The U.S. Factor In The Creation Of Multilateral Food Aid Regimes

With the great expansion of arable land and the rise of revolution of agricultural science and technology, food surplus began to emerge and became increasingly serious in America after the Civil War. Because of the end of the Korean War, the U.S. lost a main outlet of surplus food disposal. A new revolution of agricultural science and technology and outdated agricultural policy stimulated the government-owned food stocks expand quickly and reached a terrible size in the beginning of1960s. Dealing with the mountainous surplus food stocks became one of the toughest problems facing the governments in the early postwar period. After the coming into force of Public Law480(PL480), the most critical foreign food aid law, the U.S. began to provide a large quantity of food aid to the world. At the beginning of1960s, after several years of practice of food aid and the revolution of "Food for Peace" by President Kennedy, with the need to dispose surplus food and to urge other countries to share more food aid burden and the foreign policy of Cold War, the U.S. began to promote the historical process of creating multilateral food aid regimes.In fact, several attempts to create multilateral regimes of food aid by the international society were failed by the refuse of the U.S. and its super hegemony. Then the attitude of the U.S became the vital factor of the success or failure of creating multilateral regimes of food aid in the postwar period. Just as the hegemony of the U.S. is the main driving force of many multilateral regimes after the Second World War, its hegemony of food was also the dominant factor in creating multilateral food aid regimes. In1961, the U.S led to create the first multilateral regime of food aid-the World Food Aid Programme, short for WFP--in the UN system, the truly beginning of Multilateral regimes of food aid, providing an aim of100million U.S. dollar food aid by all signatories. In the GATT’s Kennedy Round negotiation, which was began in1964, the U.S. successfully forced the European Community and Japan to receive a "Food Aid Convention", assured that at least4.50million metric ton international food aid were provided by signatories each year. With the FAC, the U.S. forced the European community and Japan to receive binding responsibilities for the first time and took a critical step on sharing the food aid burden with other countries. The FAC of1967is a milestone in the history of international food aid. Both the creation and operation of the WFP and FAC rely on the hegemony of the U.S. attempting to serve the interests of the United States. In this case, they are hegemonic food aid regimes. With the help of the WFP and FAC, the U.S. accomplished the creation of its dominant multilateral regimes of food aid.Since the late1960s, the current multilateral food aid regimes have been more and more difficult to meet the needs of the world. However the attempts of the international society to change them were all failed because of the objection of the United States. With the success of the farm land diversion policy from the Kennedy government and the great increase of food aid and food exports, the surplus food stocks of the U.S. decreased to the bottom in1967and never rebuilt on a large scale. The global climate disaster of1972led to worldwide agricultural failure, which stimulated the world need of the food of America greatly, including the business imports and food aid, while at the same time the Nixon government adopted a radical food export policy (especially to USSR) and farm land diversion policy, the combination of these factors thus led to the exhaustion of American food stocks and the jump up of world food prices. As a result, the amount of the U.S. foreign food aid decrease to the bottom from the year of1954while the world needed it most, which happened at the same time of the substantial increase of oil price by the OPEC, which therefore led to the first global food crisis in1972-1974and many developing countries dropped into serious food shortage. The hegemonic international regimes of food aid of the U.S. domination so fell into collapse.The world in1970s became more and more inter-dependent quickly; at the same time the developing countries were increasingly becoming an important force in the international politics and with the group strategy they were trying to dominate the issues of international regimes. In this background, the U.S. sponsored the1974world food conference, hoping to relieve the pressure from the developing countries and to create an international cooperation framework for the long term world food problems. The relative decline of the U.S. hegemony (especially food hegemony) made it no longer able to dominate the agenda of the conference while developing countries has successfully reformed the current multilateral food aid regimes and created some new regimes on this conference. The hegemonic role of the international food aid regimes faded after the reform. It became more development-orientation and more effective to deal with the world food disaster. The1974world food conference is a watershed in the history of international food aid; because of it the multilateral food aid regimes after World War II became mature. The aim of his thesis is to express the role of the U.S. in the creation of multilateral food aid regimes by analysis the U.S. factor in three cases:World Food Programme,1967Food Aid Convention, and the1974World Food Conference.