The cover story of the April 19th-24th 2008 issue of The Economist is titled "The silent tsunami: The food crisis and how to solve it." It details an alarming phenomenon, echoed in news headlines around the world, that has world leaders worried: skyrocketing global food prices. According to The Economist, wheat prices rose 77% last year and rice prices rose 16%. This year, the rises are exponential; the price of rice is up 141% since January. The causes vary; factors include the more lavish appetites of wealthier Chinese and Indian populations and the despicable diversion of American crops into the biofuels industry--a move that means big money for farm lobbies, but does virtually nothing for the environment and hurts the poor. In the United States or the European union, higher food prices are an annoyance. Just as Americans find ways to cope with rising gas prices, they will find ways to feed themselves. But in the world's poorest countries, higher food prices might make the difference between life and death. Bob Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, "reckons that food inflation could push at least 100m people into poverty, wiping out all the gains the poorest billion have made during almost a decade of economic growth." With poverty comes economic and political instability. The Economist cites several examples. Cote d'Ivoire's government postponed elections due to violent riots. The prime minister of Haiti resigned over protests from hungry mobs. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has ordered his army to bake bread. In the Phillipines, hoarding rice is now punishable by life imprisonment. Expect to see instability and even violence grow worse as food prices continue to rise.
This is the kind of global, interdependent crisis that defines the 21st century. Like other global crises, such as abject poverty, AIDS and global warming, the food crisis will have spillover effects that threaten peace, prosperity, and security around the world. This means that global problems like the food crisis should lie at the heart of Western foreign policy. Unfortunately, old school thinking still prevails in most circles. Rising food prices are viewed as an obscure issue for economists or humanitarian workers, but they are not centerpieces of foreign policy. Such problems rarely, if ever, garner much attention in the national security community. While experts from the World Bank and the UN World Food Program shout from the hilltops, senior military leaders and foreign policy architects are busy behind closed doors budgeting for $200-million air-to-air fighter aircraft and mulling over conventional warfare with China or Iran. Of course, the military must maintain its competency to fight and win major wars, but something is out of balance when America's senior defenders of national security are blind to the trends shaping the developing world--the arena where the US military is most likely, and least prepared, to undertake future operations. Since the end of the Cold War, the world has changed. The US military is adapting, slowly--its growing understanding of terrorism and its recent rediscovery of counterinsurgency theory are prime examples--but it has a long way to go. Unleashing violent force can win tactical victories and defeat conventional enemies, but it cannot remedy the foundational causes of political instability, poverty, disease, sectarian strife, and state failure. A broader understanding of national and collective security is necessary. This new thinking must begin with senior policymakers, and work its way down through military and civil agencies involved in executing policy.
I believe, and will repeatedly argue on this blog, that a General's principal function is no longer to be a "manager of violence" as Samuel Huntington once argued; he or she must be a manager of full-spectrum conflict. He must understand the political, economic, and social roots of conflict, and recommend to his political supervisors comprehensive political, economic, and social solutions. Tomorrow's generals should be able to flip through an International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook, and be able to predict where tomorrow's conflict flashpoints might be. They should sit down with enviornmental experts at universities and think tanks, to predict security consequences of imminent environmental disasters--such as the pollution and desertification of China's Yellow River, or the water crisis in Jordan. They should commission country-by-country reports of how global warming will effect local environments and economies in coming decades, to predict which countries will thrive and which will not survive rapid transformation. They should understand a world where invading Iraq caused American support to plummet around the world, but where providing tsunami relief caused support in Indonesia to leap from 36% to 60% in just a few weeks. When planning theater-level strategy in AFRICOM, they should consider the value of anti-malarial drugs and mosquito nets with as much seriousness as they consider fighting al-Qaeda in Somalia.
This is the kind of global, interdependent crisis that defines the 21st century. Like other global crises, such as abject poverty, AIDS and global warming, the food crisis will have spillover effects that threaten peace, prosperity, and security around the world. This means that global problems like the food crisis should lie at the heart of Western foreign policy. Unfortunately, old school thinking still prevails in most circles. Rising food prices are viewed as an obscure issue for economists or humanitarian workers, but they are not centerpieces of foreign policy. Such problems rarely, if ever, garner much attention in the national security community. While experts from the World Bank and the UN World Food Program shout from the hilltops, senior military leaders and foreign policy architects are busy behind closed doors budgeting for $200-million air-to-air fighter aircraft and mulling over conventional warfare with China or Iran. Of course, the military must maintain its competency to fight and win major wars, but something is out of balance when America's senior defenders of national security are blind to the trends shaping the developing world--the arena where the US military is most likely, and least prepared, to undertake future operations. Since the end of the Cold War, the world has changed. The US military is adapting, slowly--its growing understanding of terrorism and its recent rediscovery of counterinsurgency theory are prime examples--but it has a long way to go. Unleashing violent force can win tactical victories and defeat conventional enemies, but it cannot remedy the foundational causes of political instability, poverty, disease, sectarian strife, and state failure. A broader understanding of national and collective security is necessary. This new thinking must begin with senior policymakers, and work its way down through military and civil agencies involved in executing policy.
I believe, and will repeatedly argue on this blog, that a General's principal function is no longer to be a "manager of violence" as Samuel Huntington once argued; he or she must be a manager of full-spectrum conflict. He must understand the political, economic, and social roots of conflict, and recommend to his political supervisors comprehensive political, economic, and social solutions. Tomorrow's generals should be able to flip through an International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook, and be able to predict where tomorrow's conflict flashpoints might be. They should sit down with enviornmental experts at universities and think tanks, to predict security consequences of imminent environmental disasters--such as the pollution and desertification of China's Yellow River, or the water crisis in Jordan. They should commission country-by-country reports of how global warming will effect local environments and economies in coming decades, to predict which countries will thrive and which will not survive rapid transformation. They should understand a world where invading Iraq caused American support to plummet around the world, but where providing tsunami relief caused support in Indonesia to leap from 36% to 60% in just a few weeks. When planning theater-level strategy in AFRICOM, they should consider the value of anti-malarial drugs and mosquito nets with as much seriousness as they consider fighting al-Qaeda in Somalia.
Is the price of food a security issue? Absolutely. Watch for it on the news.
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