ABSTRACT
The Marshall Plan was the first and most critical element of the United States’ strategy of ‘containing’ the Soviet Union by exporting democracy and capitalism to Western Europe through massive injections of financial aid. Humanitarian aid can be used as a weapon of war in different ways and can result in provoking, prolonging or intensifying conflict. The war between the Houthi rebel movement and forces loyal to President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi that began in 2014 has provoked what United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described in December 2017 as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The use of starvation as a method of warfare is already prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and UN Security Council Resolution 2417 on armed conflict and hunger.
