United Kingdom

Liz Webster, head of campaign group Save British Farming, told The Telegraph in February: “We live on an island in a particularly difficult climate with a very short growing season. If we don’t have any food security in a world which is chaotic, we know what happens because it happened in the last two World Wars – we are exposed to a food crisis.”

You can trade for food. You are part of the wealthy world and can outbid just about anyone else. Even in the event of a global famine, it's not gonna be the UK at the bottom of the food chain.

But the World Wars!

You were blockaded then.

Who is able and willing to blockade the UK today? That'd require a hot war. And what is the kind of insane scenario one can produce in the present world where the UK would be need to be facing down a blockade, and can then militarily pull out ahead after doing so?

1. The UK is one of the more potent naval powers in the world. Trying to cut the UK off from the ocean is something that only a few countries could even realistically attempt.

2. The UK is in NATO. Virtually all of the world's major naval powers are in NATO. NATO Article 6 explicitly covers attacks on the ships of member states in the North Atlantic as being in NATO's scope. You'd have to have at minimum NATO breaking up for this to even be conceivable.

3. The UK is a couple miles offshore of France and even absent the Royal Navy, the UK has extensive ability to do anti-submarine warfare, knock enemy warships out of the area, shoot down aircraft in the area, and generally keep the English Channel open. So at least mainland Europe is going to have to be in opposition, since it's very dubious that anyone is going to have an easy time interposing themselves between the UK and mainland Europe.

4. Even absent the entire rest of NATO and absent the entire Royal Navy, the UK and the US are allied. As things stand today, the US would reasonably be expected to win a naval war against the rest of the world combined. China is the closest thing to a peer today, and trying to fight a naval war against the UK and US concurrently in the Atlantic (a) sounds pretty unlikely and (b) probably one of the worst battlefields that China could possibly choose for something like that.

5. The UK is a nuclear power with second-strike capability. Nobody, absolutely nobody -- and I include the US -- is going to try to wage an all-in war against the UK where the aim is to starve the British population without asking some very serious questions about the risk of a nuclear war.

So, what is the scenario that one is trying to hedge against? A scenario in which NATO has broken up and the UK is concurrently fighting France and the US at least? Because that scenario really seems like one where there would be rather larger military concerns than running low on food. I also think that if that is a realistic concern, then the UK would probably not be doing the military collaborations that the UK does with either, for starters.

But then why would the head of the campaign group Save British Farming say such a thing?

Well, maybe because they're an industry advocacy group, and it's in their interest not to be competing with agriculture from abroad?

Let's hypothetically say that there is an actual, real national security threat involving food shortages. Okay. Let me suggest a few things:

• Probably a lot of the UK's military strategy needs to be redone, since it is probably improperly relying on alliances if it's needing to hedge against this route. If the UK has a serious concern about fighting a conventional war against France and the US concurrently, then it needs to do a lot of things differently.

• Second, I'd want to understand what combination of enemies the UK is going to be facing that can impose a blockade on the UK but cannot otherwise defeat the UK militarily.

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