The Role of Food in The International System A Case Study: Iraq as a Sample

Abstract

Food security is one of interlinked to the sovereignty and independence of the state, it represents the crucial relationship between the government and the people on the one hand, and between the state and the international community ,on the other. Thus, priority must be given in the strategies and  future plans of the state. Food security provides food commodities at reasonable prices and a high nutritional value for the needs of population in any country or territory of the world throughout the year. Food security has therefore become correlated with other security terms, such as economic, social, political and water security. The problem of food has started to take on other aspects of international politics, and it directly affects the balance of powers, such as energy sources, or even more than them, because food is irreplaceable, while energy sources have multiple substituents. Food weapon and trade warfare became popular, as was evident in international relations by the economic siege and starvation warfare. Perhaps the most appalling forms of how the United States of America uses  food as a weapon, when it decided to economically besiege Iraq in 1990 under  the auspices of the United Nations , that increased the map of food deprivation, with a consequent increase in unemployment, illiteracy, ignorance, diseases, the emergence of criminal gangs, and the deterioration of security and morality that paved the way for the destruction of Iraqi statehood.