Hunger in global war economies: understanding the decline and return of famines

The resurgence of famines is a topic of concern. This paper explains the recent trajectory using the framework of contending ‘global war economies’. It characterises the unipolar neoliberal world order era (1986–2015) as the ‘Pax Americana’ war economy, focusing on the United States dollar's roles. These were the decades of the liberal imperium, the corporate food regime, and counterinsurgent coalitions, which generated structural vulnerability to food crises and reduced the actual incidence and lethality of famine. The paper characterises the subsequent period (2016 onwards) as the challenge of the BRICS club, focusing on its efforts to rewrite the global political economy's rules, proactively hedging among diversifying currency regimes. This entails a scramble to secure strategic commodities and infrastructure in subaltern countries, which is intensifying conflict and food insecurity, and revising international norms in favour of reasserting sovereign rights. The global political–economic contestation and, especially, the associated normative regression are permissive of political and military triggers of famine.