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David Fickling, Columnist

Why India and Pakistan Won’t Go to War Over Water

Because no one ever does — it’s almost like WMD-level deterrence.

Leave the Chenab river where it belongs — in a treaty.

Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

It sounds like the opening scenes of a World War III dystopia: Deep in the Himalayas, engineers quietly shut off the sluice gates to a little-known dam. Like the assassination of an Austrian archduke, the butterfly effects from that one obscure incident could blow up into a nuclear conflict drawing in much of the planet.

Right now, it seems like a remote but genuine possibility. Since Sunday, India has almost entirely stopped water flows across the border through the Chenab river, a tributary of the Indus, according to Pakistan’s government. New Delhi earlier withdrew from a 1960 treaty governing the Indus that’s remained in place through decades of skirmishes and actual wars.