You know there is all kinds of talk about civil war over politics like guns, or abortion, etc.

The one thing that will cause a civil war is if you take away American's access to beef. Good luck trying to do that

a huge portion of the alfalfa being irrigated isn't even used to feed american beef. The plants are literally sent to saudi arabia to feed cows there. You could entirely fix the agricultural use of water if you priced it more accurately. There is enough water to grow all the food we need and more, its just priced in a way that encourages the agricultural landlords who own the water rights to waste it because it is essentially costless to the individual rights holders. Price the water better and they will build conservation methods without lowering output.

(https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/water-wars/saudi-a....)

I'm struggling to believe that it's a "a huge portion" given that Saudi Arabia has less than 1/10th the population of the US. Still, the story you link to is an amazing self-own on the part of Arizona.

>So far, four California water districts have proposed to reduce water use by up to 400,000 acre-feet per year. That would amount to about 9% of the state’s total water allotment from the river through 2026.

Even a 10% reduction in use due to Saudi exports would be higher than the current goal. It is considered a national security risk to export encryption to foreign countries, but it isn't a national security risk to export our water? And why are we growing such water-intensive crops in a desert to begin with?

At a gut emotional level this would be true

but trade is what has kept the world wars a bay. Start down the path of protectionism and what we see in Russia/UKR will seem like a nice day at the park

a Middle East-China-Russia vs US-EU-UK-AU-CAN would be the likely outcome, and not good for economic stability or national security

Not sucking a river dry isn't protectionism. Or now protectionism means protecting a river, which it should.

"free markets"

Reducing production in one region that can’t sustain it is not “taking away” our (unprecedented) access to beef.