NativeAlienNation

💧 Europe’s 2026 drought has once again highlighted the value of fresh water. It suddenly turns out that water is not just about drinking — supplying cities — or eating, through irrigation. Nor is it only about industrial production: many technological processes depend on water. Fresh water also underpins large-scale energy and logistics. And soon, data centres will depend on it too, since, like thermal and nuclear power plants, they require huge amounts of water for cooling. From this perspective, a river, lake or any other body of water still shapes the way entire macro-regions live, just as it did thousands of years ago. And although fresh water remains greatly undervalued as a resource — a natural good that literally falls from the sky — something else is striking: almost every country aspiring to global, or at least regional, leadership is also a water superpower: the United States, China, Russia, India, and Brazil as a potential leader of Latin America. In other words, control over one of the key resources of the future is already largely determined by geography: no abundance of water — no great future. 🌍 Fresh water is already becoming a factor in major politics and conflicts — for example in Central and South Asia, as well as Africa. And it is obvious that competition for water resources will intensify over time, including in Europe. Droughts are becoming too frequent, affecting harvests, power generation, mining, food deliveries and much more. For now, a major war on the scale of the Ukrainian conflict over fresh water sounds unthinkable. But if droughts like the summer of 2026 become more frequent in the Old World, Drang nach Osten could acquire a new motivation: not only land and cheap resources, but fresh water as well. Original Post Follow TRN 👈