Odors of defeat and the wages of trickery

We’re being told that the Russians are indifferent to the plight of hungry Africans because they kaboshed a deal with Ukraine in which the latter’s grain exporting ships were permitted to transit the Black Sea without interference. As usual, that’s a false reading of the situation.

The headlines were dire: “Russian Grain Deal: Why Moscow Is Being Accused of Using Hunger as Blackmail,” trumpeted Yahoo News. “A hit to global food security,” said the LA Times. As usual, the war propaganda we’re being fed is heavy-handed enough to sink one of those giant boats laden with barley and sunflower seeds. In fact, the grain deal had two major components, not just one.

Yes, the Russians agreed to let Ukrainian grain exports travel freely to alleviate food shortages in the global South. In exchange, they were promised access to world markets for their own food products and fertilizer, including an agreement that Rosselkhozbank, the Russian Agricultural Bank, would be reconnected to the SWIFT payments system.

The Russians fulfilled their part of the bargain; Europe and the U.S. didn’t. After agreeing to several postponements, Moscow finally decided that the foot-dragging had gone far enough. Now, while the Russians say the deal can come back any time the original terms are carried out, they are no longer willing to cooperate on the basis of empty promises.

Don’t expect our self-righteous pols and pundits to acknowledge that aspect of the situation any time soon. The neocon cabal in D.C. will bash Russia with letting African babies starve and further wrecking Ukrainian finances. The idea that the deal could have been carried out by all parties as originally promised won’t enter the debate.

A nasty little side secret is that the Ukrainians’ supposed relief to the tables of the underdeveloped world was a bit exaggerated. A large portion—probably the majority—of the exported grain was headed right back to Europe. It’s important for the EU struggling with a staggering food inflation problem that they have enough feed for their animal stocks. But it’s not really a huge deal for, say, Egypt. John Helmer at Dances with Bears says that poor African countries received only 2.5% of the grain freed up under the deal.

Propaganda points aside, there is a danger in consistently saying you will do something and then not doing it. When the U.S. and its junior allies finally sit down to sort out what to do about the lost war in Ukraine, their Russian counterparts are not going to be in a trusting mood. A few years ago, various final arrangements could have been discussed among the hostile parties; now, U.S. diplomats are more likely to be handed a sheet of instructions.

Recent talk about a “stalemate” that will lead to a kind of Korea-style DMZ freezing the lines in eastern Europe for another half-century might have made sense if the parties involved were capable of coming to terms. They’re not.

Biden’s neocons and their European servants like Macron and Merkel haven’t been serious about the things they put their signatures to, such as the notoriously bad-faith Minsk accords. “We just did that to buy time for the Ukrainian military build-up,” they boasted not so long ago. That would once have been considered undiplomatic, but it sounded good when western leaders were eager to out-swagger each other. It was an expensive self-indulgence.

Proving that you’re a country incapable of keeping its word has a cost once others wise up to you. It means that the future of what’s left of Ukraine will be decided on the battlefield, not the negotiation table. The grain deal’s demise is only the prologue.