ABSTRACT
The association of debt with civil violence and actual civil war has been convincingly established by a number of authorities. The correlation between the heaviest debtors and the worst experience of violence and civil war has to be recognized as a fact. In their major study of hunger in the modern world, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen emphasize, as key factors in the creation of famines, the distribution both of food and of support for food production. The association of famine and war has a long history. In the apocalyptic revelation of St John, the four horsemen signifying conquest, war, famine and pestilence ride over the earth. The arming of African regimes by the industrial powers has had both a strategic and an economic rationale. Fear is a bad guide to action except in the first moment of response to danger.
