A Russian mathematician invented the math behind ChatGPT in 1906 while trying to humiliate a priest in an academic feud, and he died 16 years later without knowing any of it.
His name was Andrey Markov. His nickname was Andrey the Furious. And the thing he built was never meant to be about language at all.
Here is the story almost nobody tells you.
Russia in 1905 was fracturing. The Russo-Japanese War was bleeding the country. Revolution was in the streets. And inside the Imperial Academy of Sciences, two mathematicians were tearing each other apart over a question that had nothing to do with either of them professionally.
The priest was Pavel Nekrasov, a theologian turned mathematician who believed numbers could prove God’s design. His argument was this: the Law of Large Numbers, the foundational rule of probability theory, only works when events are independent of each other. Like coin flips. No connection between them. And if human decisions follow the same pattern, he said, then human beings must be making truly free, independent choices. Mathematics, in his telling, proved free will. Which meant it proved the soul. Which meant it proved God.
Markov found this professionally offensive and personally infuriating.
He was a fierce atheist who had been excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church by choice, sending a letter demanding they remove him after they refused to recognize Tolstoy’s excommunication. He had no patience for what he called the abuse of mathematics. The idea that a priest was using probability theory to smuggle theology into science made him furious in the precise way his nickname suggested.
So he set out to destroy the argument.
His proof was elegant and brutal. He showed that the Law of Large Numbers does not require independence at all. Averages can stabilize even when every event is connected to the one before it. Free will had nothing to do with it. The soul had nothing to do with it. Nekrasov’s entire theological superstructure collapsed on a mathematical technicality.
But Markov needed a real-world demonstration. Something concrete. Something that would make the proof undeniable.
He picked up a copy of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
Not to read it. To count it.
He sat in his study in St. Petersburg and wrote out the first 20,000 letters of the poem in one continuous string, stripping out every space and every punctuation mark until it was just a raw chain of characters. Then he began counting. Vowel or consonant. What follows what. How often does a vowel follow a vowel. How often does a consonant follow a vowel. Week after week, letter by letter, by hand.
What he found was that the letters were deeply dependent on each other. A vowel is far more likely to follow a consonant than to follow another vowel. The sequence is not random. Each letter is influenced by what came before it. And yet across 20,000 letters, the overall frequency of vowels converged to a stable number. Dependence and statistical regularity could coexist.
Nekrasov was wrong. The math worked without independence. Free will was not hiding inside probability theory. Markov had proven it on the back of a love poem.
He called the structure he had discovered a chain. What we now call a Markov chain.
The idea is simple enough to explain in one sentence. The next state of a system depends only on its current state, not on everything that came before it. Each step carries just enough memory to take the next step. No more.
What Markov could not have imagined is what that idea would become.
Every language model that exists today is built on this exact logic. When ChatGPT reads your prompt and generates the next word, it is doing a vastly more sophisticated version of exactly what Markov did with Pushkin’s letters. It looks at the current state of the conversation and calculates what should come next based on patterns in everything it was trained on. The core mathematical intuition, that sequences have structure, that the next element depends on what came before, that you can model language as a chain of dependent probabilities, is Markov’s. It has been Markov’s since 1913.
His paper on Eugene Onegin was presented to the Imperial Academy of Sciences on January 23, 1913. The audience was mathematicians. The context was a dispute about free will. Nobody in that room was thinking about computers. There were no computers. The first electronic computer would not exist for another three decades.
He died in 1922, nine years after the paper, in the early chaos of the Soviet era. He was 66. He had spent his final years watching the Tsar fall, the revolution rise, and his country become something unrecognizable. He never saw a transistor. He never imagined a machine that processes language. He thought he had settled an argument with a priest.
The argument he actually settled was one nobody had asked yet.
Today his chains are inside every search engine, every voice assistant, every spam filter, every autocomplete. The 2024 paper Large Language Models as Markov Chains shows formally what practitioners have known informally for decades: the inference mechanism of GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini can be characterized as a Markov chain operating over sequences of tokens. The math is his. The name on the paper is someone else’s.
There is a version of this story where Nekrasov wins the argument. Where Markov decides the priest is not worth his time. Where nobody counts 20,000 letters in a poem to settle a theological dispute.
In that version, the chain is never invented. Or it is invented later, by someone else, for different reasons, on a different timeline.
We got this version instead. The furious atheist. The love poem. The weeks of counting. The proof that destroyed a man’s theology and accidentally handed the 21st century its most important mathematical tool.
Nekrasov wanted to find God in the numbers.
What he found instead was Markov. And Markov found something neither of them was looking for.
Every year, the food produced contains enough calories to feed 10 billion people, yet one-eighth of the planet faces chronic hunger. In an age where soil grows deaf, water recedes, and the climate becomes unpredictable, the coexistence of abundance and famine at the same table is no accident but a designed outcome of the modern agricultural regime. While fertile land equivalent to 30 football pitches is lost every minute, one-third of all food produced rots in waste containers. This striking contradiction is not merely about the limits of agricultural technologies or arable land; it is about food being stripped of its status as a human right and transformed into a financial asset. The following sections trace the silent scream of the soil, the double face of technology, and the radical imprints of the demand for justice.
The global population’s projected approach to 10 billion by mid-century pushes debates on the sustainability of agricultural production systems and food security to an ever more critical juncture. Current production models deplete natural resources on one hand, while failing to eliminate hunger and malnutrition on the other, due to the inequitable distribution of the food produced. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations indicate that the per capita food supply is theoretically sufficient on a global scale, yet structural ruptures in access are deepening. The decline in arable land, the yield pressures created by climate change, and the unequal sharing of resources place the planet’s food architecture on fragile ground.
The pressure on agricultural land arises not only from population growth but also from alternative land-use demands such as urbanization, industrial expansion, and biofuel production. Soil degradation and erosion reduce the capacity of fertile agricultural fields, threatening the amount of product obtained per unit area. Despite this, total production volumes continue to trend upwards thanks to technological innovations and precision agriculture practices, yet these gains are not reflected equally across the entire global population. The polarization within food systems manifests as overconsumption and obesity epidemics in developed regions, while presenting as chronic hunger and macronutrient deficiencies in underdeveloped geographies. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events linked to climate change, geopolitical ruptures in supply chains, and speculative price movements prove that logistical and economic access, rather than production quantity, constitutes the primary problem.
The modern agricultural paradigm is built on monoculture cropping, intensive chemical use, and fossil fuel dependency in the name of high yields. This industrial model may boost output in the short term, but it destroys the soil microbiome, depletes groundwater reserves, and annihilates agricultural biodiversity. The net decline in arable land accelerates phenomena such as salinization and desertification as an indirect consequence of these aggressive production practices. Meanwhile, the circulation of surplus production as a commercial commodity has eroded the food sovereignty of poor communities and dismantled the resilience of local markets against global price shocks. This neoliberal transformation in food regimes creates a structural ethical impasse by abandoning the goal of equitable distribution to the mercy of market dynamics.
Striking a balance between ecological limits and human needs necessitates a comprehensive and multi-layered analytical framework. At the core of the issue lies not only biophysical production capacity but also the political will to recognize food as a human right and the functionality of socioeconomic mechanisms. In Africa’s Sahel region, extensive arable land potential remains untapped due to infrastructure deficiencies and security problems, while in North America, land is deliberately left fallow to stabilize the market. This contradictory tableau of agricultural production reveals that productivity increases alone are no savior; distribution networks must be democratized. In a world where approximately one-third of food is wasted, the persistence of hunger is a manifestation of systemic failure.
Current Status and Limitations of Arable Lands
The global stock of arable land constitutes a limited portion of the Earth’s ice-free surface, and the capacity for expanding these lands has been largely exhausted. Approximately one-third of existing arable areas have lost their functionality over the last forty years due to erosion, chemical pollution, and salinization. Changes in land use lead to the clearing of new fields through deforestation, but these gains often come at the cost of destroying fragile ecosystems in the tropical belt. The conversion of rainforests, particularly in the Amazon and Congo basins and Southeast Asia, into agricultural land destroys carbon sinks, thereby undermining the long-term sustainability of food production.
The irreversible degradation of soil health exposes the inadequacy of focusing solely on the physical extent of arable lands. Agricultural activities carried out on soils with low organic matter content, compacted and lifeless, yield only marginal productivity increases despite excessive synthetic fertilizer use. Reports from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification record that approximately 12 million hectares of productive land undergo degradation each year. Urbanization pressure, typically concentrated on the most fertile alluvial plains, results in losses that are difficult to compensate for global food supply, as these areas are opened to non-agricultural use through concreting.
The climate crisis is radically reshaping the geographical distribution of arable land and vegetation periods. While agricultural suitability boundaries shift northward in some high-latitude regions due to rising temperatures, extreme heat and drought periods are prolonging in traditional agricultural centers such as the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East, and South Asia. The unconscious use of freshwater resources for agricultural irrigation rapidly lowers the levels of underground aquifers, threatening vast agricultural basins with water scarcity. Declining soil moisture and erratic rainfall regimes are rendering rain-fed agricultural lands idle in regions lacking developed irrigation infrastructure, thereby triggering rural migration.
Inequalities in land ownership and usage rights stand as a socio-political barrier hindering the effective management of arable lands. Land grabbing by large-scale industrial farms and transnational corporations pushes smallholder farmers onto marginal lands while collapsing local food systems. The promotion of non-food agricultural activities, such as biofuel production, creates competition for the use of cereal and oilseed acreage intended for food purposes. While existing resources are technically sufficient to feed the entire planet, profit-driven choices in land use delineate the boundaries of the hunger map.
Agricultural Productivity and Technological Intervention
The concept of agricultural productivity, with modernity, has focused on obtaining maximum output per unit area, a process that reached its zenith with the Green Revolution’s triad of hybrid seeds, chemical inputs, and irrigation. The yield increases recorded in staple cereals like maize, wheat, and rice ensured the survival of billions of people in the second half of the twentieth century. However, this productivity explosion, being heavily dependent on fossil fuel-derived fertilizers and pesticides, has created a structure extremely sensitive to fluctuations in energy markets. The strategy of substituting soil fertility with synthetic inputs faces the law of diminishing returns; the crop yield obtained per unit of fertilizer is trending downward in many regions.
Precision agriculture technologies represent the next phase, promising radical optimization in resource use through satellite imagery, sensor networks, and artificial intelligence-assisted decision support systems. Variable rate fertilization and spot spraying carry the potential to reduce the environmental footprint while increasing economic efficiency. Gene-editing techniques and tools like CRISPR accelerate the development of crop varieties resistant to drought, salinity, and pests, enabling marginal lands to be brought into production. Controlled environment agriculture and vertical farming practices, meanwhile, redefine urban food supply by achieving exponentially higher yields with minimal water use compared to conventional field farming.
Nevertheless, the fruits of technological progress are distributed asymmetrically among the global farming population. High-cost robotic systems and digital infrastructure are accessible only to capital-intensive large enterprises, while subsistence farming families in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia cannot adequately benefit even from advances in seed breeding. Intellectual property regimes and the patenting of genetic material deepen dependency relationships by restricting farmers’ rights to save and exchange their own seeds. Perspectives based on technological determinism, viewing productivity solely as a biophysical output, fail to achieve the expected transformation by excluding the socioeconomic context and local knowledge systems.
Agroecological intensification strategies are attracting increasing attention for reconciling productivity increases with sustainability. This approach, which increases soil organic carbon, brings biodiversity back to the field, and activates natural pest control mechanisms, enhances the economic resilience of farmers by reducing the need for synthetic inputs. Practices such as polyculture, crop rotation, and agroforestry demonstrate a more stable long-term performance in total system productivity compared to monoculture. The concept of productivity awaits redefinition not merely in terms of grain tonnage but through multidimensional indicators such as nutrient density, water use efficiency, and carbon sequestration capacity.
Structural Barriers to Equitable Distribution
The global architecture of the food supply chain structurally reproduces the paradox of widespread scarcity amidst production abundance. Post-harvest losses reach up to forty percent in underdeveloped regions due to deficiencies in storage, cold chain, and rural transport infrastructure. Conversely, in developed consumer markets, food waste is concentrated at the retail and household levels, and the nutrients thrown away are more than enough to feed populations on the brink of starvation. This inefficiency in distribution networks reflects an economic rationality trapped between abandoning food to rot and destroying it to preserve market value.
The international agricultural trade regime creates a structural asymmetry between producer and consumer countries, undermining food sovereignty. Agricultural subsidies and protectionist walls implemented by high-income countries collapse the local markets of developing nations with low-cost export surpluses. Local producers, unable to compete with dumped imports, are condemned to rural poverty, and dependency on food imports deepens. Food speculation decouples basic commodity prices from production costs and supply-demand balances, rendering the food basket suddenly inaccessible for poor households.
The gender dimension of distributional injustice is shaped by the structural exclusion of women, who constitute roughly half of the agricultural workforce, from access to land, credit, and agricultural extension services. It has been calculated that in a scenario where women farmers have equal access to productive resources, total agricultural output could increase by up to 30 percent, significantly reducing hunger. Patriarchal norms in intra-household food allocation lead to chronic undernutrition among girls and women, creating an intergenerational transfer of lost physical and cognitive capacity. Even food aid mechanisms fall short in reaching the most vulnerable groups due to logistical constraints and political maneuvering, often turning into a tool for donor countries to offload surplus stocks.
Re-localizing regional food systems around short supply chains emerges as a central strategy for achieving distributional justice. Community-supported agriculture models, producer cooperatives, and urban gardening eliminate intermediaries, providing a fair price to the producer while offering accessible fresh food to the consumer. Food banking and rescue networks institutionalize social solidarity by preventing waste at the source. Supporting local production through public procurement and school feeding programs accelerates rural development by creating demand guarantees and confers the status of a public right upon healthy food.
Holistic Analysis and Policy Openings
The current crisis imposes a simultaneous transformation of interconnected ecological, economic, and social layers. Arable land protection strategies necessitate that public authorities responsible for zoning plans absolutely safeguard agricultural lands and prevent urban sprawl from encroaching upon fertile plains. Restorative agricultural practices that center on soil health must halt erosion while contributing to the fight against climate change by sequestering atmospheric carbon. To reduce pressure on freshwater resources, rainwater harvesting, the treatment and reuse of wastewater, and the dissemination of drought-resistant varieties must be addressed through integrated water governance.
Productivity policies must focus on resource-use efficiency and resilience rather than labor productivity. Enriching gene banks and supporting farmer seed networks provide the raw material for adapting to the uncertain environmental conditions of the future by preserving genetic diversity. Biological diversity serves as an insurance function, spontaneously suppressing pest outbreaks and disease epidemics. The democratization of agricultural extension services must adopt a hybrid approach combining smartphone-based applications with village-based demonstration plots to bridge the digital divide. Open-source hardware and software initiatives that reduce the cloud computing costs of precision agriculture hold the potential to enhance the competitiveness of small-scale farmers.
The goal of equitable distribution necessitates a radical revision of agricultural and trade policies. Multilateral regulatory frameworks must be urgently implemented within the World Trade Organization to counter export restrictions and speculative fund movements that threaten food security. Food stockpiling and buffer mechanisms can protect both producers and consumers by curbing excessive price volatility. Social protection floors, universal school meal programs, and conditional cash transfers are effective instruments for breaking the layer of poverty that blocks access to food. Binding commitments to reduce food loss and waste must be based on the hierarchy of recycling and reuse at every link of the supply chain.
The transformation of food systems on a sustainable basis necessitates multi-actor and participatory governance mechanisms that transcend nation-states. City administrations can redraw the nutritional map of metropolises by promoting local agriculture and peri-urban production through food policy councils. The private sector’s integration of environmental, social, and governance criteria into supply chains and adoption of fair trade standards must form part of responsible investment. Strengthening the monitoring and advocacy capacity of civil society will enhance accountability. Ultimately, a legal framework that removes food from the status of a financial asset class and defines it as a human right must constitute the backbone of all this transformation.
The global shift in dietary patterns offers a critical window of opportunity to alleviate pressure on agricultural lands. Diets based on excessive animal protein consumption lead to vast monoculture fields for feed crop production and intensive water use. A conscious transition towards plant-based nutrition will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also allow existing arable lands to be allocated to producing food for direct human consumption. Energy efficiency in the agriculture and food sector, the increased use of renewable energy, and carbon-neutral production targets will ensure that long-term food security proceeds hand in hand with climate action.
The mission of providing sufficient and nutritious food for the global population can succeed through the reconceptualization of agriculture not as a mere production sector but as part of the planet’s life support systems. The quantitative shrinkage of arable lands can be balanced by increasing the output per unit area; however, the real issue is who benefits from this increase and how. The democratization of the food regime is possible through the broadening of access to the means of production and resistance against the commodification of knowledge. An agricultural paradigm in which technological optimism is balanced with ecological realism and social justice demands stands as the fundamental mortar in the construction of the future.
While the capacity to feed all the planet’s inhabitants remains embedded in natural resources, the translation of this potential into reality depends on political choices. Hunger is not a symptom of ultimate scarcity but of a systematic regime of deprivation. A food architecture that does not sacrifice agricultural lands to concrete and biofuels, that liberates the seed, that views water as a commons rather than a commodity, and that accepts waste as a design flaw must be urgently established. Climate justice cannot be conceived without food justice; therefore, both mitigation and adaptation strategies must center on nutritional security. Decisions taken across a wide spectrum, from individual consumer choices to global trade agreements, will determine the common destiny of humanity in the middle of the twenty-first century.
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Sefa Yürükel
Danish ethnographer and social anthropologist (MA) Aarhus University, 1997 Independent Researcher Fields of Research: International Politics, Public International Law, Geopolitics, Sociology, Psychology, Cultural Studies, Systems and Structures
Letter to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Closest Ally – Mr. Ali Najmi
Mr. Ali Najmi The Law Office of Ali Najmi 32 Broadway Suite 1310 New York, NY 10004
April 4, 2026
Dear Mr. Najmi,
At the outset let me ask: Are Christian Armenian lives more precious than the 2. 5 million Muslim lives to you and Mr. Mamdani that were killed / lost in World War 1 ?
I acknowledge your recent remarks concerning my position on the characterization of the events of 1915- World War 1, as well as the references made to my professional background. I respond to clarify the issues raised and to ensure the discussion remains grounded in principle, law, and evidentiary standards rather than insinuation.
During our text messaging Sunday April 26, 2026 , rather than engaging with the facts, Mr. Najmi, you have chosen to rely on personal diversions that have no bearing on the historical and legal questions at hand. This approach prioritizes personal antagonism over evidence-based debate. I maintain that this discussion should be guided by judicially tested evidence and documentation, rather than irrelevant personal attacks.
The central issue is not whether history can be studied or discussed by scholars, but whether the legal classification of grave international crimes such as genocide can be definitively established outside a competent judicial process. In my view, such determinations properly fall within the jurisdiction of established legal bodies, including international courts and tribunals or competent human rights mechanisms. Scholarly interpretation, particularly when selective or ideologically driven, should not substitute for formal legal adjudication where such serious legal characterizations are concerned. A determination of genocide requires rigorous evidentiary review, adversarial testing, and cross examination within an appropriate judicial framework.
Sir, it is important to separate historical inquiry from legal adjudication. While historians may contribute to contextual understanding, legal determinations of this magnitude are ultimately the responsibility of impartial tribunals. This distinction is fundamental to the integrity of international law.
Sir, no one disputes that the early 20th century was marked by immense human suffering across multiple communities during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the First World War. This includes significant losses experienced by 2.5 million Muslims as well as Armenians and others. A balanced historical understanding must acknowledge all such suffering without selective omission. The legal argument advanced here is often misunderstood. The absence of the 1948 Genocide Convention at the time of the events in question does not preclude accountability under international law.
Indeed, precedents such as the Nuremberg Trials demonstrate that mass atrocities were prosecuted as crimes against humanity under existing principles of international law. Furthermore, later international tribunals, including those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, confirm that judicial mechanisms are routinely established after the fact to determine responsibility based on evidence and due process.
Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan January 24, 2025, during a meeting with members of the Armenian diaspora in Zurich, Switzerland. said ” How is it that there was no agenda for the Armenian Genocide in 1939, and how is it that the agenda for the Armenian Genocide appeared in 1950? How did it happen?”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon April 16, 2015 said “Armenian deaths during World War I were not genocide”
U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Armenian Allegations.
European Court of Human Rights, ECHR on December 17, 2013 (Perincek vs Switzerland) that the events of 1915 cannot be proven to be genocide or compared to Jewish Holocaust.
The continued efforts by segments of the Armenian diaspora to advance interpretations of history that Türkiye considers inaccurate have long been a matter of concern. In this context, Türkiye’s 2005 proposal to establish a joint historical commission with Armenia remains unfulfilled. If the evidentiary basis is as clear as asserted, engagement with such an initiative would seem constructive.
Perhaps, Mr. Najmi and Mr. Mamdani, might consider taking a leading role in pursuing a legal avenue to definitively clarify the matter at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), International Criminal Court (ICC), International Court of Justice (ICJ) an effort that could, in your view, bring resolution and recognition to the Armenian position. You or Mr. Mamdani can Mr. Najmi become a hero to the Armenians.
Mr Najmi, Are Christian Armenian lives more precious than the 2.5 million Muslim lives to you and
Mr. Mamdani that were killed in World War 1
Mr. Najmi, I am quite curious as to why you think that I, and many others in my position, do not deserve a right you so readily claim for yourself ?
Finally, attempts to resolve or prejudge such deeply contested historical and legal issues outside of proper judicial forums risk undermining both legal standards and constructive dialogue. For that reason only competent international judicial bodies not selectively curated scholarly consensus or politically motivated narratives are appropriate forums for definitive legal determinations of genocide.
Also, Using of the outdated term “Turkey” in official communication is a insult to a honorable people and Nation. The nation has formally adopted the name “Republic of Türkiye,” which has been recognized by the United Nations and numerous international bodies. Addressing countries by their chosen names is a basic element of diplomatic respect and cultural decency. Mr. Mamdani should, get it right !
Accordingly, I respectfully decline to accept the characterization set forth in your statement and that of Mr. Mamdani.
Until a verdict of genocide can be reached by a “competent tribunal ” after “due process” where both sides of the conflict are properly represented and evidence cross examined, the term genocide should be preceded by the qualifier “alleged”.
WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS TRUTH AND HONESTY, NOT SELECTIVE MORALITY.
Respectfully,
Ibrahim Kurtulus
Community Activist
From: EMI P Date: Thu, May 7, 2026 at 3:43 AM
Back page of the French daily Le Petit Journal, dated 24 November1896 (Armenians attacking a mosque):
In the context of a complex geopolitical environment and the internal transformation of Moldova’s political system, the ability of various political forces to build a balanced and pragmatic foreign policy course is becoming increasingly important. In this regard, the Moldovan opposition — primarily the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova —positions itself as a constructive force oriented toward dialogue with both the West and the East.
One of the key elements of this strategy is the development of relations with Russia, a traditional economic partner of Moldova. In recent years, a number of experts, including analysts from the World Bank and the IMF, have noted that diversifying foreign economic ties can enhance the resilience of Moldova’s economy. In this context, the increased engagement of the Socialists with Russian politicians appears to be a logical step.
Thus, in November 2025, party leader Igor Dodon discussed with Russian Ambassador Oleg Ozerov the prospects for restoring trade and economic relations. In March 2026, during a meeting with Deputy Speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Pyotr Tolstoy, the focus was on energy cooperation — a field where mutually beneficial solutions are particularly in demand.
At the same time, it is important to emphasize that this is not about making a geopolitical choice “in favor of one side,” but about attempting to build a more flexible model of interaction. Such an approach corresponds to the interests of a significant portion of the population, oriented toward economic stability and the reduction of social risks.
Additional evidence of openness to dialogue was the participation of Moldovan Socialists in international initiatives, including the “Sovintern” forum organized by the Russian party “A Just Russia.” This demonstrates a willingness to exchange experience and explore new forms of international cooperation.
Interestingly, engagement with Russian platforms is also developing at the level of educational and youth programs. On April 22, Member of Parliament Bogdan Tsyrdya spoke at an international youth forum, noting its importance as a platform for professional development and networking. Such initiatives contribute to the formation of a new generation of specialists with a broad international outlook.
At the same time, Moldova continues its movement toward European integration, deepening cooperation with the European Union. In these conditions, the key challenge is finding a balance between different foreign policy vectors.
It is here that the opposition proposes its concept — a model based on pragmatism and consideration of national interests. Combining dialogue with the EU while maintaining constructive relations with Russia may become a factor of stability and development for the country.
Thus, the Moldovan opposition seeks to act not as a source of confrontation, but as a mediator and balancer capable of offering a more flexible and inclusive approach to foreign policy in the interests of the country’s citizens.
Ever since the founding of Israel, one of the most fundamental elements shaping its national security strategy has been water. Historians and political scientists have repeatedly stressed that one of the underlying dynamics of the 1967 war was control of the Jordan River basin. For decades, the level of the Sea of Galilee and the state of the coastal aquifers have been among the most sensitive items on governments’ agendas. This chronic scarcity pushed Israel to seek a radical and bold solution, eventually leading the country to build gigantic technological facilities that convert seawater into drinking water.
Starting with the first large-scale plant commissioned in Ashkelon in 2005, the process has culminated in five massive complexes lined up along the Mediterranean coastline. With the Sorek, Hadera, Palmachim, and Ashdod plants coming online, Israel now meets roughly eighty-five to ninety percent of its national drinking and municipal water from this centralized system. Internationally, this transformation has frequently been hailed as a “water miracle” and held up as a model for arid geographies. Yet this engineering triumph has concentrated an existential national resource at an extremely limited number of points, creating a perilously new and deep state of strategic vulnerability.
The risk posed by geographical concentration constitutes a vital threat, especially in the context of the asymmetric warfare doctrine developed by Iran and its proxy forces. The rapid proliferation of precision-guided missile and unmanned aerial vehicle technologies in the region has moved strategic civilian infrastructure—once considered safe behind the front lines—directly into the line of fire. Hezbollah’s threats targeting Haifa, Hamas’s rocket attacks reaching Ashkelon, and the Houthi assaults on Eilat from Yemen are concrete manifestations of this new geo-strategic reality. At this juncture, water desalination plants turn into priceless strategic targets for an adversary seeking to strike the lifeline that sustains a nation.
The Geographic and Structural Vulnerability of Centralized Infrastructure
Almost all of Israel’s desalination capacity is situated along a narrow coastal corridor of roughly one hundred and fifty kilometers, stretching from the Lebanese border to Gaza. This geographic constriction paints an extremely risky picture in the face of modern warfare’s requirements. The strip falls well within the range of missile and drone attacks that Hezbollah could launch from southern Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Gaza. The short distances between the facilities significantly increase the likelihood that simultaneous or successive strikes could paralyze the entire system.
The facilities in question are sensitive not only because of their locations but also due to their structural characteristics. The heart of a reverse osmosis plant consists of high-pressure pumps, sensitive membrane systems, and complex water intake and outflow infrastructure. A munition hitting any one of these components could cause damage that halts production at the plant for months. When spare parts supply and repair times are taken into account, even a single successful attack on one plant would inevitably trigger cascading effects on the national water grid. In a scenario where the two largest plants—Sorek and Hadera—are knocked out simultaneously, the country’s water supply could reach a collapse point within just a few days.
Another point that must be underlined here is that the old strategic reserves no longer have the capacity to carry such a burden. The Sea of Galilee and the mountain aquifers, which were once fallbacks in water crises, have been severely degraded by years of over-extraction, population growth, and agricultural policies dependent on desalinated water. Because the system is built on the assumption that the desalination plants will run continuously at full capacity, natural sources have ceased to be a “backup” and have become, in effect, a complementary part of daily consumption. Therefore, in the event of an attack on the plants, there is practically no secure water reservoir to fall back on.
When all these factors come together, the fate of Israel’s water security becomes tied to a handful of industrial facilities and the success of the air defense systems tasked with protecting them. Air defense systems, however, can reach saturation point, especially in the face of intense and multi-directional attacks. Although Iron Dome and other layered defense components achieve a statistically high interception rate, they can never guarantee one hundred percent protection. A few munitions that manage to slip through could cease to be a statistical anomaly and become the trigger for a national catastrophe.
Capability and Intent Analysis of Asymmetric Threat Actors
The most concrete and immediate threat to Israel’s water infrastructure originates from the network of proxies backed by Iran. Hezbollah, the most critical link in this network, has multiplied its military capability both quantitatively and qualitatively since the 2006 Lebanon War. According to various military intelligence sources, the organization’s inventory includes more than one hundred and fifty thousand rockets and missiles. Within this arsenal, the presence of precision-guided munitions, particularly Iranian-made Fateh-110 and M-600 missiles, poses a lethal threat to fixed strategic facilities with known coordinates. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s past explicit designation of ammonia and petrochemical plants in Haifa as targets reveals the depth of the organization’s strategic planning against Israel’s civilian infrastructure nodes.
To the south, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, although more limited in range and accuracy, directly threaten the desalination plant in Ashkelon. Rocket attacks directed at this area during the post-October 7, 2023, conflicts demonstrated how easily the plant can be targeted. Even though the Iron Dome system destroys many threats in mid-air, saturation attacks, particularly with short-range and mass munitions launches, have the potential to overwhelm the defense. Moreover, a coordinated wave of attacks launched simultaneously from the Lebanese and Gazan fronts would force Israel to divide its air defense resources, thereby increasing the system’s fragility.
Iran’s large-scale missile and drone attack on Israel from its own territory in April 2024 transported the threat spectrum to a new dimension. In that attack, Iran directly and openly declared to the world its capability and intent to strike the country’s military and strategic infrastructure. Although allied air forces and Israel’s own defense systems neutralized the bulk of the attack, the event indisputably proved that Iran has reached the technological maturity to execute precision strikes against Israel’s vital nodes from hundreds of kilometers away. The fact that publications from strategic research centers affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards specifically scrutinize Israel’s water infrastructure among “sensitive pressure points” completes the theoretical framework of this threat.
The threat is not limited solely to missiles and drones. Sabotage actions that could come from the sea represent another risk dimension that must not be overlooked. The seawater intake structures of the desalination plants are connected to pipelines situated relatively offshore. Sabotage of these underwater structures carried out by divers or unmanned underwater vehicles could completely halt the plant’s water intake. Given Hezbollah’s and Iran’s investments in naval commando units, such a scenario is not unrealistic. Likewise, cyber-attacks targeting the control systems of the water grid are another asymmetric vector that could disable the plants without physical destruction.
The Water-Energy Nexus: Two Breaking Points of a Single Chain
The greatest quandary of reverse osmosis technology is that it is an extremely energy-intensive process. Israel’s desalination plants require roughly eight to ten percent of the country’s national electricity generation. This immense energy demand chains water security directly and inseparably to energy security. In practical terms, this means that the electricity grid and the energy sources feeding it must operate uninterruptedly for the water taps to flow. A severe rupture in energy supply is capable of stopping the water supply overnight.
Israel’s energy generation, meanwhile, has become largely dependent over the last decade on the natural gas fields discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean. Giant offshore platforms such as Tamar and Leviathan supply nearly all of the country’s natural gas needs. This situation ties the fate of the energy supply to offshore infrastructure that is exceedingly difficult to protect. Hezbollah’s anti-ship missiles, Iran’s submarine capabilities, or even a simple explosive-laden boat attack are among the elements that could threaten these platforms. Hezbollah’s drone attack targeting natural gas facilities off the coast of Haifa in 2024 is a concrete example of this threat.
Onshore energy infrastructure exhibits similar fragility. A single major facility like the Orot Rabin power plant in Haifa alone provides more than one-fifth of Israel’s total electricity generation. A successful strike on this power station would create a massive supply gap in the grid. Even if smart grid management systems are activated, a loss of this scale inevitably necessitates load-shedding operations. And in load-shedding, the first to be disconnected are the large industrial consumers that rank behind hospitals and military bases in terms of strategic priority—namely, the desalination plants. This vicious cycle between energy and water constitutes the most critical and delicate node of Israel’s national resilience.
This dependency chain is not one-directional either. The energy generation facilities themselves also require large amounts of water for cooling purposes. Desalinated water is increasingly used in the cooling systems of coastal power plants. Thus, a disruption in energy supply threatens water, while a disruption in water threatens energy. This mutual and circular dependency demonstrates how quickly and destructively a domino effect could propagate in a disaster scenario. An attack on a single facility could, within a very short time, lead to the simultaneous collapse of water and energy supply.
Layers of Supply Chain and Environmental Vulnerability
Beyond the military and energy dimensions of the strategic vulnerability, two additional, less visible but equally critical layers exist: supply chain dependency and environmental threats. Keeping a reverse osmosis plant operational requires not only energy but also high-tech membranes that need constant renewal, specialized chemicals, and sensitive spare parts. Almost all of this equipment and consumables are imported. Membrane production is concentrated globally in the hands of a few companies, with Israel heavily dependent on manufacturers in the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
This dependency renders national water security defenseless against external factors, completely independent of domestic military capacity. The threat to maritime trade routes by Iran or the Houthis during a prolonged regional conflict could disrupt the flow of critical materials. The Houthis’ attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea have proven just how realistic such a blockade is. When spare membrane stocks are exhausted, the efficiency of the plants drops rapidly; poorly treated water causes corrosion within the system, and eventually the plants may be completely disabled.
Environmental threats constitute another layer of fragility originating from nature’s own dynamics—one that is difficult to predict and prevent. Rising seawater temperatures in the Mediterranean, driven by climate change, lead to population explosions of jellyfish swarms and the formation of massive mucilage (sea snot) bodies. These biological masses can clog the seawater intake filters of desalination plants within minutes, completely halting production. In the past, the Ashkelon and Hadera plants were forced into emergency shutdowns several times due to such environmental events. A national water crisis could be triggered solely by a natural occurrence, without any intentional military attack.
In addition, rising sea levels due to climate change pose a long-term existential threat to coastal infrastructure. Pipelines, pumping stations, and the substructures of the facilities are sensitive to rising sea levels and associated coastal erosion. Moreover, heavy maritime traffic and oil and gas exploration activities in the Eastern Mediterranean keep the risk of a major oil spill constantly alive. Such a spill could render seawater intakes unusable for months, cutting the plants off from the outside world, much like a blockade. All these layers demonstrate that the vulnerability of desalination infrastructure rests on a much more complex threat matrix than enemy weapons alone.
The Dilemma of Societal Resilience and Agricultural Dependency
Over the last two decades, Israel’s water abundance has created a structural habit and dependency of water consumption within society and the economy. The uninterrupted and relatively cheap water provided by desalination plants has fundamentally transformed the agricultural sector, industrial production, and household consumption patterns. Luxury consumption (swimming pools, expansive lawns), water-intensive agricultural products, and landscaping arrangements requiring constant irrigation have become normalized. This situation has fixed societal habits and economic structures upon the assumption that the current supply will never be interrupted.
The agricultural sector, in particular, is the most critical link in this dependency. Using its world-renowned drip irrigation technologies, Israel has turned the Negev Desert into fertile agricultural lands. However, this modern agriculture is entirely indexed to a continuous and reliable water supply. If the plants were offline for more than forty-eight hours, it would not merely leave cities without water; it would instantly collapse agricultural production reliant on high-tech greenhouses and irrigation systems. This would rapidly lead to a food supply crisis and empty grocery shelves. The simultaneous occurrence of water and food crises is one of the most dangerous scenarios threatening social order and internal security.
Simulations by the National Emergency Management Authority foresee that a prolonged water cutoff would severely test societal resilience. Hospitals would become unable to perform vital procedures such as dialysis and sterilization. Industrial facilities would halt production. Fire-fighting systems would lose water pressure. All these factors could create a mutually reinforcing spiral of chaos. Although Israeli society has grown accustomed to the comfort brought by technological progress, its psychological and logistical preparedness for water scarcity has seriously eroded since the drought days of the past.
This picture also invalidates the idea of preserving natural water sources as strategic reserves. Because even when the desalination plants are operational, the Sea of Galilee and the underground aquifers are strained to meet consumption, they cannot be allowed to recover. A return to the “austerity” and water rationing policies seen in old drought periods would be far more painful and chaotic than expected, as both infrastructure and habits have evolved into an entirely different reality. In short, the success story has not increased the system’s flexibility and resilience but rather its intolerance of fragility.
Conclusion
The story of Israel overcoming water scarcity by desalinating seawater has been recorded as an impressive triumph of technology and human will over nature. However, the centralized and complex system built by this triumph has simultaneously transformed the country’s most vital resource into a target that is exceedingly difficult to protect. Absolute dependence on a handful of facilities along the Mediterranean coast has created a strategic quandary concerning national survival in a geography where asymmetric threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
The depth of this quandary lies in the fact that the water infrastructure is not merely a target on its own, but is enmeshed in a relationship of mutual dependency with energy systems and global supply chains. Protecting water requires protecting energy, and protecting energy requires protecting offshore gas platforms and giant coastal power plants. A successful attack on any link in this chain has the potential to collapse the entire system through a domino effect. The doctrine of the Iran-led axis of resistance is built precisely on seeking out and exploiting such sensitive nodes. The April 2024 attack and the continuously evolving capabilities of proxy forces have moved this threat from the realm of theory into a concrete and urgent security matter.
That said, policy options to reduce vulnerability do exist, though none are easy or quick to implement. The urgent reconstitution of strategic water reserves and the replenishment of aquifers through artificial recharge methods are imperative. Maximizing the physical protection of the plants and, in particular, enhancing security protocols for underwater intake structures are necessary. More importantly, increasing the share of distributed and renewable sources such as solar energy in electricity generation could reduce the risk of a single-point collapse in the water-energy nexus. On-site backup power generation capacity integrated into each facility is also of vital importance.
In the final analysis, Israel’s water miracle lays bare the inherent risks of modern states’ understanding of national security based on complex technological systems. Every great leap in technology, alongside the problems it solves, also produces new, often unforeseen, vulnerabilities. In Israel’s specific case, the genius that succeeded in creating water in the desert is now fighting a war to protect that water. The fate of this war will depend not only on the success of Iron Dome or Iron Beam but also on how honestly and courageously strategic planning can address this multi-layered fragility.
References
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Israel Water Authority (2024). National Water System Overview and Desalination Capacity Report. water.gov.il
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UNEP – United Nations Environment Programme (2023). Climate Change and Infrastructure Vulnerability in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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Sefa Yürükel
Danish ethnographer and social anthropologist (MA) Aarhus University, 1997 Independent Researcher Fields of Research: International Politics, Public International Law, Geopolitics, Sociology, Psychology, Cultural Studies, Systems and Structures
The world usually expects geopolitical earthquakes to occur at the end of long-drawn-out processes. However, sometimes the flow of history changes at a speed that will shatter everyone’s preconceptions within just a few days. We are currently witnessing exactly such a moment. The emerging military picture reveals how the hegemony the USA has built in West Asia for over thirty years was shattered by Iran in an unbelievably short period of four days. This is not merely a military defeat; it is also the story of the definitive and irreversible end of a superpower’s regional ambitions.
The Sudden Collapse of the Strategic Balance
The situation is crystal clear: The USA is suffering one of the greatest defeats in its history. The gravity of this judgment stems from the results of the comprehensive, large-scale, and highly determined destruction operation launched by Iran against the massive American military bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. To reference Pearl Harbor, the USA has never seen destruction on this scale from any enemy in a conventional war until today. Described as the world’s most expensive and most valuable military facilities, built over decades and costing trillions of dollars, these bases are being abandoned, burned, and destroyed one by one. The sudden incapacitation of advanced technology radars worth hundreds of millions of dollars symbolizes not only a material collapse but also the bankruptcy of the USA’s strategic mind.
The Information Blackout and Cover-Up of the Shock
One of the most terrifying aspects of this new war is the deep information blackout that has descended upon it. While thirty-five years ago during the First Gulf War, images provided by smart bombs and cameras flooded the screens, today we see almost no video. This censorship is the greatest proof of the gravity of the situation. The Pentagon’s doctrine of “shock and awe” has been replaced by an effort to cover up the shock and awe being experienced. The fact that the USA, touted as the world’s largest air force, cannot achieve air superiority over Tehran or any other Iranian city even on the fourth day of the war, and more importantly, that images of American planes cannot even be served, clearly shows how hopeless a point the military situation has evolved to. The fact that American soldiers cannot even dream of setting foot on Iranian soil reveals the nature of this war.
Strategies of Desperation: The Escalation Trap
One of the most concrete indicators of this hopeless picture is the incredible proposals coming from the Trump administration as early as the fourth day. The idea of providing military escort to oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf means sending American ships into the Strait of Hormuz, within range of Iran’s thousands of missiles, which is a suicidal decision. It is known that Iran has been preparing this region as a trap for decades. Even more alarming is the proposal to invade Iran by arming Kurdish militias. Anyone looking at Iran’s vast geography immediately grasps the impossibility of invading this country, whether with a militia force of ten thousand or a hundred thousand. Iran would simply swallow such a force.
The Anatomy of an Impossible Victory
The US and Israel have already lost this war in a military sense. Of course, they can kill millions of civilians in their homes and level buildings with their powerful bombs; however, they cannot win this war. Iran’s military infrastructure and weapons are deployed deep underground all over the country. Neither the Americans nor especially the Israelis have a chance to reach them. They have no chance of finishing what they started.
When all this is over, the USA will never be able to return to West Asia. There will be no American military presence left in the Middle East. History will write this moment as the end of an era. Iran, astonishingly, managed to expand its area of military superiority in the region within four days and buried a superpower’s decades-long investment in its ashes. The sandcastles have collapsed; nothing will ever be the same again.
The Deepening of the Escalation Trap: The Absence of a Plan B
What really needs to be questioned at this point is why the mental map that led the USA to this total strategic collapse still hasn’t changed. The proposals for escorting tankers and invading with Kurdish militias, put forward on the fourth day, are a painful confession that the Pentagon and the White House still have no viable Plan B. This situation, referred to as an “escalation trap” in military literature, is defined by one side continuing to escalate a war it is losing simply because it cannot find an exit strategy. The moment the USA risks its navy to save its presence in the Persian Gulf, it will have offered not only its land bases but also its naval power to Iran’s asymmetric fire. The geographical structure of the Strait of Hormuz is too narrow to allow maneuvering space for an aircraft carrier battle group; these waters are a trap area that Iran has been building layer upon layer for decades. Deliberately entering this trap can be explained not by strategic reason, but only by a kind of gambling blindness caused by desperation.
The Bankruptcy of Intelligence: The Unseen Threat
A more serious reflection of the same blindness is the intelligence failure. For decades, the USA portrayed Iran’s military capacity as “isolatable” and “limited.” However, Iran’s ballistic missile program, cruise missile inventory, and swarm drone technology in particular have shown a leap that American intelligence reports failed to foresee for years. The bases receiving hits one after another within four days is proof of how much Iran has refined its target intelligence and advanced its satellite-based damage assessment capability. This is not a random rain of missiles, but a military operation planned and executed with surgical precision. US intelligence either could not see or did not want to see this capability increase; both situations lead to the same outcome: the bankruptcy of strategic intelligence.
The End of the Doctrine of Air Dominance
The failure to see an American plane in the skies of Tehran even on the fourth day of the war is the clearest indicator of how the concept of air superiority has become meaningless in the region’s conditions. The US Air Force had built its entire doctrine of the last thirty years on “air dominance.” Yet Iran, with its integrated air defense systems, passive defense infrastructure, and surface-to-surface strike capability, has rendered this doctrine obsolete. The inability of American warplanes to enter Iranian airspace is not only a technical failure; it is proof of how the USA’s entire military paradigm can be overcome by a regional power. This picture creates a shock effect that will fundamentally shake the Pentagon’s future budget requests and weapons programs. The trillion-dollar F-35 program has been rendered non-functional in the region against Iran’s much lower-cost asymmetric capacity.
Israel’s Fragile Solitude
In the shadow of all these developments, Israel’s strategic position is perhaps the most fragile point. Israel built its security doctrine upon the US military umbrella in the region. The evaporation of this umbrella in four days leaves Israel facing not only Iran but also Iran’s network of influence alone. Hezbollah’s precision-guided munition inventory, the Houthis’ ballistic missile capacity, and Iranian-backed militias in Syria increase the risk of Israel being dragged into a multi-front war of attrition. Israel’s military doctrine is based on short-duration wars conducted on enemy territory aiming for decisive results. However, this new equation forces Israel into a long-term and attritional defensive war on its own territory. The pressure of such a war on Israel’s economic and social fabric could be far more devastating than the military losses.
The New Reality for the Gulf Monarchies
The Gulf monarchies, meanwhile, are watching this new era in horror. Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha see that the security premium they have paid to the USA for decades has evaporated in an instant. These countries’ entry into a rapid normalization process with Iran is no longer a choice but an existential necessity. Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s softening of its condemnatory language towards Iran and activating diplomatic channels even on the fourth day of the war is the first sign of this necessity. The Arab states in the Persian Gulf have understood that the security myth the USA has been selling for decades has collapsed and have faced the reality of having to fend for themselves. This confrontation will inevitably open the door to regional security negotiations with Iran and the complete exclusion of the USA from the region.
The Tombstone of the Unipolar Order
History will record this moment as the tombstone of the post-Cold War order. The unipolar period that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended on the shores of the Persian Gulf, among burning American hangars and disabled Patriot batteries. Iran has not only driven the USA out of the region but has also presented the rest of the world with a new strategic model: proof that a regional power that invests in asymmetric capacity, establishes a deep defense infrastructure, and prepares patiently can shut out a superpower. This model will be taught in military academies as a template that will fundamentally change the military doctrines and geopolitical calculations of the coming decades.
Conclusion: In the Aftermath of Destruction
As the USA’s presence in West Asia comes to an end, what remains is not only wreckage but also a warning: No superpower has the luxury of underestimating geography, patience, and the asymmetric mind. The sandcastles have collapsed, and the dust from this destruction will not settle for many years to come.
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Sefa Yürükel
Danish ethnographer and social anthropologist (MA) Aarhus University, 1997 Independent Researcher Fields of Research: International Politics, Public International Law, Geopolitics, Sociology, Psychology, Cultural Studies, Systems and Structures
