Abstract
The article explores an increasingly relevant topic of the impact of the sanction
pressure on food security, summarizes and refines the assessments that have
gained ground in political and academic discourse by early 2020s. The study first
examines the restrictions on food and agricultural products, points at the legal gap
that had emerged in this domain during the Cold War, and examines attempts to
partially mitigate this gap by means of humanitarian exemptions from the sanction
regimes. The range of options for making such exemptions has significantly
expanded after the Cold War, but some factors, especially zero risk tolerance and
overcompliance by financial institutions, reduce the effectiveness of these
exemptions. Key mechanisms of direct and indirect impact of trade and financial
sanctions on food security are addressed at the macro-level. The article also
focuses on the novel dimensions of the nexus between sanctions and food
security that emerged as a result of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and the
following wave of unprecedented Western sanctions against Russia. In the future,
the Western powers can also step up primary and secondary sanctions against
those large non-Western powers who act as both suppliers of food products and
donors of development programs. This, however, would inevitably have
destructive reverse impact on the economies of both third states and sanctioning
countries themselves. As a result, the sanctions–food security nexus may become
even stronger, which, in turn, may hinder the achievement of food security-related
goals and tasks envisaged in Global Sustainable Development Agenda. The only
way out of this impasse is to boost parallel efforts to mitigate disruptive
consequences of economic sanctions and to create conditions for resolving the
conflicts which led to imposing these sanctions.