My distinguished colleague and buddy Melvin Goodman has had some terrific items up at Counterpunch not too long ago, together with nice, searing critiques of Pres. Biden’s rehabilitation of Eliott Abrams, and of David Ignatius’s newest piece of compacent lunacy concerning Ukraine and Russia.
So think about my shock once I learn Goodman’s newest piece there, through which he proposed that, “Implementing a grain airlift for Ukraine could be the apparent technique to have fun the seventy fifth anniversary yr of the Berlin Airlift, which was carried out from June 1948 to September 1949.”
This is able to be to cope with the worldwide “disaster” of meals availability/costs spurred by Russia’s choice to not regain the Black Sea grain association that was reached final yr beneath the joint auspices of the UN and the Authorities of Turkey. This disaster has, as you’ve got most likely seen, been a lot hyped by the Western company media.
Goodman appears to be urging in his piece that the U.S. navy lead the airlift effort he proposes. He writes,
[T]right here is not any query that the US has the moxie and the airlift functionality to conduct such an operation…. The U.S. Air Pressure has greater than 200 C-17s for such an airlift in addition to three varieties of air refueling plane (KC-135 Stratotankers, Ok-10 Extenders, and KC-46 Pegasus).
This proposal strikes me as fairly batty and (have been it to be be applied, which I dearly hope it by no means is) very significantly escalatory.
Goodman, by the way in which, shouldn’t be the one particular person presently proposing forceful, unilateral (or anyway, non-UN-authorized) U.S. motion to assist Ukraine export its grain. The reliably hawkish retired U.S. admiral James Stavridis can also be proposing that “NATO convoys can defend Ukraine’s grain.”
So right here, simply shortly, are my objections:
First, and most necessary, is that truly, international wheat costs have not too long ago been significantly decrease than they have been final yr. (See e.g. this.) So that they’ve gone up a bit after the Black Sea Grain deal collapsed? Not the tip of the world…
After all the craven company media on this nation desires to make it seem that Russia’s assaults on Odessa and so on are harming the World South. However that’s not precisely the case and I don’t hear any leaders within the World South shopping for that argument… Certainly, all essentially the most influential ones are in South Africa proper now, planning for the large BRICS summit on account of be held there in a month’s time– at which Russia’s International Minister Lavros will probably be an apparently valued participant.
Second, the idea of a Berlin-style airlift is after all not almost so simple as it sounds. It could contain the airlifting planes flying into Ukraine and touchdown at airports there to load up their cargoes. Zero civilian planes are flying into Ukrainian airspace as of late for the superb motive that the Russian air drive workouts broad management over almost all of it. So now, Goodman proposes that convoys of U.S. navy planes fly in.
World Conflict 3 alert, folks! That’s fairly a bit completely different than simply demonstrating Goodman’s “moxie”.
(The Berlin airlift, which concerned having U.S. and British navy planes fly briefly into Berlin to speedily dump the humanitarian cargoes they have been taking in, have been a deliberate and understanding problem to the Soviet navy’s management of the airspace of East German, in the course of which sat beleaguered West Berlin. It concerned clear dangers. However within the chaos of these early post-1945 years, these have been dangers that London and Washington judged price taking. Fwiw, the Soviet Union didn’t show its acquisition of nuclear weapons functionality till a yr later.)
Third, the Black Sea Grain deal had at the very least three necessary elements: (a) The Ukrainians acquired to export their grain beneath worldwide supervision, and beneath an association that concerned having Ukrainian pilots information the ships by means of the Ukrainian minefields close to their ports after which Russian pilots information them by means of the Russian minefields additional out. (b) There was rigorous and trusted worldwide inspection (by Türkiye and the UN) of cargoes going each out and in of Ukrainian ports. As a result of you realize, Ukraine might need been bringing arms and so on in on those self same boats. Gasp! (c) In return for its participation, Russia acquired assurances that the monetary sanctions and different impediments imposed by Western nations on its exports of grains and different agricultural exports could be lifted.
When renewal time got here up, the Russians acknowledged that the third of these situations was not realized/revered. Therefore, no renewal.
So at this time, with a US/Western “airlift” of grains out of Ukraine, what physique, trusted by each side would do the inspecting of planes going into Ukraine to choose up the shipments? Simply price asking!
Lastly: all of the monetary and large environmental prices of utilizing air transport to move grain?? These would get borne by whom? And to make what level?
(Possibly the East Europeans might be pushed to do a bit extra to assist Ukrainian grain exports– one thing they’ve till now been very reluctant to do?)
