Sharpening Asian competition over energy resources, driven in part by high growth rates in gross domestic product and in part by mercantilist attempts to lock up supplies, has obscured another danger: Water shortages in much of Asia are beginning to threaten rapid economic modernization, prompting the building of upstream projects on international rivers. If water geopolitics were to spur interstate tensions through reduced water flows to neighboring states, the Asian renaissance could stall.

Water has emerged as a key issue that could determine whether Asia is headed toward mutually beneficial cooperation or deleterious interstate competition. No country could influence that direction more than China, which controls the Tibetan plateau — the source of most major rivers of Asia.

Tibet’s vast glaciers and high altitude have endowed it with the world’s greatest river systems. Its river waters are a lifeline to the world’s two most-populous states — China and India — as well as to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries make up 47 percent of the global population.

Yet Asia is a water-deficient continent. Although home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water — 3,920 cubic meters per person — than any continent besides Antarctica.

The looming struggle over water resources in Asia has been underscored by the spread of irrigated farming, water-intensive industries (from steel to paper making) and a growing middle class seeking high water-consuming comforts like washing machines and dishwashers. Household water consumption in Asia is rising rapidly, according to a 2006 U.N. report, but such is the water paucity that not many Asians can aspire to the lifestyle of Americans, who daily use 400 liters per person, or more than 2.5 times the average in Asia.

The specter of water wars in Asia is also being highlighted by climate change and environmental degradation in the form of shrinking forests and swamps, which foster a cycle of chronic flooding and droughts through the depletion of nature’s water storage and absorption cover. The Himalayan snow melt that feeds Asia’s great rivers could be damagingly accelerated by global warming.

While intrastate water-sharing disputes have become rife in several Asian countries — from India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia and China — it is the potential interstate conflict over river-water resources that should be of greater concern. This concern arises from Chinese attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, where major rivers originate, including the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej. Among Asia’s mighty rivers, only the Ganges starts from the Indian side of the Himalayas.

The lopsided availability of water within some nations (abundant in some areas but deficient in others) has given rise to grand ideas — from linking rivers in India to diverting the fast-flowing Brahmaputra northward to feed the arid areas in the Chinese heartland.

As water woes have been aggravated in its north due to environmentally unsustainable intensive farming, China has increasingly turned its attention to the bounteous water reserves that the Tibetan plateau holds. It has dammed rivers, not just to produce hydropower but also to channel waters for irrigation and other purposes, and is currently toying with massive interbasin and inter-river water-transfer projects.

After building two dams upstream, China is building at least three more on the Mekong, inflaming passions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Several Chinese projects in west-central Tibet bearing on river-water flows into India, but Beijing is loath to share information.

Following flash floods in India’s northern Himachal Pradesh state, however, China agreed in 2005 to supply New Delhi data on any abnormal rise or fall in the upstream level of the Sutlej River, on which it has built a barrage. Discussions are on to persuade it to share flood-control data during the monsoon season on two Brahmaputra tributaries, Lohit and Parlung Zangbo, as it has done since 2002 on the Brahmaputra River, which it has dammed at several places upstream.

The 10 major watersheds formed by the Himalayas and Tibetan highlands spread out river waters far and wide in Asia. Control over the 2.5 million-square-km Tibetan plateau gives China tremendous leverage, besides access to vast natural resources. Having extensively contaminated its own major rivers through unbridled industrialization, China now threatens the ecological viability of river systems tied to South and Southeast Asia in its bid to meet its thirst for water and energy.

Tibet, which existed independently up to 1950, comprises approximately one-fourth of China’s land mass today, having given Han society, for the first time in history, a contiguous frontier with India, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.

Tibet traditionally encompassed the regions of the central plateau, Kham and Amdo. After annexing Tibet, China separated Amdo (the present Dalai Lama’s birthplace) as the new Qinghai province, made the central plateau and eastern Kham the Tibet Autonomous Region, and merged the remaining parts of Tibet into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu.

The traditional Tibet is not just a distinct cultural entity but also a natural plateau, the future of whose water reserves is tied to ecological conservation. As China’s hunger for primary commodities has grown, so too has its exploitation of Tibet’s resources. And as water woes have intensified in several major Chinese cities, a group of ex-officials have championed the northward rerouting of the waters of the Brahmaputra in a book enlighteningly titled "Tibet’s Waters Will Save China."

Large hydro projects and reckless exploitation of mineral resources already threaten Tibet’s fragile ecosystems, with ore tailings beginning to contaminate water sources. Unmindful of the environmental impact of such activities in pristine areas, China has now embarked on constructing a 108-km paved road to Mount Everest, located along the Tibet-Nepal frontier. This highway is part of China’s plan to reinforce its claims on Tibet by taking the Olympic torch to the peak of the world’s tallest mountain before the 2008 Beijing Games.

As in the past, no country is going to be more affected by Chinese plans and projects in Tibet than India. The new $ 6.2 billion Gormu-Lhasa railway, for example, has significantly augmented China’s rapid military-deployment capability against India just when Beijing is becoming increasingly assertive in its claims on Indian territories. This hardline stance, in the midst of intense negotiations to resolve the 4,057-km Indo-Tibetan border, is no less incongruous than Beijing’s disinclination to set up, as agreed during its president’s state visit to New Delhi last November, a joint expert-level mechanism on interstate river waters.

Contrast China’s reluctance to establish a mechanism intended for mere "interaction and cooperation" on hydrological data with New Delhi’s consideration toward downstream Pakistan, reflected both in the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (which reserves 56 percent of the catchment flow for Pakistan) and the more recent acceptance of World Bank arbitration over the Baglihar Dam project in Indian Kashmir. Yet, as if to demonstrate that if you give an inch, it takes a mile, Islamabad has now raised objections to two more Indian hydropower projects — Uri 2 and Kishanganga.

No Indian project has sought to reroute or diminish trans-border water flows, yet Pakistan insists on a say in the structural design of projects upstream in India. New Delhi permits Pakistani officials to inspect such projects. By contrast, Beijing drags its feet on setting up an innocuous interaction mechanism. Would China, under any arrangement, let Indian officials inspect its projects in Tibet or accept, if a dispute arose, third-party adjudication?

If anything, China seems intent on aggressively pursuing projects and employing water as a weapon. The idea of a Great South-North Water Transfer Project diverting river waters cascading from the Tibetan highlands has the backing of President Hu Jintao, a hydrologist who made his name through a brutal martial-law crackdown in Tibet in 1989. In crushing protesters at Tiananmen Square two months later, Deng Xiaoping actually borrowed a leaf from Hu’s Tibet book.

The Chinese ambition to channel the Brahmaputra waters to the parched Yellow River has been whetted by what Beijing touts as its engineering feat in building the giant $ 25 billion Three Gorges Dam project, which has officially displaced a staggering 1.2 million citizens. While China’s water resources minister told a Hong Kong University meeting last October that, in his personal opinion, the idea to divert waters seems not viable, the director of the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee said publicly that the mega-plan enjoys official sanction and may begin by 2010.

The Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo to Tibetans) originates near Mount Kailash and, before entering India, flows eastward in Tibet for 2,200 km at an average height of 4,000 meters, making it the world’s highest major river. When two other tributaries merge with it, the Brahmaputra becomes as wide as 10 km in India before flowing into Bangladesh.

The first phase of China’s South-North Project calls for building 300 km of tunnels and channels to draw waters from the Jinsha, Yalong and Dadu rivers, on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau. Only in the second phase would the Brahmaputra waters be directed northward. In fact, Beijing has identified the bend where the Brahmaputra forms the world’s longest and deepest canyon just before entering India as holding the largest untapped reserves for meeting its water and energy needs.

While some doubts do persist in Beijing over the economic feasibility of channeling Tibetan waters northward, the mammoth diversion of the Brahmaputra could begin as water shortages become more acute in the Chinese mainland and the current $ 1.2 trillion foreign-exchange hoard brims over. The mega-rerouting would constitute the declaration of a water war on lower-riparian India and Bangladesh.

NEW DELHI — A nifty new enterprise to discuss security dangers in the Asia-Pacific and evolve a coordinated approach — the Quadrilateral Initiative — has kicked off with an unpublicized first meeting. U.S., Japanese, Indian and Australian officials, at the rank of assistant secretary of state, quietly met recently on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) gathering in Manila.

Given the qualitative reordering of power under way, with Asia boasting the world’s fastest-growing economies and fastest-rising military expenditures, it is vital to ensure strategic stability and power equilibrium. The shifts in international power — most conspicuous in Asia — are being spurred by rapid economic growth, not military triumphs.

The rise of any new world power engenders serious challenges, especially when the concerned power is opaque or harbors imperial ambitions. China’s emergence as a global player is transforming geopolitics like no other development since the time Japan rose to world-power status in the late 19th century during the Meiji Restoration. Ironically, it had been China’s failure to grasp the dramatic rise of Japan that led to its rout in 1895 in the Sino-Japanese War, opening the way to Western imperialistic expeditions into China over the subsequent decades.

Today, major powers don’t wish to make a similar mistake over China’s rapid rise. Given the new fluidity, all important players, including China, are maneuvering for strategic advantage through new equations and initiatives. Just as China, for the first time since the Ming Dynasty, is pursuing security interests and seeking allies far from its shores, other powers are working to build new equations and partnerships.

The "quad" is just one of several initiatives currently being developed in the Asia-Pacific. Yet its preliminary first meeting was not made known for fear of raising China’s hackles. If the China-India-Russia "strategic triangle" can hold high-level meetings with fanfare, why should the United States, Japan, India and Australia shy away from announcing a meeting to discuss issues of common interest and concern?

Considering that Asia is coalescing economically but becoming more divided politically, Asian security and prosperity demands cooperative relationships between the major players. This is more so because of Asia’s conflicting political and strategic cultures and weak regional institutions. Initiatives like the 26-nation ARF, the 16-state East Asia Summit (EAS) and the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum are too large and unwieldy to bear enduring results by themselves. They need to be complemented by smaller initiatives that involve the important powers in different permutations.

In that light, the quad is surely a good idea. In fact, Tokyo and New Delhi ought to also explore the establishment of Russia-India-Japan and Japan-China-India triangular initiatives. Both such initiatives, like the quad, could contribute to building strategic stability and understanding rival military doctrines in Asia.

The quad opens the path to greater strategic interaction among four major democracies. Some factors, however, need to be borne in mind. First, how the initiative shapes up will hinge on the resolution of a key issue: Will India be a Japan or an Australia to the U.S. (in other words, an ally), or will it be a strategic partner? An ally must follow the alliance leader, while in a partnership there is at least the semblance of equality.

This question won’t go away easily. Australia and Japan have not only a bilateral security treaty with America but also trilateral security arrangements. With India, the U.S. has worked out only a defense-framework agreement.

New Delhi agreed in the framework accord signed in June 2005 not only to "conclude defense transactions" and share intelligence with America, but also to participate in U.S.-directed "multinational operations" and join the U.S.-led nonproliferation regime. India, however, is going to be reluctant to outsource its security to the U.S. in any way.

It is Tokyo that pushed for India’s inclusion to turn the existing trilateral security arrangements into quadrilateral. Even before becoming Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe proposed the quad idea in his book, "Utsukushii Kunihe" (Toward A Beautiful Country), published in July. The idea was supported by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney when he visited Japan and Australia earlier this year.

Second, the quad, once it matures, would involve India in activities to which New Delhi is already committed bilaterally with the U.S. — from promotion of democracy and collaboration on homeland security to joint disaster-response operations and building greater interoperability between the armed forces. It is significant that the first quad meeting was preceded by the first-ever U.S.-Japan-India joint naval exercises.

The Indian naval ships actually first went to Okinawa for a joint maneuver with U.S. forces before taking part in the trilateral exercises off Tokyo Bay. The trilateral exercises, interestingly, intersected with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s Tokyo visit. New Delhi, however, had taken care to placate Beijing by dispatching two to three ships to China from Okinawa for a friendly exercise immediately after the bilateral maneuvers with the U.S.

Third, just because Washington, New Delhi, Canberra and Tokyo are coming together to build a four-way arrangement based on shared values and interests doesn’t mean that they intend to jointly countervail China. Such a mechanism, at best, can give the four countries extra leverage with Beijing as part of a common desire to ensure that the fast-rising Chinese power does not slide into arrogance. The fact is that for each quad member, a stable, mutually beneficial relationship with Beijing is critical to national interest.

In reality, the four have still a long way to go before they can synchronize their approaches toward China. Given their geographical proximity to China and the direct impact Chinese power and ambitions hold for them, Japan and India view power equilibrium as a more pressing imperative. In the years ahead, the two are likely to be more in sync with each other than with the U.S. and Australia on how to contend with Beijing. For the present, the growing asymmetry in power with China puts them at a disadvantage while bilaterally dealing with Beijing, making broader initiatives like the quad attractive.

U.S. strategy is geared toward maintaining a calibrated balance between strategic hedging and greater engagement with Beijing. As part of the hedging, the U.S. is interested in co-opting India, an important geopolitical swing state. But such co-option is unlikely to be at the cost of America’s closer engagement with Beijing.

After all, America now relies on Chinese savings and trade surpluses to finance its super-size budget deficits, hold down U.S. interest rates and prop up the value of the dollar. China, indeed, has become an engine for U.S. economic growth. Politically, too, the U.S. depends on Beijing’s assistance on challenges ranging from North Korea’s future to the Iranian nuclear program. Once allies of convenience during the Cold War, the U.S. and China today are partners tied by interdependence.

Australia’s extraordinary economic boom, likewise, is being driven by exports to a resource-hungry China, and Canberra is loath to take sides between Japan and China, or between China and India. Once regarded with distrust, China has gained recognition and respectability in Australia, securing in the process a controversial deal to import Australian uranium for power generation without having accepted verifiable measures of the kind India is ready to embrace against diversion for weapons purposes.

Lastly, the quad doesn’t mean that the U.S. is reversing the strategy it has maintained in the Asia-Pacific since it took the Philippines in 1898 as spoils of the naval war with Spain — counterbalancing one power against the other to reinforce America’s role as the main arbiter. As part of this continuing strategy, the U.S. has in recent years strengthened its bilateral military alliances, reconfigured its forward-deployed military forces, designated Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines as its major non-NATO allies, and built strategic cooperation with India and Singapore.

America can live with a China that challenges India and Japan, but not one that challenges U.S. pre-eminence. To tie down China regionally, the U.S. is not averse to Japan coming out of its pacifist cocoon as a "normal" military power — but under American tutelage. The revival of the Sino-Japanese historical rivalry indeed can only help the U.S. retain its position as Asia’s strategic pivot.

Similarly, after having penalized New Delhi for more than three decades for its 1974 nuclear test through U.S.-inspired technology controls, Washington is now ready to promote India’s "normalization" as a nuclear power, but at a price: India is to bind its interests to America’s, and accept constraints on the development of its still-nascent nuclear-deterrent capability.

The quad is just one of several new initiatives intended to help shape a new international balance in response to the ongoing power shifts. It seeks not to establish a new security bloc but to evolve common thinking on shared concerns.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan."