JAMES LIM ESCALANTE

For generations, the concept of national security conjured images of tanks, battleships, and soldiers. It was a measure of military strength and border defenses. Today, a new, more urgent measure of security is emerging. It is not found in missile silos. It is found in grain silos.

Food security—the stable, reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food—is no longer a separate goal from national defense. It is a core component of it.

Governments are learning a hard lesson. A nation that cannot feed its people cannot defend itself. A hungry population is an unstable population. This instability becomes a direct threat to a state’s sovereignty, its economy, and its political order. The war in Ukraine, persistent climate shocks, and fragile supply chains have exposed this weakness. The 21st-century’s most volatile conflicts may be sparked not by ideology, but by the price of bread.

History is filled with examples. The French Revolution was not just about liberty; it was about the Parisian mob’s demand for bread. More recently, the 2011 Arab Spring offers a clear, modern case. The uprisings that toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were not isolated political events. They began, in part, as food riots.

In late 2010, global food prices spiked. Droughts in Russia and Eastern Europe, major wheat exporters, caused supply to tighten. Nations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are among the world’s largest food importers. Egypt, for example, is the top global wheat importer. When the price of wheat shot up, the cost of subsidized bread rose. This broke a delicate social contract.

For decades, many autocratic regimes in the region maintained stability through food and fuel subsidies. It was a trade: the public would tolerate a lack of political freedom in exchange for basic economic certainties. When that certainty vanished, the people took to the streets. The demand for “bread, freedom, and social justice” showed that food access is not a low-level economic issue. It is a high-level political one.

A government that fails to ensure food access loses its legitimacy. This creates a power vacuum. Such vacuums are dangerous. They can be filled by extremist groups, internal factions, or rival nations. This internal collapse is a catastrophic failure of national security.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine provided the world’s most dramatic lesson in food’s strategic importance. This conflict was not just fought on land. It was fought at sea, through the blockade of Black Sea ports.

Russia and Ukraine are global breadbaskets. Together, they accounted for a massive share of the world’s exports of wheat, barley, maize, and sunflower oil. Their customer list included some of the world’s most fragile states. Lebanon, already in economic collapse, received over 70 percent of its wheat from Ukraine. Somalia, facing a devastating famine, was heavily reliant on it.

When the war began, Russia blockaded Ukraine’s ports, trapping millions of tons of grain. This act was a clear weaponization of food. It served multiple strategic goals.

First, it strangled Ukraine’s economy. Agricultural exports were a primary source of Ukraine’s national income. Second, it created a global crisis that Russia could leverage. By controlling the food supply, Moscow held negotiating power over dozens of nations. The ensuing global food price spike punished countries that sided against Russia.

Third, it threatened to create a wave of instability in the Middle East and Africa. A surge of hunger-driven migration toward Europe could destabilize the continent. This would pressure European nations to reduce their support for Ukraine.

The international effort to create a “grain corridor,” brokered by Turkey and the United. Nations, was not just a humanitarian mission. It was a high-stakes national security negotiation. It demonstrated that control over food chokepoints, like the Bosphorus Strait, is as strategic as control over oil chokepoints, like the Strait of Hormuz.

The war also revealed other vulnerabilities. Ukraine’s fields were mined. Its grain silos and port infrastructure were bombed. This was a direct attack on its capacity to exist as a state. At the same time, the world learned its fertilizer supply was also compromised. Russia is a top exporter of key fertilizer components. Without fertilizer, future crop yields collapse. This weapon has a long tail.

While conflicts provide sudden shocks, climate change delivers a slow, grinding crisis. The Pentagon has for years called climate change a “threat multiplier.” It takes existing tensions—over water, land, or resources—and makes them worse.

Food production is based on predictable weather. Climate change destroys that predictability.

In the Horn of Africa, five consecutive failed rainy seasons have created the worst drought in decades. Millions face starvation in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. This crisis does not stay within those borders. It fuels displacement, creating massive refugee flows. It provides a recruiting ground for terrorist groups like al-Shabab, which often steps in to provide food and “order” where states have failed.

In Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state, the 2022 “monster monsoon” submerged one-third of the country. The floods wiped out over 40 percent of its crops. This agricultural devastation crippled the nation’s economy, which was already on the brink. A nuclear state’s instability, driven by a climate-induced food crisis, is a global security concern.

In more developed nations, the threat is economic. Severe droughts in the U.S. Midwest, China’s Yangtze River basin, and across Europe have reduced crop yields. This tightens global supply and raises prices for everyone. The 2023-2024 El Niño event further disrupted weather patterns, hitting agriculture in Australia, Southeast Asia, and South America.

This scarcity forces nations to compete. The competition for water is now a competition for food. In regions like the Nile basin or the Mekong, where multiple nations share a single water source, this competition can easily escalate from economic tension to open conflict.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed another layer of vulnerability. The global food system is a modern marvel of efficiency. It is built on “just-in-time” logistics. A product moves from farm to factory to port to supermarket with minimal storage. This system is cheap in good times. It is disastrously fragile in bad times.

When the pandemic hit, the system broke.

Truck drivers fell ill. Port workers were in lockdown. Shipping containers were in the wrong places. Abattoirs and food processing plants shut down dueS to outbreaks. The result was a strange paradox. Farmers in some areas had to euthanize livestock and plow vegetables back into the ground. At the same time, supermarket shelves in other areas were empty.

The food was available. It just could not get to the people who needed it. This logistical failure highlighted a key security flaw. Dependence on complex, long-distance supply chains makes a nation vulnerable. Any disruption—a pandemic, a stuck container ship in the Suez Canal, a drought in the Panama Canal—can sever a country’s lifeline.

This forces a major strategic rethink. For decades, the goal was efficiency. Nations were encouraged to specialize. They grew what they were good at growing and imported the rest. That policy is now being questioned. Security, not just cost, is driving decisions. Nations are now asking: How much of our own food do we need to be able to produce?

Because food is a strategic asset, nations are using it to build power. Countries with surplus food, like the United States, Canada, and Brazil, exercise immense “food power.” They can use food aid to build alliances, reward friends, and pressure adversaries.

Nations without food security are seeking to buy it. This has led to a new, quiet form of colonialism: global land acquisition.

Since the 2008 food price crisis, wealthy but food-poor nations have been buying or leasing massive tracts of farmland in other countries. China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are major players. They have acquired millions of hectares of arable land, primarily in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

The logic is simple. Why risk buying food on the volatile open market when you can own the farm?

These land deals are presented as economic development. The investing nation brings capital and technology. But the crops grown are often shipped directly back to the investor’s home country. They do not feed the local population. In some cases, these deals displace local farmers. They create a situation where a country, like Ethiopia, may be suffering from famine while its most fertile land is used to grow food for export to Saudi Arabia.

This is a direct transfer of food security. The host nation gives up its own resources—its land and water—making itself more vulnerable. The investing nation secures its own food supply, insulating its population from global shocks. This competition for land is a new geopolitical flashpoint.

The threat is not just external. It exists within every nation’s borders.

Food inflation is one of the most politically toxic forces a government can face. Unlike energy prices, which people feel weekly, food prices are felt daily. When families cannot afford groceries, public anger rises fast. This erodes trust in government. It can decide elections and paralyze a government’s ability to act on other national security matters. A government consumed by domestic price protests has less capacity to manage a foreign policy crisis.

The food system itself is critical infrastructure. A cyberattack on a major food distributor, a physical attack on fertilizer plants, or the contamination of a major water source are all national security threats.

There is also a long-term human dimension. A nation with chronic food insecurity suffers from malnutrition. This has a direct impact on its human capital. Malnourished children do not perform as well in school. This weakens the future workforce and the nation’s economic competitiveness.

It also weakens military readiness. In the United States, military leaders have raised alarms about “food deserts” and poor nutrition. A large percentage of military recruits are not eligible to serve due to obesity and related health problems. A nation’s diet is directly linked to its ability to field a healthy and effective military.

Recognizing these threats, nations are shifting their strategic posture. The new defense policy is one of resilience. The goal is to move from a fragile “just-in-time” system to a robust “just-in-case” system.

This involves several key strategies.

First is diversification. Nations are trying to diversify their food suppliers. Relying on one or two countries for a staple crop is no longer seen as viable. This is the same logic used in energy security.

Second is investment in strategic reserves. Just as nations have strategic petroleum reserves, many are now building or expanding their strategic grain reserves. These stockpiles act as a buffer. They can be released during a sudden crisis to stabilize prices and ensure supply while a long-term solution is found.

Third is a focus on technology and domestic production. Agri-tech is the new arms race. Governments are pouring money into research. This includes developing drought-resistant and pest-resistant crops through gene-editing. It includes precision agriculture, which uses data and AI to use less water and fertilizer. It also includes new methods like vertical farming. These indoor farms can grow produce in cities, cutting-transport links and insulating production from weather.

Finally, there is a new appreciation for the food-water-energy nexus. These three resources are deeply connected. It takes massive amounts of energy to produce fertilizer and transport food. It takes massive amounts of water to grow crops. A crisis in one sector immediately becomes a crisis in the others. Smart national security policy must manage all three at once.

The lesson is clear. A government’s first duty is to protect its citizens. That protection no longer just means guarding the borders. It means guarding the food supply. The farmer, the scientist, the logistician, and the diplomat are now on the front lines of national defense. Security in the 21st century depends on a full stomach.