Understanding global security - Peter Hough

ECONOMIC THREATS TO SECURITY
natural and political factors and disputes on causation centre on determining the
relative weighting of the two contributory factors (hence this section is included here
rather than in Chapter 8). The famines in India and Ireland, for example, had natural
causes but are generally considered to have been exacerbated by an ignorance of the
local situation borne of colonial rule. The North Korean famine had natural origins
but has, undoubtedly, been greatly worsened by the government’s drive for economic
self-sufficiency, which has seen a fall in food imports at the same time as the domestic
food supply has dwindled.
Marxist analysis argues that structural economic factors account for famines
as much as the inadequate political responses of particular governments to crop
failures. It is, indeed, striking that so many of the worst famines in history occurred
in the late nineteenth century, an era of as-then unparalleled global economic
liberalization when the trade in foodstuffs greatly increased. Marx himself considered
the famines of his era to be the product of capitalism and his latter day protégés, such
as Davis, cite persuasive evidence that colonized or semi-colonized countries, like
India and China, thrust into a global market economy, exported food to the developed
world while their own nationals starved (Davis 2001: 27).
The late nineteenth century, however, was also an era marked by extreme
climatic conditions in Asia owing an increased prevalence of the ‘El Nino’ effect.
El Nino is a periodically occurring phenomenon whereby equatorial areas of
the Pacific Ocean warm up, causing atmospheric disturbances which can manifest
themselves in periods of drought and flood, in place of the characteristic seasonal
changes in weather. It appears that a combination of profound changes in both the
natural and economic environments transpired to kill millions in Asia and elsewhere
in the late nineteenth century. Those deaths should serve as a powerful warning from
history of the need to temper contemporary economic globalization with political
measures in order to be ready to deal with the rise of unexpected threats to economic
security.
The clearest cases of man-made, political famine are the horrific twentiethcentury
disasters in Communist China and the USSR. The Chinese famine was
influenced by the effects of excessive rainfall on harvests but there is little doubt
that its principal cause was Mao Tse Tung’s determination to pursue his ‘Great
Leap Forward’ plan of economic reform, regardless of the human consequences. The
Ukrainian famine did not have any obvious natural causes and appears to have been
entirely political and even deliberately engineered by Stalin to punish farmers of
the region for their lack of enthusiasm for Soviet collectivization.
There are three fundmental explanations for any particular famine related to
the balance between the supply and demand for food.
1 A fall in the food supply.
2 An increase in the demand for food.
3 Disruptions to the normal distribution of food.
The third of these is most particularly influenced by politics and economics. As will
be explored in the next section, if considered from a global perspective, all famines
can be attributed to explanation three since there is demonstrably sufficient food in
the world for all people to be adequately fed. We do not yet live by effective global
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