Description
“Water and blood cannot flow together,” declared Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, on 12 May, 2025. This was a dictate to revoke water sharing with Pakistan in the wake of violence in Kashmir. Recent conflicts around the world have brought renewed attention to the use of water in warfare. This use is at odds with a longstanding moral current – a water taboo – in the international community that prescribes high standards for water sharing and denounces water weaponisation as morally objectionable. What is the status of the water taboo today? Extending norm evolution scholarship into norm regression, this essay analyses the successes and limits of a moral aversion to weaponising water in war. Qualitative foreign policy analysis of the United States, India, Russia and Ukraine in the early-mid 2020s indicates that the taboo’s influence has been moderated by permissive interpretations of military necessity and construction of the adversary as located outside of the norm community. These findings contribute new insights into taboo limits in international conflict, and offer future avenues for policy to charter peace and security around water.
