Guns, butter, and development: Security and military famine extensions of the modernization versus dependency debate

Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Winter 2001 by Scanlan, Stephen J

Journal of Political and Military Sociology 2001, Vol. 29 (Winter): 331-355

In this paper I expand the long-running "guns versus butter" debate between modernization and dependency perspectives on development by examining multiple components of militarization and food security and their links to human security and military famines. Militarization and food security are complex processes that demand careful research that adequately addresses the multiple ways these may be conceptualized. Using new measures of food security constructed as relative adequacy of food supply and child nutrition that capture food access, I reveal that political and social militarization improve food security. Economic militarization and military famines detract from it, thus pointing to mixed consequences for human development and security in these societies. Differences exist between models for each dependent variable, highlighting the importance of considering multiple aspects of food security. This paper takes empirical research on food security beyond simple concerns with food availability to more important ideas such as stratification and distribution. It contributes methodologically by incorporating new measures into the guns/ butter debate and theoretically by extending this discussion to important security and military famine considerations.

INTRODUCTION

Hunger affects some 830 million people globally, 791 million of whom are living in less developed countries (LDCs) (World Food Program 2001). In addition, over 200 million children under age 5 experience chronic undernutrition (Unicef 1998) exhibiting the most tragic element of this global concern. Large numbers of hungry persons exist, even though their numbers are declining relative to global population growth. This is not the result of a shortage of food but an inability of people to benefit from their "food entitlement" (Sen 1981; Dreze & Sen 1989) resulting from poverty, inequality, and the poor distribution of an existing food surplus. Lack of access to available food thus is the key component to understanding the persistence of hunger on a massive global scale. In this paper I evaluate this problem by focusing on an institution of central interest to food security and development: the military. More specifically, I examine the impact of economic, social, and political militarization on the distribution component of food security and its ties to development and security in LDCs.

Research on a long-standing "guns versus butter" debate has focused on the impacts of militarization on development (Benoit 1973; Bullock and Firebaugh 1990; Chan 1985, 1995; Kick & Sharda 1986). Militarization has numerous links to development, and research has examined economic growth, basic needs, and the political consequences of militarization. Because food security is central to human development, well-being in this form can be linked to militarization which can have a key role in infant states. However, the traditional guns/butter debate falls short on a couple of fronts, neglecting important security dynamics and their importance to "military famines" (Cheatham 1994; Macrae & Zwi 1994) and the presence of 47 "food wars" (Messer, Cohen, & D'Costa 1998) around the world. In this regard, the guns versus butter debate should shift its focus from budget tradeoffs and priorities to the realities of the impact of armed conflict on human well-being.

FOOD SECURITY, MILITARIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Development experts at the World Food Conference of 1974 first defined food security, with primary concern being the food self-sufficiency of individual countries (Babu & Quinn 1994:213). Writing for the World Bank, Reutlinger et al define food security as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active healthy life" (1986:1), a definition similar to that of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that claims food security exists when " . . . all people at all times have both physical and economic access to basic food" (1994:22). Such a definition focuses on social-structural causes of hunger and extending from this, food insecurity can be succinctly summarized as "when people must live with hunger and fear starvation" (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] 1999:1). In cross-national analyses, impoverished countries like poor individuals have no guaranteed means of maintaining sustenance short of producing food for internal consumption, which is increasingly unlikely in an era of globalization where self-sufficiency is rare.

Food security operates on a number of levels. Tweeten (1997), for example, notes that food security is comprised of three components: availability, access, and utilization. In other words, for food security to exist there must be a reliable supply of food, individuals and countries must be able to acquire it, and once they acquired it, they must be able to derive nutritional well-being from it in the form of a healthy diet. Similarly, Uvin (1994) notes that food security entails discussion of shortage, poverty, and deprivation. It is the complexity that makes food security interesting not only as the most central component of development but also for its embeddedness in the international political economy. It is within this realm that food security becomes highly relevant to militarization. I focus on the food access and poverty components of food security that most exemplify the stratification realm of hunger.