Peace Without a Drought   

Iasked 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.”