Democratic Peace in a World of Hungry Bellies?

Professor Nexon briefly mentioned in his lecture that the spiraling food prices, especially to those crops that are the staple food for many around the world, are threatening global peace and ushering an onslaught of riots and violence that can only be solved with lowering prices and more aid.

The food shortages that are now spanning across the globe and hitting either particularly weak or rising states such as Haiti, Nigeria, South Africa, India, and China reflect an almost doomsday, Thomas Malthusian view about what the world may look like with such a shortage of crucial resources. Could it be that Western countries (especially the U.S.) were too busy concentrating on biofuels and ethanol instead creating some alternate form of green technology, thus driving up prices and threatening the stability of states that eventually have to contend with the soaring prices of wheat, corn, and rice? Where were the institutions that were supposed to stop this? Or is this crisis simply a reaction to the inevitable dog-eats-dog structure that allows weaker states to collapse and stronger states to survive? After all, the countries in which food price have skyrocketed but population remaining relatively unaffected are in no hurry to start protests or overthrow their government. However, these countries with the least problems are the ones who are almost always the perpetrators regarding the cause of the rising prices.

The recent New York Times article about food riots notes that nervous governments are already cash-strapped with their food subsidies and increasingly angry people. UN peacekeeping forces have been called to Haiti because demonstrators are angry, even if the government has tried to slash food prices at 15%. While constructivists may say that the solution to these problems has to do with the norms that must be overturned in order to progress, this issue is particularly hard to solve because, well, the need for feeding oneself is literally a universal need that can't be broken down between any sort of boundaries. Policy changes could happen, such as governments limiting the amount of food that people can buy to reduce hoarding, but the real changes must come from some sort of policy aspect that allows countries to invest and increase their domestic resources.

Personally, it seems that liberals' theories are right when it comes to this issue. The complex interdependence was what allowed food shortages to start in the beginning; the rising prices in Burkina Faso should have triggered an alarm to North American countries. Globalization has truly affected all states in the sense that no one can be impervious to another's woes; no one can hide from the rippling that occurs when one state's crises spills over to its neighbors. There are just too many ties that bind all states together, and to say that states are still in an anarchical battle over power and sovereignty is to ignore the implications of these ties and the fact that if one tie is threatened, all other ends will become loose. Interstate competition just can't "win out" in something that's crucial as feeding a population. Collective action must be taken to ensure that one state's problems do not tip the balance of world powers in chaos.