Trump’s new theory of everything

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asked the room’s simplest, slipperiest question: “Are there other conflicts the president is working on right now that are off the radar and that we should be tracking?”

The press secretary didn’t blink. “In fact,” she said, “there are, there are many. The State Department is always working around the clock under the leadership of Secretary Rubio, and keeping the president apprised of conflicts as they are bubbling up all over the world.”

Did you catch that? “Bubbling up,” she said, as in liquids. And that suggestion led to some interesting revelations: Water scarcity. It’s the plot twist that keeps rewriting foreign policy. By one internal tally, 137 countries share a cross-border water source. That means roughly seven in ten nations are literally upstream or downstream of a neighbor, turning rivers into the shortest fuse in geopolitics, where a single dry season can ignite a crisis. And you thought world peace would be simple?

Actually, it could be. The approach is, if you desalinate the grievance and condense the humidity of hate into potable hope, many conflicts may become solvable, and the rest, at least, stay hydrated. Welcome to the Hydro-Accords, under which the peace through strength runs through pipes, and reverse osmosis. Forget about the old “land for peace” dynamic. This administration’s next frontier is “water for everything.”

War needs logistics; so does life. You can subsidize textbooks, tweet about tolerance, and hold summits in ballrooms (very large, sparkly ones, even), but if two neighbors are sharing one angry river and it runs low, you’ve got more than a drought bottled up. Now imagine how much worse of a crisis looms when nations already at odds are suddenly thrust into a water scarcity collective.

Here are a few conflicts where scarcity is doing the scripting. Consider the Blue Nile’s GERD project, impacting Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan. Ethiopia’s giant dam is effectively finished and slated for inauguration at a time of prolonged civil unrest, while more than half of the populace awaits a formal introduction to electricity. Sudan isn’t keen on the idea of a Blue Nile drop as their civil war ravages the state’s capacity to manage curveballs. Egypt, meanwhile, is juggling the GERD fight alongside a grinding economic program and inflation hangover. The net effect: an engineering dispute wrapped in three overlapping domestic crises.

Across the Middle East, Iraq and Syria are in one of their worst drought years on record, as upstream dam projects in Turkey and Iran, both grappling with their own water shortages, are throttling flows on the Euphrates and Tigris. In dry seasons, a valve upstream is a verdict downstream; when the taps become leverage, politics follows the flow.

The Indus pact has survived wars; it’s now colliding with weather and rage. Following a lethal strike in Kashmir, New Delhi put the treaty on pause and the dispute drifted into legal-diplomatic limbo. Weeks later, wild monsoons caused major flooding across parts of Pakistan, which it blames on India’s suspension of the treaty, resulting in an escalation of rhetoric between nuclear-armed neighbors that too often feels one rung removed from the unthinkable.

Here are a few options that are currently being considered and tested to filter out grievances:

Desalination turns saltwater from the sea into potable water using super-fine filters. It eats a lot of energy, so it’s best on the coast and works great with solar or wind. When done right, it’s peace from a tap; done sloppy, it’s just expensive salt.

Another option is reusing wastewater, which cleans and disinfects sewage until it’s safe for drinking or industry. It’s usually the cheapest way to produce new water, but it needs strict testing, clear rules, and public trust. In plain English: get comfortable with safely recycled water — or get used to recycled wars.

Atmospheric capture and fog nets literally pull water out of the air, either by chilling humid air or catching fog. Handy for small, remote communities in dry, foggy places, but it won’t supply big farms or whole cities.

Smart irrigation gives crops only what they need, exactly when they need it. Drip lines, soil-moisture sensors, weather-based watering, and even switching to less-thirsty crops. But there’s more to world peace than patents, pipes, and plants.

Projects need to be started and pipelines need to be guarded. And for nations unaccustomed to expenditures that aren’t for armed conflict, a gentle nudge from the leading superpower could help get them over the top.

SOif the goal is world peace, start by making water boringly reliable. Build the plants, power them, and plan for the salty waste. That turns drought from a panic into a service.

Then protect the peace you’ve created. Guard the valves, hire locals to patrol pipelines, and verify flows with satellite data so both sides argue over the same facts. Next, make sharing fair and visible: Install meters everyone can see; give each side a key to the same valves; post live dashboards; and out of an abundance of caution, create a water court system that settles disputes in days, not years.

The US can nudge this along by backing the loans, tying the funds to upkeep and training, and offer neutral monitoring. Do those basics and something simple happens: When the tap is trustworthy, the border gets quieter. Turn water from a weapon into a shared utility, and you swap swampy relations for a lasting peace.

You don’t end every war with a well, but at least you can de-incentivize the cheap ones.

Look, we’ve tried treaties that read like term papers and ceasefires that age like milk in the Sahara. This White House wants something different: infrastructure with a foreign policy attached. Solving geopolitics by turning it into hydro-politics is the most conservative thing imaginable. Essentially, you’re fixing the thing that breaks first and most often. The best way to revive a nation that’s dying a death of a thousand cuts is with a pipeline of a thousand drips.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1077)