Food, Oil, and Coercive Resource Power

Food,Oil, andCoerciveResoume mwer I Robert L. Paarlberg I t was fashionable several years ago to argue that both food and oil could be used as tools for coercion. International security,once definedand preserved by military might, had suddenly been threatened by the uncertain availability of critical economic resources. Nations seemed in a position to struggle for dominance over one another by offering or refusing access to increasingly scarce primary commodities and raw materials. In one view, the most dramatic aspect of this struggle was to occur between producers of food and oil. Food power was ro be arrayed against oil power. The oil-starved industrial countries, some of which exported food, would confront food starved non-industrial countries, some of which exported oil.’ This looming contest between ”agripower” and ”petropower” was not unwelcome to some in the United States who foresaw their own ultimate triumph, with what had come to be called the “food weapon.“ Having earlier identified food as “one of the principal tools in our negotiating kit,” Secretary of Agriculture Earl L. Butz predicted in 1975that, “In the long run, agripower has to be more important than petropower.” Assistant Secretary of State Thomas 0.Enders warned in November 1974, at the time of the World Food Conference, that U.S. food power was a natural counter to Middle East oil power. He claimed that “The food producers ’monopoly exceeds the oil producers’ monopoly.” Other State Department officials asserted in 1975 that “we could make OPEC look sick if we were just to use what our agriculture gives us.” The Central Intelligence Agency published its speculation that food abundance might allow the United States to regain the primacy in world affairs which it had enjoyed at the close of the Second World War, when it was the only nation to possess nuclear weapons. Lester R. Brown concurred with these official assessments, observing that, “The issue is no longer whether food representspower,but how that power willbe used.”a Yesterday’s prophets of food power have today fallen silent. Exportable oil has 1. For an elaboration of this viewpoint, see Goeffrey Barraclough, “Wealth and Power: The Politicsof Food and Oil,’’ The New York Review of Books XXII,no. 13 (August 7,1975), p. 23. 2. These predictions of food power are found in Earl L. Butz, “Food Power-A Major Weapon” (speech), Washington, D.C., 24 June 1974; ”Food Power: The Ultimate Weapon in World Politics ?” Business Week, 15 December 1975, pp. 54-60; Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Political Research, Potential Trends in World Population, Food Production, and Climate (OPR 401), August 1974; and Lester R. Brown, ”The Politics and Responsibility of the North American Breadbasket,” World Watch Paper No. 2, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.,October 1975. ~ Robert L.Paarlberg is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College. 3 14 International Security indeed become a prime ingredient of national power in the contemporary international system, but food has not. Since the effective wielding of their "oil weapon " in 1973-74, the Arab oil exporting nations have gained discernable leverage over the diplomatic behavior of oil importing countries in the industrial world. Even as the real price of oil now declines, amid predictions of an interlude of abundant world supplies, the threat of another Arab oil embargo remains sufficient to inspire, among oil importing countries, far more generous policies toward the Arab world than would otherwise be the case. Non-Arab oil exporting countries enjoy enhanced diplomatic leverage as well, merely by posing as "dependable " sources of supply. No parallel growth of food power has yet occurred. This is due in part to recent conditions of relative abundance in the world food market. Yet the failure of food power to emerge as a counterweight to oil power goes far beyond current market conditions. Whatever the changing condition of the market , food can never provide as much diplomatic leverage to an exporting nation as does oil. Barriers to the Exercise of ResourcePower We define resource power as the ability of one nation to influence the behavior of another nation through the manipulation of international resource transfers. This definition excludes from consideration the export of resources such as good...