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Water Security in the Middle East
Essays in Scientific and Social Cooperation
By Jean Axelrad Cahan Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2017 Jean Axelrad Cahan editorial matter and selection
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78308-568-2
CHAPTER 1
COOPERATION RULES: INSIGHTS ON WATER AND CONFLICT FROM INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Patrice C. McMahon
At least implicitly, many disciplines recognize that a changing climate with higher temperatures and altered precipitation patterns will require adaptive water- management strategies. Climate change necessitates a collective and coordinated response to water shortage, and states must yield to this reality. If these processes are not carefully calibrated to respond both to physical characteristics and to cultural norms, the path ahead will have grave implications for future generations who will experience human suffering, social and political discord and an impoverished environment. An important question for political scientists is this: will water insecurity — whether it is caused by access, allocation, degradation or scarcity — necessarily result in violent conflict between states?
The answer may depend on whom you ask and the region in question. Although research on water politics and international conflict has led to separate substantial literatures, this chapter considers them together and presents a tentative answer. I argue that, although literature in international relations (IR) is historically predisposed to focusing on war and interstate violent conflict, when it comes to arguments and research on water there is a decisive, if largely overlooked, consensus that it is cooperation rather than violent conflict that dictates interstate water relationships. The past is not always the best predictor of the future, but research on war and conflict thus far indicates that water insecurity is unlikely to result in violent conflict between states. As Aaron Wolf puts it, water may be a tool, target or victim of warfare, but up until this point it has not been the cause (2007, 4).
Nonetheless, a significant amount of scholarship in IR assumes, and sometimes asserts, that problems with access to freshwater and water insecurity will not only lead to violence within states but also result in interstate war (Setter et al. 2011). Especially for scholars who focus on certain regions where water scarcity is severe, where political tensions are significant and where there are no international institutions in place to promote cooperation, violent conflict is overdetermined. The Middle East is usually considered one of the likely hot zones where the quest for water is seen as a catalyst for future conflict either within states or between states (Dinar 2002). This volume's focus on the Middle East and peace building demonstrates clearly that conflict over water is not inevitable and that many institutions, mechanisms and ideas exist to encourage states, local authorities and members of civil society to use water as a conduit for cooperation and peaceful interactions. Employing literature from IR and security studies, this chapter provides several explanations for cooperation and many examples of cooperative water management, even in the Middle East.
I begin the next section with an overview of water's role in IR literature, specifically in research that deals with war and interstate conflict, known as security studies. This section argues that, while the politics of water has long been a concern in IR literature, it is relatively new to discussions about security and conflict. The section on how water is framed presents a summary of water-related research, highlighting distinct differences in the framing of global water issues. This section provides a sampling of the literature written in English from 1990 to 2015 found in the International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA), which contains articles from more than one thousand journals worldwide. To be sure, this sample is neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but this analysis does highlight important trends in how global water politics is studied. This literature is complemented with books and other articles on shared waters and water security written largely by scholars from other disciplines. This section suggests that water's potential role in violent conflict not only depends on the region studied but is also shaped by an author's discipline and methodological approach and thus the frame for water issues.
In light of this literature, I then examine different mechanisms of cooperation identified in the IR literature. Most IR literature, and security studies in particular, focuses on the state as the level and unit of analysis. This is problematic when thinking about water cooperation because water transcends many levels and the unit of analysis is not always — in fact is not often — the state. Although much of the literature on transboundary water treats political entities as homogeneous monoliths, claiming that "Canada feels" or "Jordan wants," the reality is far more complex (Wolf 2007, 13). Literature on water management is an interdisciplinary endeavor that examines various levels and actors with great sensitivity to scale. Given the wealth of factors and mechanisms associated with water cooperation, but also IR's tradition of levels of analysis, section 3 highlights macro-, meso- and microlevel factors that shape water cooperation. I maintain that, while potential violent conflicts over water indeed demand our attention, there are good theoretical and empirical reasons why water is not likely to be the primary factor in future interstate conflicts. This is exactly why an interdisciplinary book on water and peace in the Middle East is so important.
Water and Conflict in International Relations
An overview of IR assumptions and theories provides significant insight into why water insecurity and tensions between states are not likely to result in militarized conflict between states. IR as a field of political science has traditionally focused more on the possibilities of war than the reasons for peace. Such a statement is most closely identified with realist theories that assume that international anarchy, state interests and national security animate the most important dynamics in international politics (Waltz 1979). Anarchy and the absence of a world government mean that conflicts between states are inevitable and wars always loom in the background. This is a position that is often adopted by water scholars intent on justifying the water wars thesis. As Hussein Amery's article titled "Water Wars in the Middle East: A Looming Threat" warns, while many cooperative solutions to resource conflicts will emerge in the Middle East, violent confrontations over vital resources such as water are still highly probable in the next few decades (2002, 322).
IR scholarship reminds us that, although international anarchy is a powerful permissive condition, states only go to war to advance their interests when they can, and this is, in turn, determined largely by their power capabilities. Power — and by this realists mean military might — is considered the best indicator for why and when wars occur. Interpretations vary, but balance of power theory argues that although their interests diverge, states are rational actors and will only risk war when they have the power to do so. War happens only when states calculate that the gains will be greater than the losses, and unless power differences are small and the potential rewards great, states generally do not go to war (Gilpin 1981). In many places in the world, including the Middle East, power differentials and military capability are so significant that even when tensions over water are great, states are likely to seek accommodation and compromise. It is simply rational to do so and thus, in the post–Cold War period in particular, interstate war is quite rare.
During the Cold War, IR theories and security studies specifically focused on great power wars and national security and how military power shaped the likelihood of interstate war. Threats and security were construed narrowly in terms of weapons and capabilities, and rarely were other factors considered in research on international war. Defending its narrow, military focus, Stephen Walt explains that "security studies is principally about the phenomenon of war; it assumes that conflict between states is always a possibility, and that the use of military force has far-reaching effects on states and societies" (Walt 1991, 212). In the 1980s, as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union declined, some IR scholars called for a broadening of security studies and for research to look to for new or previously overlooked threats (Lowi 1999, 376). As Richard Ullman explained, portraying security in "excessively narrow and excessively military terms" not only misrepresents reality but also means that we are ignoring what is really happening in the world (1983, 129–130).
By the beginning of the 1990s, it was impossible to ignore the new issues that were contributing to violence all over the world. Ethnicity, religion and even the natural environment were suddenly cast as crucial contributing factors to instability and interstate violence. As Robert Kaplan (1994) dramatically put it, worldwide demographic, environmental and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges, is the real strategic danger, eroding the integrity of states and creating internal anarchy rather than great power interstate wars. This sudden interest in so-called new security issues or nonmilitary threats produced various terms, including "environmental security" and "environmental scarcity." It also spawned multidisciplinary research on the relationship between the natural environment and security, with an emphasis on whether and to what degree environmental issues affect the likelihood of war. The US government in particular wants to understand how new threats might impact national security and the security of its allies around the world.
One US government intelligence report concluded that "there were at least ten places in the world where war could break out over dwindling shared water," the majority in of which were in the Middle East (Dolatyar and Gray 2000, 67). At least for a while, environmental concerns pushed the US government to shift its focus accordingly, creating new institutions and offices to address and respond to looming environmental threats. Events of the 1990s only accelerated the intellectual move to redefine and broaden security studies and to reassess the causal relationship between water and conflict. Two research programs in particular, the Toronto Group and the the Swiss-based Environmental Conflict Project (ENCOP), engaged in high-profile studies that tested so-called Malthusian claims or environment–conflict linkages. In the United States, Tad Homer-Dixon's research in Toronto was "initially greeted enthusiastically by the defense establishment, this time in the setting of the post–Cold War redefinition of relevance" (Wolf 2007, 4). Homer-Dixon's research evolved significantly, implicating water initially in interstate conflicts, while later his research recognized that war between states over water is likely only under limited circumstances. His research thus focused more on the intervening variables and factors that contribute to intrastate violence (Environmental Change & Security Report 2000).
Much of the early research on environmental security relied on historical cases and qualitative methods, examining how the quality or quantity of resources such as water leads to competition between individuals and groups and thus increases the likelihood of intrastate violence. Although environment–conflict linkages were found in many of the historical cases, other researchers, specifically Nils Petter Gleditsch from the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), argued that the environmental security literature lacked clarity, important variables were overlooked and, in general, the arguments were so complex that they were "virtually untestable" (Environmental Change & Security Report 2000, 78). In other words, it was too difficult to assess the independent contribution of the natural environment to violence (Meierding 2013, 188). Quantitative researchers were often the most vocal critics of this research, but during the 1990s only two large N-analyses were attempted, and they presented inconsistent findings on the environment-conflict linkage. Unfortunately, by the time quantitative studies were completed, interest in environmental security was overshadowed by other concerns, namely, international terrorism because of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Only in the last decade has interest in the natural environment — and specifically water — returned, because of the unique aspects of water and concern over climate change. Much of this research has been quantitative in nature and focuses on the role of geography in affecting the likelihood of war. Among the explanations for the robust relationship between neighboring states and war is territory, because it is a vital resource with military and economic importance. In addition, territory harbors important natural resources, including water, making it an even more important resource. To a great extent, this research has examined "the role of territory as either a cause or a facilitating factor in conflicts between neighboring states, with water and competition for shared water resources featured prominently in these studies" (Brochmann and Gleditsch 2012, 518). Research on shared rivers, for example, tries to discern the independent effects that sharing a river might have on the probability of interstate conflict.
These studies have been done in various ways and they sometimes involve the same authors, but they have produced inconsistent findings when it comes to the linkages between water and conflict (Gleditsch et al. 2006; Brochmann and Gleditsch 2012). However, the most recent findings indicate that, since almost all neighboring states share at least one river, it is "impossible to disentangle the effect of sharing a river from the effect of being neighbors" (Brochmann and Gleditsch 2012, 519). Territory and proximity may indeed increase the likelihood of interstate militarized disputes, but future research needs to do a better job conceptualizing and measuring the issues under contention (Hensel 2000). Thus, while neo-Malthusians predict water wars in the future, such a conclusion is considered largely premature by IR scholars, because there is little evidence that water in and of itself has created a war or even a credible threat of one.
Liberal assumptions and theories in international relations recognize that while war is possible between states, it does not always occur because of the range of institutions that exist to encourage states to address conflicts peacefully. Liberals also assume that states are often interested in their individual absolute gains rather than in the gains of others, which means they are more likely to seek out cooperation (Powell 1991). Moreover, as international politics becomes more globalized and states become more interdependent, war and violent conflict in general will be less likely to help states advance their interests. Liberal assumptions and theories are often founded in research on water, because "shared interests along a waterway seem to consistently outweigh water's conflict-inducing characteristics" (Wolf 2007, 7). This means that under certain circumstances, and especially as they become more interdependent, states are even more likely to think about absolute gains and peaceful solutions to conflicts.
Globalization will inevitably make states more interdependent, and nonstate actors including international and regional organizations will help facilitate cooperation. Simply put, in the twenty-first century, war is less cost effective than pursuing the same goal through cooperation and trade. Liberal authors thus maintain that if interdependence is peace promoting in general, then this will be true for resource-based conflicts as well (cited in Barnett2000, 273). Water scarcity by its nature creates zero-sum or positive-sum dynamics, because water links states' fates in a unique way. Cooperation means that everyone benefits, while the failure to cooperate leaves both states worse off. According to this perspective, "water is too vital a resource to be put at risk by war; increasing water scarcity generally pushes decision-makers to find substitution by coordinated, cooperative and conciliatory arrangements" (Dolatyar and Gray 2000, 67).
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Excerpted from Water Security in the Middle East by Jean Axelrad Cahan. Copyright © 2017 Jean Axelrad Cahan editorial matter and selection. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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