An Analysis The Evolution Of The American Food Diplomacy In The Post-War Period

Since Public Law 480 (PL480) became effective in 1954, America began its process of the food diplomacy. After the Second World War, the grain became a means to America's foreign aid diplomacy. And the world war II also brought a chance to Americans to develop their agriculture; therefore the remaining agriculture product appeared. Because of America's special status in the international politics, economics and grain market, it became the most powerful country using food as weapons. America took the grain as a diplomatically means to realize its diplomatic purpose. America's food diplomacy can be divided into three parts as its main characteristics. They are dealing with surpluses-food diplomacy, food for peace plan era and buying peace food diplomacy. Considering what is mentioned above, this thesis defines three aspects of research tasks, and reviews the American Food Diplomacy in five chapters. And it focuses on the following two examples: America food assistance to the Soviet during the cold war and food aiding to North Korea post Cold War.Chapter One explains the purpose and significance of the study, summarizes related literatures, and presents the research methods and framework of the study.Chapter Two reviews the development of Foreign Aid theories; and then it discusses and makes conclusions about the characteristics of the different theories.Chapter Three comprehensively discusses the America's food diplomacy, with a time range covering about fifty years. It mainly answers three questions: Why America takes foreign food aid as weapons? How does the America's food diplomacy develop? What are its evolutions?Chapter Four contains the core innovation of research. It analyses the practice of the America's food diplomacy. Then, it takes the using food weapons by the United States against the Soviet Union as an example; the analysis revolves around the United States two main intents: competing with the Soviet Union for bribing the third world countries and weakening the competitiveness of the Soviet Union. The U.S. took series of initiatives towards these two major goals; and then analyzed the United States' food aid to North Korea after the Cold War. It finally argues that the United States food diplomacy, whether it's food-for-peace, or the purchase of peace, are all for the national interests of the country. Food diplomatic is one of the important tools for achieving the political interests, economic interests, and security interests of the United States.Chapter Five concludes major viewpoints of this thesis.