Hacker News Reader

Comment by chriselles | Hacker News Reader

Egypt literally dies as a nation without Nile water.

Uganda purchasing SU27 advanced long range fighter bombers and Egypt recently placing increased emphasis and resources on training military units(including western training efforts) responsible for upstream Nile force projection is not a coincidence.

Nile resource sharing is a massive flash point.

I recall glancing at an engineering report that indicated clearing/dredging swamps in Sudan could significantly reduce mile water evaporation and increase downstream flow.

But at massive environmental and financial cost.

Perhaps it’s time to stock up on Egyptian cotton sheets now, since the future of Egyptian cotton may seriously be in doubt.

Tough choices to be made amplified by the need for them to be across sovereign borders.

View on HN

Great video on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BCY0SPOFpE

Also this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOezSxtL05E

Great yt channel in general.

and the big ass damn in Ethiopia. Given the civil war there, don't be surprised in this turning into a bigger conflict.

Has the world always been this on-the-cusp of war?

Turkey-Greece, Azerbaijan-Armenia, China-Taiwan, Ethiopia, Egypt-Uganda, Saudi-Iran-Yemen, Congo, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Russia-Ukraine, Morocco-Western Sahara-Algeria, India-China, India-Pakistan, Syria

Maybe I've just been watching too much Caspian Report lately, and a lot of these issues are a century in the making, but damn if it doesn't feel like early WW2 issues arising along with the geopolitical implications of climate change.

> Has the world always been this on-the-cusp of war?

Usually much more so.

Those are small conflicts and skirmishes.

Take India-China. Those borderguards were literally fighting eachother with rocks and sticks because they don't issue guns to them PRECISELY to avoid war.

Until they're not? Major conflicts always seem to be negative feedback loop series of escalations.

I think you mean "positive feedback loop", which means a self-reinforcing cycle.

A negative feedback loop is the opposite, a feedback mechanism that self-corrects or dampens the signal.

Re. the state of war, I suggest reading "Enlightenment Now" by Stephen Pinker. We are living through the most peaceful period in history.

This is probably the most peaceful time in history, there is no armed conflict in the western hemishpere. https://time.com/4475617/how-peace-finally-came-to-reign-thr...

Most of the world is at peace, it's a remarkable accomplishment.

My understanding is that economic interdependence deserves the bulk of the credit for this relative peace. Tying the economic prosperity of nations together makes it harder to rationalise physical conflict.

But perhaps we can also thank global communications for making it that little bit harder (though still by no means impossible) to sufficiently otherise far away populations.

And nukes certainly limit large scale wars as well.

Oh, yes. I believe it was Francis Fukuyama who predicted that different regions of the world would specialize in producing specific products, trade would increase, and wars would decrease. Wars would decrease because of the DEPENDENCE of trade - BUT international sanctions would replace wars as the key piece to hold other countries in check.

We are seeing the US sanction other countries when they do things we don't like - and we are getting sanctioned in turn.

> economic interdependence deserves the bulk of the credit for this relative peace.

That was the thesis of a book called The Great Illusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

The book argued a European war was very unlikely.

the economic interdependence between industrial countries would be "the real guarantor of the good behavior of one state to another", as it meant that war would be economically harmful to all the countries involved.

The book was published, to great acclaim, in... 1909.

The author could well have been right, but underestimated how much economic interdependence was required for his thesis to hold.

The Ukraine versus Russia

That is eastern hemisphere

World Wars have always taken place primarily in the Eastern Hemisphere. I assume WWIII will be the same.

I'll just leave this here.

https://youtu.be/eFTLKWw542g

The primary issue of WW2 was an ascending, hyper-aggressive super-power-to-be that was assisted by a secret pact with the USSR. Had Poland not been stabbed in the back, the war would have gone on an entirely different course.

All of the conflicts that you listed are just run of the mill civil wars/border skirmishes/empires with rather limited pan-ethnic ambitions.

Morocco-westernSahara will not involve Algeria. The conflict is also basically resolved already with Morocco having successfully invaded/taken control of all but a very small part of Western Sahara.

From what I hear, a lot of the internal conflicts in Ethiopia is fuelled by undercover Egyption influence, trying to increase the internal conflicts to weaken the country.

That is the perception here. Predictably, it's behind the hardening of public opinion on the issue of the dam.

Egypt is in an ideal location for solar-powered desalination... if they can afford it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com