Author(s)
“Bread, not guns, may well decide mankind’s future destiny. ... Regrettably, however, the American people have been led to think our abundance and ability to produce in abundance is some shameful millstone around our necks — instead of perhaps one of the greatest advantages we hold on the world scene.”
— United States Senate, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, April 21, 1958[1]
Introduction
America’s Cold War experience emphasized the importance of maximizing food and energy abundance. Such abundance is a foundational source of national power that underpins social and industrial vitality, deters adversaries, and persuades allies and partners. Pursuing energy and food abundance in a sustainable fashion also sets a powerful example, both in the campaign for hearts and minds, and the campaign for investment capital and wealth creation.
As the U.S. faces a potential new cold war with both China and Russia, it is critical for the White House and Congress to prioritize policies focused on ensuring an abundance of food and energy. U.S. policy positions on energy and food issues can substantially influence the direction and scale of investments from the roughly $100 trillion in potentially investable capital around the world.[2] And where energy and food go, water is never far behind.[3]
By applying the lessons learned from America’s abundance agenda during the Cold War to today’s geopolitical conflicts with Russia and China, the U.S. will be well-positioned to drive future prosperity and win deeper global influence. U.S. partners in fast-growing economies recognize the importance of abundance and maximally leveraging domestic resources to achieve energy and national security. A recent meeting hosted at the Baker Institute with senior energy decision-makers from Indonesia reinforced these points.[4] More closely aligning U.S. domestic energy policies and energy diplomacy abroad with an abundance agenda would unleash high-impact progress across the non-OECD world.
Early Cold War: Launching the Abundance Agenda
Writing 65 years ago, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey noted that “our reserves of food and fiber, and our ability to produce such commodities in abundance, are resources to be prized; to be used boldly and imaginatively, and not be dribbled away.”[5] Adding one word — energy — makes the statement as relevant in 2024 as it was in 1958.
The abundance agenda embraced by U.S. policymakers in the late 1950s helped facilitate a peaceful triumph over the Soviet Union more than 30 years later. This historical perspective warrants careful consideration, as the U.S. now finds itself engaged in a simultaneous competition with both China and Russia that could stretch well beyond 2050.
Throughout the Cold War, even as NATO forces faced Soviet armies across the Fulda Gap, grain exports from the U.S. Midwest helped feed the world — including Moscow’s own citizenry, whose domestic livestock herd often fed on imported grain, a substantial portion of which came from the U.S.[6] Perhaps even more important than kernels, the contributions of U.S. scientists and policymakers to the Green Revolution were instrumental in creating better living standards and helping to tilt the global scales against Communism.
Once Soviet leaders experienced the abundance of American society firsthand, the impacts were even more profound. Future Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s visit to a Houston-area Randall’s grocery store in 1989 left a deep impression (Figure 1). At the time, he first asked if the store had been staged for him, and once he was assured that it had not and that, in fact, there were even bigger stores, he remarked that if Soviet citizens saw a U.S. supermarket, “there would be a revolution.”[7]
Years later, he wrote in his autobiography, “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people. ... That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”[8]
Figure 1 — Boris Yeltsin Visits a Randall’s in Clear Lake, Texas (September 16, 1989)
Source: Houston Public Media.[9]
Benefits of Abundance
Having plentiful energy, food, and water creates strategic space to maneuver and, with it, a greater latitude for shaping a world that reflects our interests and values. Take, for example, the U.S. shale gas boom that began in the mid-2000s. Twenty years ago, many believed America was poised to become the world’s largest gas importer. Now, after entrepreneurial firms and their backers mobilized more than $1 trillion in capital, America supplies over 20% of the world’s liquified natural gas (LNG) and over 10% of total globally traded gas. This abundance facilitated the massive displacement of coal use both stateside and abroad. It also led newer gas importers like Bangladesh and Pakistan, and longstanding users like Japan and South Korea, to conclude that gas was a viable long-term energy security foundation.
American gas abundance has also clearly demonstrated that “energy security is national security.” Indeed, massive American gas exports help our European allies manage the energy crisis instigated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[10] Likewise, during the Obama administration, the shale oil boom helped U.S. policymakers impose sanctions and generate leverage to push Iran to the nuclear negotiating table, put the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in place, and temporarily freeze Iranian nuclear weapons progress.[11]
Elevating abundance above deprivation may also appeal at a practical and philosophical level to countries across the Global South with aspirations for growth and development. Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa, and Vietnam, among others, all belong to this vital group. Former Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo likely spoke for billions in the developing world when he wrote in 2021 that “our citizens cannot be forced to wait for battery prices to fall or new technologies to be created in order to have reliable energy and live modern, dignified lives.”[12]
By amplifying the pursuit of energy, food, and water abundance domestically and adjusting policies abroad to facilitate meeting others’ acute need for energy, Washington could make billions of lives better while winning hearts and minds in the process.[13]
Navigating a New Cold War
Past American successes in creating resource abundance should imbue policymakers with confidence that economic and technological systems work best when the force of incentives prevails over the straitjacket of political mandates. The U.S. can establish an alternative vision for the world by leveraging incentives and market forces to simultaneously pursue abundance, affordability, efficiency, and reliability for energy and food supplies alike.[14] It can also lead by example through adapting water governance policies that more effectively and sustainably balance human needs and property rights.[15]
By recognizing energy transitions as additive and setting conditions and incentives that put innovation and technology development (rather than political mandates) in the driver’s seat, American federal policymakers can unleash a process that enhances U.S. global competitiveness while sharing the bounty with the rest of the world. The coming year offers a chance to accelerate the transition needed most — one that embraces a policy approach to ensuring an abundance of energy, food, and water as its cornerstone principle. At this pivotal moment in history, the U.S. has a chance to foster a new set of relationships and help mitigate vulnerabilities that might otherwise cause other countries to align with resource-rich adversaries such as Russia.
With energy and food alike, U.S. policymakers should embrace concepts like those that helped America prevail in the Cold War. The United States cannot do this alone, but its leadership is instrumental. The American approach uniquely combines a trade-driven mindset, a massive resource base, deep capital markets, an innovation ecosystem, and an open-access political mindset that multiple partners can plug into moving forward.
Conclusion
Purposeful policy aimed at unleashing the American economic engine to drive prosperity at home while simultaneously exporting it abroad powered the free world’s triumph in the Cold War and set the stage for the 30-year boom that followed. Today’s competition is more complex — with small and middle powers wielding a massive collective influence on the world’s future trajectory. But if anything, this complexity makes pursuit of abundance even more important.
Fostering energy and food abundance harnesses American commercial strengths. It would also demonstrate that an open-access global operating system offers a better and more prosperous future for the world than the authoritarian, control-centered model the Chinese Communist Party favors. As Sen. Humphrey put it in 1958, “there must be an end to the policy of regarding America’s plenty with embarrassment.”[16]
Notes
[1] Hubert H. Humphrey, Food and Fiber as a Force for Freedom (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1958), https://books.google.com/books?id=ll1-xQEACAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
[2] Chris McIntyre et al., “The Tide Has Turned: Global Asset Management 2023,” Boston Consulting Group, May 15, 2023, https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/the-tide-has-changed-for-asset-managers.
[3] Gabriel Collins and Gopal Reddy, “How China’s Water Challenges Could Lead to a Global Food and Supply Chain Crisis” (Houston: Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, November 14, 2022), https://doi.org/10.25613/526F-MR68; Collins and Reddy, “China’s Growing Water Crisis,” Foreign Affairs, August 23, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas-growing-water-crisis; and Collins, “Iran's Looming Water Bankruptcy” (Houston: Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, April 4, 2017), https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/irans-looming-water-bankruptcy.
[4] “Indonesia in Transition: A Conversation on Energy and Diplomacy,” Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, March 21, 2024, https://www.bakerinstitute.org/event/indonesia-transition-conversation-energy-and-diplomacy.
[5] Humphrey.
[6] Robert L. Paarlberg, “Food as an Instrument of Foreign Policy,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 34, no. 3 (1982): 25–39, https://doi.org/10.2307/1173726.
[7] Craig Hlavaty, “When Boris Yeltsin Went Grocery Shopping in Clear Lake,” Chron.com, January 31, 2018, https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php.
[8] Hlavaty.
[9] Michael Hagerty, “Boris Yeltsin’s 1989 Visit to a Houston Grocery Store Is Now an Opera,” Houston Public Media, February 21, 2020, https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-matters/2020/02/21/361467/boris-yelstins-1989-visit-to-a-houston-grocery-store-is-now-an-opera/.
[10] Collins and Steven R. Miles, “Why Is Europe Not Replacing Russian Pipeline Gas With Long-Term LNG Contracts?” (Houston: Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, September 13, 2023), https://doi.org/10.25613/3FRC-FA56.
[11] Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Shadia Nasralla, “The Ebb and Flow of Sanctions on Iranian Oil,” Reuters, April 22, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ebb-flow-sanctions-iranian-oil-2021-04-22/.
[12] Yemi Osinbajo, “The Divestment Delusion: Why Banning Fossil Fuel Investments Would Crush Africa,” Foreign Affairs, August 31, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/africa/2021-08-31/divestment-delusion.
[13] U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Guidance on Fossil Fuel Energy at the Multilateral Development Banks,” August 16, 2021, https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Fossil-Fuel-Energy-Guidance-for-the-Multilateral-Development-Banks.pdf; Todd Moss and Vijaya Ramachandran, “Why the Climate Panic About Africa Is Wrong,” Foreign Policy, December 6, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/06/africa-climate-emissions-energy-renewable-gas-oil-coal/.
[14] Collins and Michelle Michot Foss, “The Global Energy Transition’s Looming Valley of Death” (Houston: Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, January 27, 2022), https://doi.org/10.25613/Y18Q-PM32.
[15] Collins, “Overruling the Rule of Capture: What Can Texas Learn From 10 Other States’ Groundwater Law Updates?” (Houston: Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, June 2021), https://doi.org/10.25613/knsb-6g39.
[16] Humphrey.
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