U.S. Food Aid, Civil Conflict, and the End of the Cold War

This thesis explores whether accounting for the end of the Cold War affects the relationship between U.S. food aid and conflict incidence. By replicating and extending Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian's 2014 article "U.S. Food Aid and Civil Conflict," this thesis finds that the end of the Cold War does matter for understanding this relationship. During the Cold War, U.S. food aid increases both conflict duration and the likelihood of conflict onset. In contrast, once the Cold War ends, U.S. food aid has no statistically significant relation to either conflict duration or onset. To explain these results, this thesis argues that the end of the Cold War fundamentally changed how civil wars are fought, how the state government is perceived, and how foreign aid is distributed.