Syria and Water!

http://www.timesofisrael.com/lack-of-water-sparked-syrias-conflict-and-it-will-make-egypt-more-militant-too/#.UY4xAJLVdGc.email

This is a very interesting line of argument regarding Syria. I argues in my book The Last Crusade that Iraq was the best place for us to try to jumpt start something approaching a modern secular state becuase Iraq was the only Arab state in the Middle East that has both water and oil. Some have water, Egypt; some have oil, Saudi; but only Iraq has both.

When I was in graduate school, the population of Saudi Arabia was about 5 million, or less. Today it is 25 times that and can be sustained ONLY through massive and expensive imports of food and costly de-salinization efforts.

What will happen when the world begins to better exploit its shale oil and natural gas and requires fewer imports from the Gulf? How will the Saudis feed their population? Keep in mind that recently the US has been pumping more crude than Saudi Arabia!

If you look around a bit on the web you will also find stories about a brewing problem between Ethiopia and Egypt. The Ethiopians are planning on damming up some of the headwaters of the Nile. There are different estimates of how much damage that would do downstream in Egypt.