for potential escalation.

It makes sense that dams would require military defense. 

They serve a variety of functions by concentrating water, power and infrastructure into a single, highly targetable site. 

Unlike oil, water cannot be stockpiled at scale or transported freely. 

Reservoirs can buffer flows, but storage is limited, leaky and vulnerable to drought. 

And when rainfall is erratic, even upstream states lose the ability to control flows reliably.

The result is structural. Engineering projects and military deployments reinforce each other, but neither can resolve disputes outright. 

Escalation – airstrikes on dams, forward deployments or flow manipulation – carries inherent risks of destabilization.

Several case studies illustrate the dynamics at play, perhaps none clearer than the Indus River, where India’s upstream control collides directly with Pakistan’s downstream survival. 

The Indus supplies more than 80 percent of the water Pakistan uses to irrigate its crops and more than 50 percent of its electricity generation. 

India’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty in April marked a shift from diplomacy to coercion. 

In the wake of the incident in Pahalgam – where a proxy of a Pakistan-based terrorist organization attacked sites in India-controlled Kashmir – New Delhi fast-tracked hydropower and irrigation infrastructure on the western Indus tributaries, announcing accelerated timelines for four mega-dams on the Chenab River and planning expanded canal networks on the Jhelum and Sutlej rivers. 

Pakistan responded with nuclear-coded rhetoric, warning of strikes on new Indian dams. 

What had been the world’s most enduring water-sharing agreement has collapsed into deterrence by infrastructure. 

The result is not resolution but a locked-in escalatory pattern in which every successive Kashmir flare-up risks pulling water projects into the confrontation, making dams and canals permanent triggers in the rivalry.

Then there is the case of the Brahmaputra River. 

Here, China’s control of the upper Yarlung Tsangpo leaves India in the downstream position, with no treaty framework to moderate the relationship. 

The absence of rules heightens India’s vulnerability. 

China’s leverage is political as well as hydrological: Dam announcements can be timed as pressure points in wider disputes, including border negotiations. 

The recent China-India dialogue has eased other frictions, but without a basin treaty, water remains a structural vulnerability.

A similar asymmetry of control and dependence can be seen in the Tigris–Euphrates basin. 

Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project secures irrigation and energy at home but has cut flows into Iraq by more than a quarter, causing electricity shortages and crop failures. 

In Basra, water scarcity was one of the sparks that ignited mass protests, and similar unrest has recurred in Baghdad and the south. 

In Syria, reduced releases from the Euphrates compound humanitarian crises brought on by years of war, leaving towns with failing irrigation and supply systems.

Scientific assessments estimate that roughly 30 percent of Turkey’s territory, particularly in central and southeastern Anatolia, faces a high risk of desertification. 

Broader United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification reporting places the “at risk” category much higher (though with looser definitions) at up to 88 percent. 

Reservoirs in key provinces are already running dry. 

Ankara’s need to secure water for its own population intensifies the squeeze downstream, where scarcity translates directly into unrest. 

Its forward presence in northern Syria and Iraq underscores how water management and military posture reinforce each other. 

Crucially, the water that gives Turkey leverage also ties its stability to unstable neighbors: A collapse in Iraq or Syria would surely spill over. 

This makes Ankara’s water posture not just a tool of influence but also a structural liability shaping its long-term strategy. 

Turkey’s forward presence will likely become a semi-permanent posture, one meant not just to counter militias and Kurdish groups but also to manage flows that bind its own stability to the fate of Iraq and Syria.

Elsewhere, drought in Iran has left reservoirs near empty and has triggered recurring protests, while the Helmand River dispute with Afghanistan compounds pressures in the southeast. 

In Egypt, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is treated as a matter of life or death. 

Officials there warn that force remains an option if downstream flow is cut. 

Each drought season will reopen brinkmanship over the GERD, keeping military options in play even if direct conflict remains unlikely. 

For Tehran, water scarcity is as much a domestic stability risk as an external one, making future protests and border flare-ups more likely than resolution. 

For both, water scarcity magnifies domestic fragility as much as interstate risk.

In Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan depend on Kyrgyz and Tajik headwaters – now shaped by Chinese-built dams without the Soviet-era mechanisms that once balanced flows. 

In the Western Hemisphere, disputes in the La Plata basin in South America and along the U.S.-Mexico border reveal how scarcity strains cross-border relations. 

These disputes have led to arbitration and periodic diplomatic strains, even if they fall well short of militarization. 

Taken together, these cases show how water disputes move from local grievances to structural constraints, setting the stage for broader patterns visible across history.

The bottom line is that while disputes over water resources are eternal, today’s mega-dams, climate volatility and great power competition magnify their importance. 

As a result, river basins are hardening into military frontiers. 

For militaries, dams and headwaters now function like strategic chokepoints, no less significant than straits or mountain passes. 

For outside powers, they are no longer peripheral: The U.S., Russia and China must now factor basins into intervention scenarios and alliance planning, much as they do with maritime routes. Cooperation and arbitration may delay crises, but they cannot erase the geography that locks states into conflict.

The greater risk is not gradual decline but sudden rupture: a drought, a dam failure or a deliberate cutoff cascading into regional escalation. 

Water is a structural fault line – slow to shift but capable of triggering a sudden crisis when red lines are crossed.