Food is a weapon of war. Like nuclear weapons, the use of food as a weapon can lead to mass civilian deaths and unthinkable horrors, provoking valid ethical outrage at the prospect of their use. But unlike nuclear weapons, the use of food as a weapon is commonly used in wars. And in our globalized world, this tool is more harmful than ever.
Conflict has long been a major cause of global famine. This trend is tragically manifesting itself today in places like the Gaza Strip, Haiti and Sudan, where millions of civilians are now on the brink of famine. The link between conflict and famine arises in part from the militarization of food itself, a form of warfare that exploits the coercive possibility to disrupt (or threaten to disrupt) essential food material through the looting and destruction of farms, the manipulation of food materials to exert internal political control and the use of sieges and blockades calibrated to starve civilians trapped inside. More recent examples of food militarization come with the Syrian Civil War, in which the Bashar al-Assad regime waged what it called a “campaign of famine into submission,” prohibiting access to food in residential spaces believed to be that house the insurgent forces. On both sides of Yemen’s civil war, fighters have targeted agricultural production, disrupted local food markets, and obstructed or diverted humanitarian aid.
But since invading Ukraine in 2022, Russia has taken this tool to a new level. The Kremlin is not only targeting Ukraine’s agricultural capacity, but also threatening the world’s food source as a whole. In an interdependent global economy, the militarization of food in one region can have effects on food security for all. Moscow has exploited this interdependence, intentionally altering food materials to further the Kremlin’s military goals. Over the course of the war, Moscow has imposed restrictions on exports, blockaded the Black Sea, and bombed granaries. , crushing Ukraine’s agricultural exports, gaining influence over impartial countries, and testing the West in the process.
At the beginning of the invasion, the global value of food reached an all-time high. Inflation and food value volatility continue to affect low-income countries today. The surprise of the war on agricultural production and industry is one of the main drivers of a global crisis. a food crisis that has nearly tripled acute global hunger since 2020, leaving 333 million people at risk of famine.
This surprise to the global food formula represents an opportunity for the world to come together to ban one of humanity’s most shameful and enduring weapons of war. To this end, Washington deserves a campaign for a foreign treaty banning the militarization of food. Negotiating and ratifying treaties are notoriously difficult, but it is precisely this challenge that gives treaties their disproportionate political and ethical weight. A treaty procedure would engage the entire society, from citizens to world leaders, to pay attention to the danger of the militarization of food and, if successful, to produce a legally binding decision to abandon the practice.
In 1974, U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz made an ambitious and now-famous statement to Time magazine: “Food is a weapon. They are currently one of the top teams on our negotiation team. In the context of the Cold War, Butz saw American agriculture. “Abundance as a tool of coercion that Washington can also use in the Third World: food aid and industry in exchange for political concessions. The same Time article observed: “This would possibly be a brutal policy. . . but Washington would possibly not feel compelled to help countries that have consistently and steadfastly opposed it. Butz was based on an instinct as old as the Agricultural Revolution, that food provides control to those who have it and makes vulnerable those who don’t. For example, besieging and starving an enemy’s civilian population is like turning food into a weapon.
In fact, food is a weapon, and Butz isn’t the first public official to say so clearly. During the Russian Civil War, from 1917 to 1922, Bolshevik leaders were obsessed with obtaining and distributing grain. Famines in Eastern Europe—at first an accidental result of civil war and the collapse of society—offered the Bolsheviks such strength to strain internal opposition that they even thought of rejecting food aid from the U. S. Relief Administration, explicitly telling Americans that “food is a weapon. “, the relative strength of U. S. food production is critical to the Allied war effort, so much so that the U. S. Office of War Information promoted food rationing with a catchy slogan: “Food is a weapon. Don’t try it!
Prior to World War II, the effects of food militarization were local in scope, and food security depended heavily on national or regional food supplies. But as regional food systems were incorporated into an interdependent global system, Butz envisioned anything even grander: U. S. domination of the global food industry as a tool of economic and political warfare. He did not foresee that global interdependence would affect individual states.
The U. S. first tested Butz’s proposal in 1980, imposing a grain embargo on the Soviet Union. The plan failed: Moscow temporarily discovered select suppliers, and Carter’s leadership suffered a domestic political backlash. But America’s revel in what some then called the “food weapon” presented a grim lesson: Restrictions on the food industry can have harmful and unpredictable consequences. It has become clear that a liberal democracy running a foreign order did not need such a flawed weapon, which would just as likely harm its allies. and the national electorate as it did with its objective.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin is not so constrained. He believes that a more chaotic world enhances his relative power, protects his regime, and furthers his military goals. The Kremlin’s moves have shown that a single state can inflate food prices, causing serious harm to other hungry people around the world.
The West has little equipment to deter rogue states from weaponizing food on a global scale. International humanitarian law, much of which evolved in the early 20th century, may simply not have imagined today’s interconnected food system. Existing agreements with the agricultural industry do not preclude the use of export restrictions as coercive equipment. Maritime law allows blockades as long as humanitarian aid remains unrestricted. Even the prohibition of starvation among civilians as a method of warfare in the Geneva Conventions includes exceptions and ambiguities, for example when starvation is involuntary or incidental to military objectives.
Of course, intent is hard to identify in the heat of the crash. Nor do the civilians who suffer the consequences matter. A tactic that accidentally or hastily starves the enemy civilian population and thus confers military merit is indistinguishable from the most blatantly planned use of food as a weapon. The complexity of the food formula and the war itself make the analysis of intentions even more complicated. If Kyiv were to destroy Russian exports of heat and fertilizer to damage the Russian economy, many would actually say that such a habit is acceptable, although many civilians outside the fighting zone are going through this process. Existing foreign agreements are intended to protect civilians in the line of fire, not to protect against threats made against civilians around the world. An interdependent food formula, the interruption of essential food materials constitutes a militarization of food, regardless of the intention.
If the militarization of food were judged by its effects and not by the perceived motivations of its perpetrators, States that agreed to prohibit the practice would be much more restricted in the way they wage war. If the goal is inscrutable, as is the case with the trendy militarization of food, then it is plausible to deny it. In order to particularly limit the use of food as a weapon, strict criteria opposed to this practice will have to be combined with new regulations and specific obligations.
The foreign network’s long-standing ethical objection to starvation as a method of warfare calls for a new mechanism of enforcement and accountability: a treaty banning the use of food as a weapon. Ideally, the treaty would have four conventions or agreements. The first would outline and prohibit the use of food as a weapon in conflicts. The timing would cover the use of export restrictions as a tool of economic coercion. The 3rd would be the dedication of the external network to overcoming food crises. And the 4th would dedicate member states to studies and advances in investments that would help countries diversify their food supply chains, thus mitigating their vulnerability to the use of food as weapons.
To better protect civilians in conflict, the treaty makes it clear that there are no valid military targets for attacks on food or its means of production. The treaty would specify that land and services used primarily for agricultural production or the garage should be treated as demilitarized. Areas. This would hold combatants explicitly guilty of supplying food to civilians in the territory they control, requiring parties to provide sufficient in-kind or monetary contributions to the World Food Programme, the UN company guilty of offering food aid around the world, as charged. Military interference in industry, economic sanctions, and industrial policy are all global food armament bureaucracy, and the treaty addresses each of those tools.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative (an agreement between Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey to temporarily lift the Russian blockade of Ukraine and resume grain exports through foreign Black Sea waters) provides an instructive style for prohibiting military interference in the food trade. In July 2022, the initiative established a joint coordination center between the parties and the UN to manage the safe passage of food shipments to and from the Black Sea; The center directly oversaw the expeditions to ensure that the initiative was not misused for military operations. A treaty banning the militarization of food could simply institutionalize such a framework. In the event of war, the parties would be required to establish joint coordination centres. with the participation of the UN, sites that would monitor the shipment of food to conflict zones and ensure that food shipments were not diverted, monetized through fighters, or exploited to smuggle military supplies.
Economic sanctions can also serve as a form of food weaponry, deliberate or not. Western countries imposing sanctions on Russia have worked to safeguard food supplies, but food markets have been affected due to a phenomenon called “overcompliance,” or the tendency of personal corporations to act too cautiously in the face of dubious sanctions rules. A treaty banning the use of food as weapons would exclude essential food and agricultural inputs from sanctions, but would also provide universal implementing rules to address the challenge of overindulgence.
Finally, export restrictions by major food and fertilizer exporters pose a serious and continuing threat to global food security. Export restrictions tend to be contagious, triggering panic buying and hoarding of food in the country, in a procedure that resembles a bank run. As a result, a hostile primary agricultural force can, as the Kremlin has done, choke off its exports, stoking inflation and price volatility, before re-entering global markets to sell food and inputs at exorbitant values or exert political pressure on food importers. countries desperate for affordable goods and supplies. For this reason, the treaty on the militarization of food prohibits countries that produce gigantic quantities of food and fertilizer from imposing restrictions on the export of those products.
The parties to the treaty also mitigate the greater vulnerability of emerging countries to food weapons. Underlying food crises, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate disasters, make some countries especially vulnerable to food militarization. For this reason, treaty parties are dedicated to preventing and responding to food crises. One way to do this would be to require the parties to make greater monetary outlays for multilateral institutions such as the World Food Programme, as well as for a new study fund aimed at strengthening food materials for emerging countries.
A global treaty banning the militarization of food may seem very ambitious, as maximum treaties seem before their implementation. But each and every country has an interest in banning the militarization of food. For the United States, the militarization of food around the world poses a security threat, as well as an economic threat, potentially hurting American farmers and consumers. China, a major food importer, also has an interest in restricting the use of food as a weapon and may also become a valuable spouse in selling a treaty. Developing countries have borne the brunt of the militarization of food and have a clever explanation for why a treaty would restrict primary powers. If key powers, such as Russia, refuse to participate, signatories can also simply agree to impose collective sanctions. sanctions on non-signatories who violate the principles of the treaty, thus universalizing some facets of the treaty even in the absence of universal ratification.
Global food interdependence has amplified the dangers of the militarization of food beyond war theaters. These new dangers create new responsibilities. If left unchecked, the militarization of food can precipitate a hungrier and more violent world. As memories of the war become fresh, world leaders will have to take the food weapon off the table.