The Water Wars of 2050

Although wars are often justified under the banners of lofty tenets, they are just as often fought over resources. And as the Associated Press reports today, it's not unthinkable that as global warming changes the resource status quo, conflicts will erupt between peoples competing for those resources.

A few highlights from the article:

"One of the biggest likely areas of conflict is going to be over water," said [retired General Charles] Wald, former deputy commander of U.S. European Command. He pointed to the Middle East and Africa.

The military report's co-author, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, also pointed to sea-level rise floods as potentially destabilizing South Asia countries of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Lack of water and food in places already the most volatile will make those regions even more unstable with global warming and "foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies," states the 63-page military report, issued by the CNA Corp., an Alexandria, Va.-based national security think tank.

Mother Nature's potential WMD sort of raises the bar of imminent threat, doesn't it?

-- Ward