The Danger of Worsening Relations With Both Russia and China

BY MELVIN GOODMANFacebook

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Photograph Source: Pat Guiney – CC BY 2.0

Q: “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”  (CBS News)

A: “Yes.” (President Joe Biden, May 23, 2022)

Q: “ You are?” (CBS)

A: “That’s the commitment we made.” (President Biden)

Once again, an unplanned and impromptu remark from President Biden has generated controversy, although this represents his third (incorrect) reference to a commitment to defend Taiwan.  Each time, Biden’s national security team has tried to walk back the president’s remarks, but the fact of the matter is that the United States is pursuing a policy of confrontation and containment with China.  There has been no attempt to pursue a diplomatic solution to our differences with China or to give Chinese leader Xi Jinping reason to believe that Sino-American relations could be improved through pursuit of a serious diplomatic dialogue.

It wasn’t difficult to assess China in the past because Beijing has had to deal with a hostile Soviet presence along a long international border since WWII, which required extensive military deployments and resources.  This is no longer the case.  While Biden was in Japan last week, Russia and China conducted a major exercise in the Pacific, flying strategic bombers over the Sea of Japan and East China Sea.  The joint exercise demonstrates the success that Beijing and Moscow are having in coordinating military policy against the interests of the United States.

The United States was particularly fortunate that, despite its full-scale warfare against North Vietnam in the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet dispute provided the Johnson and Nixon administration with a free hand in Southeast Asia. The dispute led to a bloody confrontation along the Amur and Ussuri rivers in 1969.  The Johnson administration was slow to understand the nature and intensity of the Sino-Soviet dispute, but the Nixon administration moved adroitly to ensure that Washington would have better relations with both Beijing and Moscow than the two leading communist powers had with each other.

The triangular diplomacy of President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger paid major dividends, including the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union as well as improved bilateral relations with China that led to full-scale diplomatic recognition in the administration of Jimmy Carter.  The Watergate crisis, the Nixon resignation, the inexperience of Gerald Ford, and the hubris of Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski kept the United States from exploiting the initial successes of the strategic triangle between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.

The United States was similarly fortunate regarding its bilateral relations with both the Soviet Union and China as a result of leadership changes in Moscow and Beijing.  In 1979, China radically changed course under Deng Xiaoping, who pursued economic reform and a non-ideological foreign policy.  Deng wanted China to “hide its strength, and bide its time.”  In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as the Soviet leader, and he was determined to pursue economic reform (perestroika) and greater scrutiny of previous Kremlin policy (glasnost).  He wanted an improved relationship with the United States, and used arms control and disarmament to ensure a durable detente.  The Chernobyl crisis in 1986 afforded an opportunity to purge the military, and to create a national security team oriented toward improved relations with the West.  Now, the United States must deal with the extreme nationalism and anti-Americanism of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

We are eighteen months into the Biden administration, and the flawed policy of Donald Trump toward China is still in place.  The policy of confrontation and containment risks the ratcheting up of military and economic pressure on China.  Editorial columns in the Washington Post and the New York Times favor this hard-line policy, calling for greater defense spending to enable a “faster modernization and rearmament of the U.S. military.”  Presumably Pentagon strategists are already preparing budget requests that are oriented to a “two-front war,” which drove U.S. spending to record levels in the 1980s right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  The notion that the United States could succeed in battling both Russia and China at the same time is particularly ludicrous.

Last week, an oped in the Post argued that “should China decide to wage war with the United States today, it would do so with modern weaponry purchased with U.S. money and often built with U.S.-designed technology.”  The idea that China would “decide to wage war with the United States” is particularly obtuse.  The belief that the policy of containment that worked against a weak Soviet Union will have favorable results with a strengthened China is an illusion.

Biden’s declaration to defend Taiwan if China attacked may have gone too far, but the formation of an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a thirteen-nation pact that excluded China, didn’t go far enough.  The Framework is no substitute for the Trans-Pacific Partnership that was negotiated by the Obama administration and abandoned by the Trump administration.  Unlike the Framework, the Partnership involved economic engagement with East Asia, India, and Australia.  The Framework is not a trade deal; it doesn’t open new markets.

Biden’s decision to maintain tariffs on Chinese imports has divided his national security team, with Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo arguing that removing some of the tariffs would offset rising prices.  Daleep Singh, a deputy national security adviser, has argued that the Biden administration inherited the tariffs from the Trump administration and that the tariffs “serve no strategic purpose.”  Thus far, the hardliners on China, particularly National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai, have convinced Biden that the tariffs provide leverage for the United States vis-a-vis China.  According to Harvard Professor Jason Furman, “tariff reduction is the single biggest tool the administration has” in fighting inflation.

Unfortunately, no one in the Biden administration seems to be making the case that the policy of decoupling the United States from ties to China and trying to take on both Russia and China will be hugely expensive in terms of resources and appropriations.  Biden’s approach will require huge expenditures for both air and naval platforms, leaving inadequate resources for domestic requirements, particularly for infrastructure and the climate challenge.  In his first months, Biden emphasized there would be a review of our global military presence.  But he gave this task to the Pentagon, which recommended no withdrawal or reductions.  Indeed, the most substantial change was to improve airfields in the Asia-Pacific regions; increase personnel in Germany; and  bolster French counter-terrorism efforts in Africa.

It is unfortunate that Biden has put together a national security team that has nothing new to alter the stalemated situations that Donald Trump left behind regarding policy toward China, Iran, and North Korea.  Defense spending continues to climb; new initiatives regarding arms control and disarmament are nowhere to be found; and military deployments continue to rise.  Defense analysts are already arguing for an expanded military presence in the Baltic States and key East European states such as Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.  Their call is for permanent basing of U.S. units in order to institutionalize a front line force posture.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org

The War, the Non-Aligned and the Struggle for the Salvation of Humanity

An obvious fact must be restated: that nobody has empowered the United States to play the role of ‘global policeman’ and of its ultimate arbiter. Humanity has already witnessed the awful way the US makes use of its “unipolar moment” (1990-2015).

26.05.2022

NORMS AND VALUES
EXPERT OPINIONS

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

PHOTO© Sputnik/Alexei Boytsov

Given the dependence of Western countries on the USA, the Non-Aligned Movement, representing today the majority of the countries and of the population of the planet and disposing of an economic power much greater than at the time when it was first created, has a historic opportunity to intervene in the on-going sui generis world war, writes Dimitris Konstantakopoulos.

We are living through the opening phase of two Armageddons and we need to stop both of them before they destroy humanity. One is the war between East and West, while the other is the war between Humanity and Nature.

So dramatic are the events taking place today on the planet, so profound the transformations of our world, that our minds find it difficult to grasp their full significance. For instance, there is a lot of debate nowadays internationally on how best to address the economic, social, political or geopolitical problems of our world. But the majority of those discussions do not take into account the fact we have entered an era of human history when, for the first time, the possibility that humanity may face extinction present.

Our world was seriously ill even before the Ukrainian crisis erupted.

Climate change will become irreversible (thus threatening the very existence of humanity), if radical measures are not taken to reverse it in the next two to three years, according to the latest ICPP reports. No state on Earth seemed disposed to adopt such measures even before the present crisis.

While the climate crisis, like nuclear war, is one of the most serious threats to the existence of mankind, it is by far not the only one. The world economy, already before the Ukraine conflict, was threatened with recession. Global debt, that is, the demands humanity faces from a handful of private financial institutions, has reached historically unprecedented levels. The same is true of inequalities between countries and within countries. About half of humanity, 3.3 billion people, live below the poverty line as defined by international organizations, while hundreds of millions remain undernourished and lack access to clean water and basic health care.

It was in this situation that the Ukrainian crisis broke out. Responding to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, the US and its allies and satellites, that is, all the advanced capitalist countries of the world, launched a sui generis world war against Russia.

We define it is as a world war because of the extent of its aims, of its global character and of the very real prospect of engulfing other countries like China – and anybody who dares to object to America and the “collective West”. We define it as a sui generis world war because, for the time being, there is no direct and massive contact between NATO and Russian armed forces, out of the fear that such a direct military conflict would lead, most probably, to a nuclear world war and the annihilation of humanity.

The only measure the United States and its allies-satellites have not adopted till now is the direct engagement of their armed forces against the Russian army, which would most probably lead to a global nuclear war and the elimination of the human species and other higher forms of life. But even this possibility, namely that life on the planet will end due to the use of nuclear and other means of mass destruction (including, for example, new artificial coronaviruses or the extensive use of cyberweapons), has now become much more likely due to the total character of the war unleashed by the West


The Non-Aligned Movement in the Multipolar World
Gulnara Mammadzadeh
The outcome of the NAM summit will promote transition to a multipolar world, including by giving small countries access to the regulation of global processes, as one can see from the example of Azerbaijan.

EXPERT OPINIONS

NATO’s war against Russia, if it continues beyond this year and if steps are not taken to immediately re-create a climate of international cooperation, will ensure the end of humanity due to climate change. Earth will enter into another “climate orbit”, where the climate change will become self-propelling and it will probably lead to a climate incompatible with the preservation of higher forms of life.

The sui generis world war against Russia that has been unleashed could also cause a major economic and social crisis in both developed countries and the Global South.

These problems are already evident. In many countries of the world, rising food and energy prices have led to mass demonstrations and strikes. Oxfam warns that any progress made in the last 25 years to combat poverty is threatened and hundreds of millions of people will experience extreme poverty and hunger this year. However, the crisis will not be confined to the South. It has already manifested in Europe. We aren’t just talking only about socio-economic problems. Examples include the fires that raged across Siberia and northern Canada last year, the floods in Germany and China, the climate famine in Madagascar, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, which has been called ‘the lung of the planet’, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, as well as the fate of Athens, which may become the first major city to suffer a “heat death”.

Given the dependence of Western countries on the USA, the Non-Aligned Movement, which today represents the majority of the countries and the population of the planet and possesses an economic power much greater than at the time it was first created, has a historic opportunity to intervene in the on-going sui generis world war.

It can do it first of all by protecting and strengthening the sovereignty and independence of its members, which America wants to enlist in its camp, using any available method, including blackmail and by becoming the spokesmen for the general interests of humanity.

The Non-Aligned must attempt to launch an initiative to stop the war and advance a peaceful solution to the crisis; this compromise would include the following:

- The cessation of hostilities and the beginning of negotiations to find a peaceful solution that recognises the rights and aspirations of all peoples inhabiting Ukraine, protects the right of all citizens to live without being terrorised by the neo-Nazi gangs which have been incorporated into the actual Ukrainian state, and also the right of Russia to exist in security, not threatened by the surrounding NATO troops or their armaments.

A cessation of arms supplies to Ukraine

An immediate lifting of all measures taken against Russia, including those against states that do not want to apply anti-Russian sanctions

The lifting of all sanctions against all countries, as they have been proven to be ineffective and affect mainly the populations of the countries – victims and not their regimes.

An obvious fact must be restated: that nobody has empowered the United States to play the role of ‘global policeman’ and of its ultimate arbiter. Humanity has already witnessed the awful way the US makes use of its “unipolar moment” (1990-2015).

Such an initiative of the non-Aligned could be extended in a manifesto, which would not be limited to the need to stop the sui generis world war which has already started; it would try to formulate the guidelines of a programme of deep transformation of our world, promoting a more equal, more democratic international structure, with the parallel and simultaneous treatment of its major ecological, social and international problems.

Indonesia, as a founding member of the non-aligned parties, but also the president of the G20, could play an important role in this direction and convey to the G20 the voice and will of the great majority of humanity.

It is a historic opportunity that should not be missed.

The U.S.’s Unilateral Sanctions Against Russia Will Produce a Global Food Disaster

BY JOHN ROSS COUNTERPUNCH  MAY 27, 2022 MAY 27, 2022

“There is really no true solution to the problem of global food security without bringing back the agriculture production of Ukraine and the food and fertilizer production of Russia and Belarus into world markets despite the war.” These blunt words by UN Secretary-General António Guterres accurately describe the present global food crisis.

As the U.S. and the G7 (comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) insist that cutting off food exports from Ukraine poses the biggest threat to world food security, rather than admitting the far more powerful negative effect of Western sanctions against Russia, their propaganda does immense damage to the world’s understanding and capability of avoiding a looming global food disaster.

The G7 and the Approaching Food Disaster

Looking at the world food supply situation, many experts see an imminent threat of “human catastrophe,” as World Bank President David Malpass put it. Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, characterized his outlook on global food supply problems as “apocalyptic” when discussing increasing food prices. This rise has led to the unfolding of two issues simultaneously: creating the threat of hunger and famine in parts of the Global South, and hitting living standards in every country across the globe.

Even before rapid price rises surrounding the Ukraine war, more than 800 million people were suffering from chronic food insecurity—around 10 percent of the world’s population. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cited this fact while speaking to the participants of an April 2022 event, “Tackling Food Insecurity: The Challenge and Call to Action,” whose participants included the heads of international financial institutions such as the World Bank’s Malpass. Yellen also noted, “Early estimates suggest that at least 10 million more people could be pushed into poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa due to higher food prices alone.” The World Food Program (WFP) plans “to feed a record 140 million people this year,” and it reports that “at least 44 million people in 38 countries are teetering on the edge of famine,” an increase from 27 million in 2019.

In countries facing other problems, like climate change, food price increases have been catastrophic. For example, in Lebanon, “the cost of a basic food basket—the minimum food needs per family per month—[rose]… by 351 percent” in 2021 compared to 2020, according to the WFP.

In the Global North, famine is not a threat, but the populations of these countries face a sharp squeeze on their living standards as the global food crisis also raises the prices people in wealthy countries have to pay and budget for. In the United States, for example, the combination of high inflation and economic slowdown led to a 3.4 percent reduction in real average weekly earnings in the last year, as per data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fake Analysis by the G7 About the Reasons for the Food Crisis

Faced with this rapidly rising threat of the deepening food crisis, the G7 foreign ministers met from May 12 to May 14 to finally focus their attention on this pressing matter. They issued a statement on May 13 expressing “deep concern” about the growing food insecurity, while pointing out the next day that “the world is now facing a worsening state of food insecurity and malnutrition… at a time when 43 million people were already one step away from famine.”

But the G7 falsely claimed that the reason for this food crisis was primarily due to “Russia blocking the exit routes for Ukraine’s grain.” According to Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly: “We need to make sure that these cereals are sent to the world. If not, millions of people will be facing famine.”

Sanctions and the Global Food Crisis

This G7 statement deliberately misrepresented the present global food crisis. Instead of attempting to solve this crisis, the U.S. and the rest of the G7 used this opportunity to further their propaganda on the Ukraine war.

Certainly, Ukraine’s export restrictions make the global food problem worse. But it is not the main cause of the deteriorating situation. A much more powerful cause is Western sanctions imposed on Russia’s exports.

The first reason for this is that Russia is a far bigger exporter of essential food items and other products in comparison to Ukraine. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter, accounting for almost three times as much of world exports as Ukraine, 18 percent compared to 7 percent.

Second, and even more important, is the situation with fertilizers. Russia is the world’s largest fertilizer exporter, and Belarus, which is also facing Western sanctions, is also a major supplier—together they account for more than 20 percent of the global supply. Fertilizer prices were already rising before the Ukraine war due to high fuel prices—fertilizer production relies heavily on natural gas—but sanctions by the West, which prevent Russia from exporting fertilizers, have made the situation worse.

David Laborde, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, pointed out that “the biggest threat the food system is facing is the disruption of the fertilizer trade.” This is because, he said: “Wheat will impact a few countries. The fertilizer issue can impact every farmer everywhere in the world, and cause declines in the production of all food, not just wheat.”

The threat to global fertilizer supply illustrates how energy products are an essential input into virtually all economic sectors. As Russia is one of the world’s largest exporters not only of food but also of energy, sanctions against the country have a knock-on inflationary effect across the entire world economy.

Response in the Global South

This world food supply situation worsened further after the G7 meeting when on May 14, India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, announced that it was halting wheat exports due to crop losses caused by an intense heat wave. Already in April Indonesia had announced that it was ending palm oil exports—Indonesia accounts for 60 percent of the world supply.

India’s halt of wheat exports will be a further severe blow to countries in the Global South, where its exports are mostly focused. In 2021-2022, India exported 7 million metric tons of wheat, primarily to Asian Global South countries such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Yemen, Nepal, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Bangladesh. But India had earlier set a target of expanding wheat exports to 10 million tons in 2022-2023, including supplying 3 million tons of wheat to Egypt for the first time.

Ending Sanctions to Prevent Worsening of the Food Crisis

The unfolding situation makes clear that António Guterres’ words were indeed accurate—the world food crisis cannot be solved without both Ukraine’s exports and Russia’s exports of food and fertilizer. Without the latter, humanity does indeed face a “catastrophe”—billions of people will have to lower their living standards, and hundreds of millions of people in the Global South will face great hardship like hunger or worse. Almost every Global South country rightly refused to support the unilateral U.S. sanctions against Russia. This refusal needs to be extended to the whole world to prevent further devastation.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

John Ross is a senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He is also a member of the international No Cold War campaign organizing committee. His writing on the Chinese and U.S. economies and geopolitics has been published widely online, and he is the author of two books published in China, Don’t Misunderstand China’s Economy and The Great Chess Game. His most recent book is China’s Great Road: Lessons for Marxist Theory and Socialist Practices (1804 Books, 2021). He was previously director of economic policy for the mayor of London.

APOLOGIST FOR CAPITALI$T CRISIS

The world’s food crisis: too late to avoid the hunger, but can we still avoid the famine?

Jamie Shea
#CriticalThinking
Climate, Energy & Sustainability

27 May 2022

Senior Fellow for Peace, Security and Defence at Friends of Europe and former Deputy Assistant Secretary General for emerging security challenges at NATO

A few weeks back, the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, gave his periodic tour d’horizon of challenges to the international system at a hearing of a House of Commons select committee. He zeroed in on the mounting global food crisis, describing it as potentially apocalyptic. This designation drew him a certain amount of rebuke from the UK press, accusing the Governor of exaggeration and doom-mongering. Yet in recent days the Governor’s warnings have been borne out by the statements of several other senior international figures, all warning of an impending food catastrophe.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, pointed to the toxic mix of rising food and energy prices, coupled with rising indebtedness that was already pushing 12 countries into economic collapse and political violence. Sri Lanka, which has run out of financial reserves to pay for its imports, is the most graphic example. Addressing the United Nations Security Council last week, the Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme, David Beasley, outlined the scope of the challenge. Currently, 1.6bn people are suffering from food stress, which means that they do not eat every day or fall short of the minimum daily calorie intake to maintain a healthy existence. This number has gone up by a staggering 440mn additional human beings over the last two years. An additional 49mn has been added to the 276mn facing famine in the same time frame, and 49mn people in 43 countries are on the brink of starvation. In East Africa, where prolonged drought has decimated agriculture and livestock, someone dies from starvation every 48 seconds.

Hunger has always been an issue somewhere on the planet at any one time. Why is the food crisis now reaching global proportions?

Before the war, Ukraine was exporting 5mn tonnes of grain every month, but this figure has now fallen to just 1.5mn tonnes

In the first place, the war in Ukraine has instigated a chain of consequences. The rich, black soils of Ukraine are famous for their productivity. Before Russia invaded, Ukraine’s exports of wheat and maize were supplying calories to 440mn people, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. Together with Russia, Ukraine’s grain exports make up 28% of the global total – or 12% of all traded calories. This figure rises to 80% for sunflower oil, which is used for cooking throughout Africa and the Middle East. Russia and Ukraine are the principal grain exporters to 50 countries.

Before the war, Ukraine was exporting 5mn tonnes of grain every month, but this figure has now fallen to just 1.5mn tonnes. Ukraine’s storage silos contain 25mn tonnes of wheat and maize; however, Ukraine cannot export this grain as Russia is blockading its Black Sea ports. Vital port infrastructure and road and rail links have been damaged by Russian bombardments. Ukraine has also mined its harbours to defend against Russian amphibious landings. After some commercial vessels were hit by mines, and reports surfaced that mines were floating freely in the Black Sea, international shipowners were reluctant to send their vessels into the Black Sea to collect grain even if the principal port for exports, Odessa, remains in Ukrainian hands.

Yet the problem extends further. The Russian forces are reported to be confiscating grain stocks in areas under their control or destroying crops altogether. Tractors and farm equipment have been carted off to Chechnya, according to some reports, and many farms have been destroyed or damaged. With farmers and farm hands leaving to join the armed forces, the spring planting season is being disrupted and Ukraine’s harvest will inevitably be smaller than in previous years. According to Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry, the shortfall could be anything between 30% and 50%.

Russia’s food exports are not subject to international sanctions and Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat. Yet, sanctions on shipping, difficulties to obtain insurance, financing restrictions and sanctions on certain imports, as well as Turkey’s restrictions on passage through the Black Sea straights, are making it harder for Russia to get its grain to its traditional markets. Russia needs to import seeds and fertiliser too. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused Russia of ‘weaponising’ grain in its war against Ukraine in an attempt to blame the food crisis on the international sanctions rather than on Russia’s military actions.

As a result, developing countries can quickly become trapped in a vicious cycle of rising prices, shortages and social unrest

Yet it is often the case that a crisis is caused not by one single event or factor but by the interplay of several factors, all coming together at precisely the worst moment. This seems to be the case with food supplies.

Shutdowns caused by the two-year COVID-19 pandemic have led to disruptions to trade, supply chains and market mechanisms. Developing countries that import most of their food have seen their foreign currency reserves slashed by the collapse in tourism and rapidly rising energy prices. Farmers can no longer afford fertilisers and nitrates made from gas and oil or pesticides. Domestic production has gone down at precisely the moment when grain prices on international markets are shooting up. Some developing countries can switch to rice but where the staple diet is bread, as it is the case in Egypt, the world’s largest grain importer, governments come under pressure to increase subsidies to stave off social unrest.

Yet this role of governments to buy food for their populations through subsidies is being undercut by rapidly depreciating currencies and financial reserves in places such as Egypt and Turkey. Egypt saw its hard currency reserves drop by 10% to just $37bn from February to March alone and the Egyptian pound depreciated by 14%. The response is to raise interest rates, but this makes it harder for farmers to access credit and increase production. As a result, developing countries can quickly become trapped in a vicious cycle of rising prices, shortages and social unrest. The World Bank estimates that the war in Ukraine will knock 1% off the GDP of the poorer countries this year.

Europe is also facing too little rain at just the moment when dryness could have the biggest negative impact on wheat production

Climate change is also now having a major and global impact on food production. Back in February, India promised to feed the world, but it then experienced its hottest March on record and worried that a poor harvest would compromise its ability to feed its own population. So Delhi announced a ban on grain exports. In total, no fewer than 26 countries have announced similar bans or restrictions on exports too as they revise their production estimates sharply downwards; this equates to 15% of the annual global consumption of calories. Extremely hot summers are now impacting many of the world’s breadbaskets. China has warned that after severe floods last year, its wheat crop could be one of the worst ever.

Due to severe drought experienced throughout the grain belt in the US, 40% of this year’s wheat has been deemed of poor quality, twice the average of 20%. Overall, production of winter wheat will be down by 21% this year compared to 2021, according to estimates. Europe is also facing too little rain at just the moment when dryness could have the biggest negative impact on wheat production. Climate change affects the pattern of the seasons and traditional planting, irrigation and harvesting times. Farmers are still working out how to adapt their production cycles and techniques to minimise disruptions, but as we have seen this year in Europe, earlier seeding can be undermined by a couple of late and unusually harsh early spring frosts. The problem is here to stay. The UK’s Met Office says that heatwaves are now 100 times more likely than a century ago, and gulf stream patterns provoked by El Niño and La Niña are interacting in less predictable ways. In a tightening grain market, an extreme weather event somewhere can tip the supply crisis over the edge.

So, what needs to be done to get a grip on the food crisis now before we face not only a humanitarian catastrophe but widespread political and economic dislocation across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America?

This is the ideal time for Beijing to win some much-needed international goodwill and demonstrate its capacity for global leadership by releasing at least 50mn tonnes of its stocks onto global markets

Firstly, grain currently lying in silos should be exported to market. Ukraine is the place to begin. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, is trying to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv to get commercial shipping in the Black Sea moving again. Humanitarian shipping corridors have been proposed. Lithuania has suggested a convoy system whereby Western warships, although not under a NATO flag, would escort grain vessels from Odessa to the Mediterranean. This would help them avoid mines and prompt Russia to desist from hostile military activities or interference, such as inspections or delay manoeuvres.

It is far from certain that Putin will be minded to accept such an arrangement that would boost the Ukrainian economy as much as relieve world hunger; but the pressure is mounting on him and a refusal to cooperate at all might lose him some support from the fence sitters in India, South Africa, Brazil, the Gulf states, and some African and Latin America states. Much of the Ukrainian grain goes to countries like Egypt that Russia is trying to cultivate. The EU needs to try other routes too, like using the Danube where grain barges are lying idle or allowing more Ukrainian trucks filled with grain onto EU highways without the quota limits or complex and time-consuming sanitary inspections or customs duties and paperwork that hold up the traffic at EU borders. These will not be perfect solutions but they will be better than nothing.

Another way forward is to try to get normal market mechanisms back up and running. Four-fifths of the global population live in countries that need to import food. That food has often to cross at least one international border to reach its destination. So, bodies like the G7 and the G20, as well as the financing institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the regional banks, need to prevail on the grain hoarders to uphold export contracts and release grain onto markets. It is encouraging that India has had a small change of heart by shipping half a million tonnes to Egypt. China is the world’s largest grain hoarder, and this is the ideal time for Beijing to win some much-needed international goodwill and demonstrate its capacity for global leadership by releasing at least 50mn tonnes of its stocks onto global markets, notwithstanding its own domestic needs after the floods.

Debt forgiveness for the most impacted countries will no doubt need to be part of the policy mix too, along with some painful IMF-driven restructuring programmes. The debt forgiven can be converted into immediate food aid and food purchases on credit, along with long-term reforms of subsidies and the agriculture sector. It is important in this respect that UN appeals for donations be used for immediate famine relief in the most severely stricken areas, such as East Africa, Ethiopia’s Tigray province and Afghanistan.

13% of all grain production is used to feed livestock, such as cattle or pigs, so switching to a plant-based diet and giving up meat is certainly a good way of eating to avoid hunger for the human race and not merely individual consumers

Finally, we will need to take a serious look at substitutions for grain used for things other than human consumption, notably animal feed and biofuels. In 2021, China imported a staggering 28mn tonnes of grain just to feed its pigs. The UN estimates that 13% of all grain production is used to feed livestock, such as cattle or pigs, so switching to a plant-based diet and giving up meat is certainly a good way of eating to avoid hunger for the human race and not merely individual consumers. A further 10% of grain production goes on biofuels. The UN further estimates that if all the grain devoted to feeding livestock and producing biofuels were redirected to human consumption, 1.9bn people could be fed. Some countries have laws mandating a certain volume of biofuel production as part of the greening of their economies.

There are difficult choices and trade-offs to be made here between competing priorities. Avoiding global famine and saving lives must come first over food diversity and lifestyle choices, and we will need to find other green fuels if biofuels become too costly or consequential. In the EU, Finland and Croatia have already relaxed national mandates on biofuel production to spare grain, and that is an example that other EU countries should be encouraged to follow.

No more than most other global catastrophes, the impending famine crisis is not inevitable. Food production has been going up overall due to better seeds, water use, genetic engineering for greater resilience and the application of science and technology to crop yields. There is enough food to feed the planet, notwithstanding the recent shocks from extreme weather events and conflicts. Yet, as so often happens, the food is with the haves rather than the have-nots, and food retailers and processing companies in many parts of the world have been making healthy profits during COVID-19 related lockdowns while many regions start to go hungry. The task now is to move the food to where it is most urgently needed – and there is not a day to be lost.

200 Members of Congress Voted Against Baby Formula. That’s An Outrage.

BY TIFFANYANN GOODSON

COUNTERPUNCH

 MAY 27, 2022
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My 8-month-old daughter, Jayde, was born with a growth restriction. She weighs just 13 pounds — no more than a 3-month-old. She sees a pediatric nutritionist and eats a specialized formula that provides 30 calories per ounce in hopes of getting her on the elusive growth curve.

Jayde was crawling steadily towards this goal — until all of a sudden, we couldn’t find her formula anywhere. We spent hours scouring the internet, social media, and stores. As the national shortage took hold, none could be found.

When I was on my last can of formula and crying in the empty aisles of the grocery store, I desperately posted online about Jayde’s needs. I’m fortunate that my network of friends, family, and colleagues were compassionate and responsive to my pleas.

A colleague in Dallas saw my post and began searching her area for Jayde’s formula. Twenty-eight miles away from her home and hundreds away from mine in Maryland, she found two cans of formula and sent them to me.

What a relief! But two cans will last us no more than two weeks. Then what?

I wanted answers to that question and to many others. Through a local chapter of Mocha Moms, an organization I belong to, I was invited to a White House summit on the baby formula crisis. I wanted to know why the Defense Production Act hadn’t been activated sooner.

I wanted to know why anti-trust regulations hadn’t prevented a virtual monopoly that puts nearly 90 percent of infant formula production in the hands of just four corporations.

I wanted to know why the formula maker Abbott Industries was allowed to prioritize stock buybacks over safety protocols so that their products became contaminated, causing the shortage.

I wanted to know how families like mine would keep their babies alive and healthy. The answers were few.

Fortunately, the Defense Production Act is now engaged, with the Biden administration directing firms to prioritize getting key ingredients to baby formula producers. Some formula is coming in from overseas. Congress has also expanded the Women Infant and Children’s program (WIC) to cover more formula brands.

But with the global supply chain still kinked up, these measures will only go so far. Unfortunately, some of our elected officials are standing in the way of help.

The House of Representatives just passed a bill to create a $28 million emergency fund to assist the FDA in increasing formula capacity. Stunningly, nearly 200 House Republicans voted against it — and Senate Republicans have signaled they may block it.

Voting against baby formula? This is an outrage. These lawmakers say they’re pro-life. To truly be pro-life, we must be concerned with feeding innocent children and helping struggling families.

My family has some privilege  — we have full-time jobs, reliable child care, and a supportive network. In spite of all those advantages, we have just two weeks of food for our baby. My heart aches for families with far fewer resources.

This is part of a broader, systemic problem of our policymakers underinvesting in families. The proposed Build Back Better Act would have provided much more support for families with kids, but 50 Senate Republicans, plus Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, dumped that like it was spoiled milk.

This crisis — which has literally taken food from the mouth of my baby — has awakened a passion in me. It’s made me realize that we can’t be silent anymore. We must call out these lawmakers who won’t stand up for families — and tell them we’ll find new ones if they don’t.

TiffanyAnn Goodson is a first time working mother, a member of Mocha Moms, and a staunch advocate for the issues impacting families everywhere.

Cancel Student Loan Debt; Bail Out Regular People

BY ROBERT ALVAREZ

COUNTERPUNCH

 MAY 27, 2022
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I borrowed money to pay for college. Like 45 million other Americans who did the same, I owe student loan debt.

My generation was sold a pipe dream about what a degree could mean for our future. I wanted so badly for this dream to come true that I leapt at the opportunity to take out loans.

What I didn’t know then was just how much the cost of higher education was soaring — and that colleges were hiking prices to take advantage of the federal government’s willingness to help poor and low-income students like me cover tuition.

I remember talking to my college counselor about how she paid $240 a year to attend one of the best universities in my home state. Since my counselor attended college, inflation has risen 645 percent. Meanwhile, tuition at the college she attended has risen 11,820 percent.

If you ask earlier generations how they paid for college, they say things like “I worked a part-time job after school.” Yeah, I did that, too. You know what that money went toward? Rent, gas, and bills. My McDonald’s job was barely enough to keep me afloat, let alone pay for my tuition and other expenses.

It was either take out student loans or drop out of college. I chose not to drop out.

I graduated and eventually got a job in my field. But with the rising cost of housing and everything else, that loan debt, which is already inflated by skyrocketing college costs, now feels suffocating. It prevents me from qualifying for a good mortgage loan and makes me second guess whether I can afford to have children.

My loan is just a tiny fraction of the national student loan debt. The $1.7 trillion student loan borrowers owe is a massive policy problem affecting everything from housing to the job market to retirement savings and so much more.

That’s why there’s a growing movement calling on the federal government to cancel some or all of this debt.

If the federal government canceled $50,000 worth of student loans, it would give 36 million borrowers a new lease on life. It could enable them to buy a house, start a family, or open a business.

I know it sounds like a radical idea to cancel up to $50,000 worth of student loan debt. It’s not.

If you’ll remember, former president Donald Trump and the Republican Party passed a $1.9 trillion, high-end tax cut in 2017 that’s been called “socialism for the rich.” It led to billionaires paying a lower average tax rate than the working class for the first time in U.S. history, and is directly responsible for corporate tax revenues plunging to near record lows.

That sounds a lot more radical to me than helping regular people. Even writing off every penny of student debt would cost less than Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

President Biden has expressed interest in forgiving some student loan debt, although he’s indicated he may not cancel more than $10,000.

I’d welcome any amount being knocked off my loan. But I fear if Biden cancels only $10,000, he would fumble an enormous opportunity to improve millions of lives and give the economy a desperately needed shot in the arm.

The precedent is there. The U.S. has a long history of economic bailouts dating back to 1792.

The benefits are there. Studies show forgiving student loan debt would create jobs, grow the economy, and have the added benefits of helping to narrow the racial and gender wealth gaps.

And, importantly, student debt forgiveness has broad public support, including among people without a college degree and without student loan debt, as well as young people.

It’s time for the federal government to bail the people out. It’s time to cancel student loans.