After Authority: War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st Century

5. MARKETS, THE STATE, AND WAR

83 5❖ MARKETS, THE STATE, AND WAR According to a study published in 1995 by the World Bank, the “Wars of the next century will be over water” (The Economist 1995b).1 Perhaps . Such warnings are not new. By now, the invocation of “water wars” is a commonplace, as a search of any bibliographic database will attest.2 The Bank, however, conveys special authority with its pronouncements, both because of its international standing as well as its long involvement in the planning and development of “water resources management.” Not only does the Bank rely on “experts” who are presumed to know everything there is to know about water and its use, as a central icon of the global economic system and a major funder of large-scale water supply systems, it must also be listened to, especially by those who may feel themselves short of water. But the Bank’s analysis leaves a number of questions unanswered or, at least, unsatisfactorily addressed. For instance, who will fight over water? According to The Economist (1995b), wherein appeared an article on the study, the Bank’s experts, and most other water scholars, believe that the Middle East is the likeliest crucible for future water wars. A long-term settlement between Israel and its neighbors will depend 84 Chapter 5 at least as much on fair allocation of water as of land. Egypt fears appropriation of the Nile’s waters . . . by upstream Sudan and Ethiopia. Iraq and Syria watch and wait as Turkey builds dams in the headwaters of the Euphrates. It is clear that the combatants will be states. But why would states fight over water? On this point, the Bank’s reasoning is less clear. On the one hand, it is taken for granted that water is scarce in absolute terms, and that people and states (according to conventional economic and political analysis) naturally come into conflict over scarce resources.3 On the other hand, geography (or, to be more precise, Nature) has not seen fit to have rivers, drainages, and mountains remain constrained within the confines of national boundaries . Indeed, rivers act as excellent borders between countries because they are such prominent geographic features and are difficult to cross— although it is true that they have a tendency to wander back and forth, now and again. Nonetheless, the combination of geopolitical and neoclassical logics leads to the conclusion that, if resources are essential, scarce, and “in the wrong place,” states that lack them will go to war with states that have them.4 QED. What, then, is the solution offered by the Bank? Markets in water. But here emerges a paradox. First, we are warned of potential struggles over Nature’s scarcity and the possibility of war between sovereign entities. Then, quite suddenly, we are transported from the “State of Nature” to the nature of markets. In Nature, people fight and often come out losers; in markets, they bargain according to selfinterest and come out winners. Thus, according to the Bank’s VicePresident for the Environment, the avoidance of water wars is to be found in what he calls “rational water management”—that is, in the transmogrification of economics from a doctrine of absolute scarcity and consequent conflict arising from the maldistribution of state sovereignty over resources to one of relative scarcity and exchange of resources—in this instance, money and water—between sovereign consumers in peaceful markets. How is this amazing transformation of interstate relations to be accomplished? Quite simply: through the “appropriate pricing” of water at its “true” marginal cost—although it is seldom noted that the “true” marginal cost of water to people defending the national patrimony Markets, the State, and War 85 may be incalculable. This move, argues the Bank, will lead to the assumption of water’s “proper place as an economically valued and traded commodity” which, in turn, will result in efficient and sustainable use through technologies of conservation. As the author of the Economist article puts it (with no sense of irony whatsoever), “the time is coming when water must be treated as a valuable resource, like oil, not a free one like air.” Not, perhaps, an ideal parallel—especially insofar as the Persian Gulf War was more about the political impacts of oil prices than absolute supply (Lipschutz, 1992a, 1992b)—but the point is well taken: it is probably better to truck and barter...