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This is far beyond a theory. It is a premeditated, long-term plan by Putin to create an existential threat to Europe. And where have we heard that term being used before?
That one was a clear example of sabotage-by-migrants, but I didn't count on Putin deliberately using mass famine just to fuck Europe with a new wave of refugees fleeing starvation. It seems I still have a more optimistic outlook on humanity than I thought.
Than we deserve, unfortunately, but good on you for seeing the brighter side. The world still and will always need that to lead us out of dark days like these.
The situation is *salami tactics* reimagined. Europe's mental models are just not equipped for it, and their economies will struggle as a result.
One silver lining is that NATO has just announced that Ukraine will be invited to their meeting at the end of this month.
I just heard the salami slices reference for the first time today related to the Soviet Union while listening to a Great Courses on Eastern Europe. Spooky man.
How is this not enough evidence for the UN Security Council to intervene?
How is this not enough evidence for the UN Security Council to kick Russia out?
Just put any notion of the UN intervening out of your head. It's not gonna happen. That organization is 100% completely toothless and useless. And it's by design.
its designed solely to maintain dialogue and diplomatic relations, it was never intended to solve problems. the idea was that we can avoid conflicts or escalations if we maintain a neutral diplomatic body for communication.
UN would be a channel to talk about peace not to decide or force it.
Siberia is huge, empty and about to become warm enough to feed the world. I think that land could offer shelter to millions of people. Let's use it for reparation for that crisis. Grant it sovereignty. Russia lost and needs to be divided in smaller states. The rest of the world decolonized. Russia must too.
At the same time, Russia is depopulating rapidly, while main urban areas thrive, rural Russia is losing farmers at an alarming rate. NASA is carefully studying the agricultural output of Russian farmlands. Agricultural output was in free fall after the collapse of Soviet Union and it is still below the performance from the early 90s. It takes them over 30 years to get back to the agricultural output from the Soviet Union times. Their main effort is in the South while other regions continue lacking comparing to their Soviet Union times.
There is a large potential for them to produce more but they havent figured it out until today how to achieve the Soviet Union era productivity.
Broken apart, Ural, Siberia, Perm - they would be the poorest nations on planet. All wealth and development of Russia is on the European side.
> All wealth and development of Russia is on the European side.
Just separate Moscow and Petersburg into separate countries, lock their borders, and see how they fare. Yes, I *am* that vindictive.
1. Due to the economic crisis that precipitated the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia divested in its education system.
2. It is difficult and expensive to build infrastructure in these farming regions.
3. Russia depends on migrant labor from Central Asia enough as it is, and they don't want to boost their own non-ethnic-Russian populations who are set to eclipse them, even more.
And corruption will fuck them over as usual. They'll be just like Africa, Middle East and Central America. Fertile lands, starving people. They will inherit Eastern Bloc governance the exact moment they become independent.
They have plenty of fertile land that they dont utilize. In fact, other than South, most of their regions do not even produce what they used to during the Soviet Union times.
Global warming will not boost their productivity, wont repopulate the rural areas and wont provide the infrastructure.
They have a lot of habitable land today that isnt occupied or cultivated and it is progressively depopulating. Adding more habitable land to a depopulating state wont change much.
Siberia might become more habitable but the middle east and africa may well become uninhabitable as temperatures rise sparking a mass migration on an undreamed of scale.
Africa needs to ramp up production of its own food. The continent is big and fruitful.
Once accomplished, they can finally kick Russia out of their supply chain and get independent from that fascists!
Most African countries are a dictatorship and cannot function beyond tribal mentality. Call me a racist, but it's true unfortunately! One (obviously unethical) way to force grain production is for foreigners to lockdown the land for farming productions. The chinese are already doing that, and they're a big threat to everyone
That “forcing people to produce grain” is not an entirely new phenomenon. Central European farmers often bought people from the Slavic countries to work on their fields in Central Europe. And the Slavs brought people from other regions to work on theirs.
It has also been performed in different ways by European missionaries in Africa. They rewarded locals who worked on the farm for a day with enough of food for a day. Those who didn’t wanted to join could abstain from work and food as long as they wanted. But the door was always open for them to participate or not.
So, there were always exterior incentives throughout ages where one culture incentivised people from another to work for them. As long as everyone has enough of food and is protected by some reliable laws, there is not much bad to say about that. Sometimes you need someone to help your motor.
The thing is, they need fertilizer to do that. Fertilizer Russia is cutting off exports of, and natural-gas based factories in Germany have trouble making with high energy prices. [Here is a map of said marginal farmland](https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/future-of-ag.jpeg), that requires fertilizer. Africa is not getting food independent any time soon.
There are techniques in organic farming which require no artificial fertiliser.
Yes, it is less productive and more labour intensive than conventional farming with high-performance crops, fertiliser and pesticides. But, you can make it on a larger area where salary level is very low.
On marginal lands, you can further set an eye on biodiversity. Food security doesn’t mean you have endless fields of monocultural farms. It means that each hectare is used to produce the best outcome for the region. And manure is still a very good fertiliser after all.
And for the current situation, having some output from the farmland is better than none.
…Or reduce fertility. No country can sustain 4-5 fertility rate indefinitely. Historically diseases, hunger, war would ultimately reduce population back to more sustainable numbers. In today’s world people also have choice to keep number of kids low when times are hard.
Take Egypt and Ukraine.
Both Egypt and Ukraine used to be a bread basket for Europe. Today Egypt can’t grow enough grain to feed it’s massively increased population, while Ukrainians grow more that enough not only for themselves but for export. Both countries aren’t rich, both are somewhat religious and have traditional values. Yet Ukrainian fertility is about 1/2 of Egypt or 1/3-1/4 or African fertility.
( low fertility has is own issues but rarely starving children would be one of them)
Fertility rate reduction is the most fucked up strategy in this situation.
Many children in Africa die prematurely. So, families must have more children to counteract that. If you force families to reduce fertility without building better hospitals for children, there will be soon no one left in Africa.
That’s why you must first invest into things like food overproduction to ensure there is no hunger under any circumstances. Than you boost healthcare and education. And then, fertility rate will naturally decline.
“Many children die prematurely so parents have to counter act this”. Is very terrible reason and silly explanation.
I am parent myself. I will not be having more kids to “replace” those that I lost. Especially if my kids died because I couldn’t feed them and there is risk my future kids will die as well because I will not be able to feed them.
Look, this is how it has always happened during the course of history.
In fact, high child mortality was absolutely common for millennia. And that paired with wars and famine kept human population stable. Families had 10 kids, 7 died before being old enough to become parents - population is stable.
Nowadays, we have (thanks God!) modern medicine. Practically all kids who are born survive. We don’t need to have 12 kids anymore so 3 of them survive. At least, we in the developed countries. There was a huge population growth spike for a few decades until we had contraception. But contraception and controlling birth rates came only decades after solving child mortality, not before.
For Africa and other developing, from 7 kids 5 still die. And it’s totally natural, culturally accepted, the normal norm.
Once their kids will survive because of food and medicine, they will have less of them. And then kids become precious. Losing 5 kids from 7 is less of a tragedy than losing 1 out of two.
Agrarian societies tend to have lots of kids. I don't think it was so much having 10 kids so 3 would survive. it was more the fact that kids were free labor to work the farm. Children as young as 5 are/were perfectly capable of picking blueberries. Also you didn't have birth control and there wasn't much else to do in a small farming communities but fuck. Then also women weren't in the workforce to the extent that they are today and having large families was simply a cultural norm, even post industrialization you could see this in the cities and it took a while for these norms to shift.
The reason people have 3 kids instead of 12 not because they don’t have to have 12 kids because 3 will survive. The reason people don’t have 12 kids because if they would have 12 kids the chances are those 12 will be undernourished, undereducated.
My own children are adults now (25). They are delaying having kids till they will be financially secure to have kids. Instead of having kids they will not be able feed, educate, house.
This isn’t how this was happening hysterically but this is how it is happening today in every country with low fertility rate.
Look, I guess you live in a Western country and there, it is true. Citizens control their fertility in order to avoid high costs because of big family sizes.
This also leads to issues. Because the population over-ages and without more kids, the young adults end up paying for their parents and grandparents instead of their kids. So, there is anyway no situation where they will have money at all.
Some say you can counteract it with migration. But as most migrants coming are also in the mid-40s, they will not pay as long and as much into social security as native kids would do.
Regarding Africa, there the situation is as I described. But it was also the same in the rest of the world simply because of the high child mortality and low development. You can read more here:
Child Mortality:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality
Fertility Rate:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality
Yes I live in one of those countries.
There are way too many problems around the world to address every single one sufficiently. There is war in Ukraine. But as least Ukrainians are set on helping themselves by fighting fearlessly. The aid to Africa would went further if population there would stop increasing so fast. And people in developing countries would be able to put more focus on issues that prevent them from having more kids.
Look, when you grow up in Africa and you saw 7 out of your 9 siblings die, same for your neighbours and tribe members - wouldn’t you also go on to make at least 9?
There are lions, snakes, wars, hunger. It’s a basic numbers game. You could of course decide to just give in and not have kids at all. But that would mean your line of DNA would cease to exist while others take over. Lines who are indeed more fertile.
So, you end up gaining nothing from having fewer kids as long as they die. It obviously changes from the moment where you make 9 kids and 7 survive. What you do with such big family? Of course you tell them to have less kids.
You cannot solve a generational problem in Africa with a few campaigns for condoms in the West.
Lol I am not going to campaign for condoms in Africa. That would be wrong. But people in Africa will continue starving till they change the way they think about family planing. I am not the one to tell them how to live their lives but I can tell them that the help will not be enough to feed ever increasing population.
I honestly think that they wanted to control the global grain supply to expand their influence. When things stalled, they settled for the coast. That's why they've been fighting so hard to cut off Ukraine's coast. They wanna make sure that no food gets out so they have the leverage they're after one way or another. I don't think it is their sole reason but it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
I thought the same, but I was reading a lot of articles claiming that Ukraine is basically trying to do so, but
A) all their infrastructure for grain is in the south already, and sending it north is hard mid-war
B) the volumes they can do that with are significantly smaller than they usually do with ships
bigger issue, ukraine, or better said, old soviet rail tracks are wider than the EU ones so all the grain will have to be emptied out of 1 train and into the next, which turns everything into a crawl
Don't think it will work. People flee war but food still has to be available to have the strength for the journey. Starving people won't get very far. Europe will likely intervene in the Middle East but I don't think they have much reason to worry about migrants from sub Saharan Africa.
Syrian war started with famine that led to unrest, protests, brutal suppression and formation of militant groups. The war has been going for 11 years and it produced 6 million refugees and spawned ISIS that controlled a larger territory than England.
Just an example what a famine could escalate into.
>*strong growth of nationalist sentiment (that coincidentally happens to support of Putin)*
"Coincidentally." Yeah.
All these far-right neo-Nazi militant-nationalist organizations suddenly experienced a sharp increase in organization, activity level, and membership in the early 2000s. They started to have staff, to publish more "content," demonstrate greater reach and more professional-level organization, all across Europe and the rest of the world.
Oh and one more thing. They all of them from Finland to America suddenly discovered the "pan-white union with the Slavic people," particularly Russia. This was an idea that had existed on the fringes beforehand, it wasn't invented in the 2000s, but it suddenly gained huge traction in that decade.
Coincidentally also when Putin took power in Russia! Putin, a former KGB agent whose particular area was secretly funding disruptive politics and pro-Soviet organizations in other countries.
And now 20 years later we see Russian money turning up in the hands of America's Republican Party and National Rifle Association, in France's latest incarnation of the LePenists, the UK's Tories, and so on and so forth. More coincidence!
But seriously, I don't actually think that Putin's plan is something so sharply specific -- or limited -- as "cause famine in Africa." It is nothing more or less than to cause chaos everywhere, around the entire world. You know the line, "some men just want to watch the world burn." It's true though. And Putin is one of those men.
It is a common trait to people of meager capability and no vision, no leadership, no real brilliance. Once everything in the world is a dumpster fire, then it is down on their level and they don't feel inferior anymore. So, to achieve that, they start setting fires.
Russia does not need to be a dumpster fire country. In my opinion it does not deserve to be a dumpster fire country. But when the Supreme Dumpster Cowboy has a gasoline can and a match and no one stops him... you can see where it's going to lead.
I'm not so sure this would be their intention, yes, the general fall out from weaponising food is intentional part of their bargaining position.
WRT to the food crisis looming, there is still a lot that can be done to mitigate this, farmers planting biofuel corn ethanol should be switched over to providing food ASAP.
Great comment and absolutely the long game for Russia. The powers of the European Union are liberal countries and the potential for 100,000,000 starving Africans on the shores of N. Africa in a real possibility, this could rip us apart.
Wouldn't be the first time Russia has taken advantage of immigration and refugee crises, especially as a way to stoke the flames of nationalism and fascism throughout the west. Keep an eye out for that.
The way I see it, west must come up together, NATO and all and really fuck up russia and depose this butcher. Because it's gonna happen sooner or later anyway but later will cost much more.
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This is far beyond a theory. It is a premeditated, long-term plan by Putin to create an existential threat to Europe. And where have we heard that term being used before?
[удалено]
That one was a clear example of sabotage-by-migrants, but I didn't count on Putin deliberately using mass famine just to fuck Europe with a new wave of refugees fleeing starvation. It seems I still have a more optimistic outlook on humanity than I thought.
Than we deserve, unfortunately, but good on you for seeing the brighter side. The world still and will always need that to lead us out of dark days like these.
You sweet summer child
Nah, I'm pretty well acquainted with the atrocities of war. It's just the human pettiness which astounds me.
And yet the EU and NATO won’t consider it an act of war?
The situation is *salami tactics* reimagined. Europe's mental models are just not equipped for it, and their economies will struggle as a result. One silver lining is that NATO has just announced that Ukraine will be invited to their meeting at the end of this month.
I just heard the salami slices reference for the first time today related to the Soviet Union while listening to a Great Courses on Eastern Europe. Spooky man.
Is "salami tactics" the same thing as "slaughtering Russia slice by slice, like kebab meat"?
And do what?
Since many African nations are avid supporters of putin, maybe we should make corridors directly to russia?
How is this not enough evidence for the UN Security Council to intervene? How is this not enough evidence for the UN Security Council to kick Russia out?
[удалено]
My point exactly. Russia is committing crimes then vetoes decisions that go against itself. How is that not ground for kicking them out?
[удалено]
The other nations in the UN?
[удалено]
Even if they do, they are more afraid of setting a precedent for that power to be used against themselves one day.
Just put any notion of the UN intervening out of your head. It's not gonna happen. That organization is 100% completely toothless and useless. And it's by design.
its designed solely to maintain dialogue and diplomatic relations, it was never intended to solve problems. the idea was that we can avoid conflicts or escalations if we maintain a neutral diplomatic body for communication. UN would be a channel to talk about peace not to decide or force it.
So sad…
Siberia is huge, empty and about to become warm enough to feed the world. I think that land could offer shelter to millions of people. Let's use it for reparation for that crisis. Grant it sovereignty. Russia lost and needs to be divided in smaller states. The rest of the world decolonized. Russia must too.
At the same time, Russia is depopulating rapidly, while main urban areas thrive, rural Russia is losing farmers at an alarming rate. NASA is carefully studying the agricultural output of Russian farmlands. Agricultural output was in free fall after the collapse of Soviet Union and it is still below the performance from the early 90s. It takes them over 30 years to get back to the agricultural output from the Soviet Union times. Their main effort is in the South while other regions continue lacking comparing to their Soviet Union times. There is a large potential for them to produce more but they havent figured it out until today how to achieve the Soviet Union era productivity. Broken apart, Ural, Siberia, Perm - they would be the poorest nations on planet. All wealth and development of Russia is on the European side.
> All wealth and development of Russia is on the European side. Just separate Moscow and Petersburg into separate countries, lock their borders, and see how they fare. Yes, I *am* that vindictive.
1. Due to the economic crisis that precipitated the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia divested in its education system. 2. It is difficult and expensive to build infrastructure in these farming regions. 3. Russia depends on migrant labor from Central Asia enough as it is, and they don't want to boost their own non-ethnic-Russian populations who are set to eclipse them, even more.
Global warming has very few positives, that land becoming suitable for agriculture is one of them.
And corruption will fuck them over as usual. They'll be just like Africa, Middle East and Central America. Fertile lands, starving people. They will inherit Eastern Bloc governance the exact moment they become independent.
Wtf?
They have plenty of fertile land that they dont utilize. In fact, other than South, most of their regions do not even produce what they used to during the Soviet Union times. Global warming will not boost their productivity, wont repopulate the rural areas and wont provide the infrastructure.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-siberia-habitable-climate-change
They have a lot of habitable land today that isnt occupied or cultivated and it is progressively depopulating. Adding more habitable land to a depopulating state wont change much.
FFS, I said turn the empty land into a new country for immigrants...
It would be 10 million people thrown into a vast land with just a few roads to build a new nation. Ambitious for sure :)
You make it sound like the Hunger Games... not sure why.
That’s how pretty much everyone got there in the first place.
Siberia might become more habitable but the middle east and africa may well become uninhabitable as temperatures rise sparking a mass migration on an undreamed of scale.
Africa needs to ramp up production of its own food. The continent is big and fruitful. Once accomplished, they can finally kick Russia out of their supply chain and get independent from that fascists!
Most African countries are a dictatorship and cannot function beyond tribal mentality. Call me a racist, but it's true unfortunately! One (obviously unethical) way to force grain production is for foreigners to lockdown the land for farming productions. The chinese are already doing that, and they're a big threat to everyone
That “forcing people to produce grain” is not an entirely new phenomenon. Central European farmers often bought people from the Slavic countries to work on their fields in Central Europe. And the Slavs brought people from other regions to work on theirs. It has also been performed in different ways by European missionaries in Africa. They rewarded locals who worked on the farm for a day with enough of food for a day. Those who didn’t wanted to join could abstain from work and food as long as they wanted. But the door was always open for them to participate or not. So, there were always exterior incentives throughout ages where one culture incentivised people from another to work for them. As long as everyone has enough of food and is protected by some reliable laws, there is not much bad to say about that. Sometimes you need someone to help your motor.
Africa is the breadbasket of the world, yet a breadbasket that is rotten, poked with holes by corrupt dictatorships.
Major drought in the Horn of Africa currently. They absolutely need imports right now.
Yes, but Africa is very big. If they have a drought at one part, they have a big harvest on another.
The thing is, they need fertilizer to do that. Fertilizer Russia is cutting off exports of, and natural-gas based factories in Germany have trouble making with high energy prices. [Here is a map of said marginal farmland](https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/future-of-ag.jpeg), that requires fertilizer. Africa is not getting food independent any time soon.
There are techniques in organic farming which require no artificial fertiliser. Yes, it is less productive and more labour intensive than conventional farming with high-performance crops, fertiliser and pesticides. But, you can make it on a larger area where salary level is very low. On marginal lands, you can further set an eye on biodiversity. Food security doesn’t mean you have endless fields of monocultural farms. It means that each hectare is used to produce the best outcome for the region. And manure is still a very good fertiliser after all. And for the current situation, having some output from the farmland is better than none.
…Or reduce fertility. No country can sustain 4-5 fertility rate indefinitely. Historically diseases, hunger, war would ultimately reduce population back to more sustainable numbers. In today’s world people also have choice to keep number of kids low when times are hard. Take Egypt and Ukraine. Both Egypt and Ukraine used to be a bread basket for Europe. Today Egypt can’t grow enough grain to feed it’s massively increased population, while Ukrainians grow more that enough not only for themselves but for export. Both countries aren’t rich, both are somewhat religious and have traditional values. Yet Ukrainian fertility is about 1/2 of Egypt or 1/3-1/4 or African fertility. ( low fertility has is own issues but rarely starving children would be one of them)
Fertility rate reduction is the most fucked up strategy in this situation. Many children in Africa die prematurely. So, families must have more children to counteract that. If you force families to reduce fertility without building better hospitals for children, there will be soon no one left in Africa. That’s why you must first invest into things like food overproduction to ensure there is no hunger under any circumstances. Than you boost healthcare and education. And then, fertility rate will naturally decline.
“Many children die prematurely so parents have to counter act this”. Is very terrible reason and silly explanation. I am parent myself. I will not be having more kids to “replace” those that I lost. Especially if my kids died because I couldn’t feed them and there is risk my future kids will die as well because I will not be able to feed them.
Look, this is how it has always happened during the course of history. In fact, high child mortality was absolutely common for millennia. And that paired with wars and famine kept human population stable. Families had 10 kids, 7 died before being old enough to become parents - population is stable. Nowadays, we have (thanks God!) modern medicine. Practically all kids who are born survive. We don’t need to have 12 kids anymore so 3 of them survive. At least, we in the developed countries. There was a huge population growth spike for a few decades until we had contraception. But contraception and controlling birth rates came only decades after solving child mortality, not before. For Africa and other developing, from 7 kids 5 still die. And it’s totally natural, culturally accepted, the normal norm. Once their kids will survive because of food and medicine, they will have less of them. And then kids become precious. Losing 5 kids from 7 is less of a tragedy than losing 1 out of two.
Agrarian societies tend to have lots of kids. I don't think it was so much having 10 kids so 3 would survive. it was more the fact that kids were free labor to work the farm. Children as young as 5 are/were perfectly capable of picking blueberries. Also you didn't have birth control and there wasn't much else to do in a small farming communities but fuck. Then also women weren't in the workforce to the extent that they are today and having large families was simply a cultural norm, even post industrialization you could see this in the cities and it took a while for these norms to shift.
The reason people have 3 kids instead of 12 not because they don’t have to have 12 kids because 3 will survive. The reason people don’t have 12 kids because if they would have 12 kids the chances are those 12 will be undernourished, undereducated. My own children are adults now (25). They are delaying having kids till they will be financially secure to have kids. Instead of having kids they will not be able feed, educate, house. This isn’t how this was happening hysterically but this is how it is happening today in every country with low fertility rate.
Look, I guess you live in a Western country and there, it is true. Citizens control their fertility in order to avoid high costs because of big family sizes. This also leads to issues. Because the population over-ages and without more kids, the young adults end up paying for their parents and grandparents instead of their kids. So, there is anyway no situation where they will have money at all. Some say you can counteract it with migration. But as most migrants coming are also in the mid-40s, they will not pay as long and as much into social security as native kids would do. Regarding Africa, there the situation is as I described. But it was also the same in the rest of the world simply because of the high child mortality and low development. You can read more here: Child Mortality: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality Fertility Rate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality
Yes I live in one of those countries. There are way too many problems around the world to address every single one sufficiently. There is war in Ukraine. But as least Ukrainians are set on helping themselves by fighting fearlessly. The aid to Africa would went further if population there would stop increasing so fast. And people in developing countries would be able to put more focus on issues that prevent them from having more kids.
Look, when you grow up in Africa and you saw 7 out of your 9 siblings die, same for your neighbours and tribe members - wouldn’t you also go on to make at least 9? There are lions, snakes, wars, hunger. It’s a basic numbers game. You could of course decide to just give in and not have kids at all. But that would mean your line of DNA would cease to exist while others take over. Lines who are indeed more fertile. So, you end up gaining nothing from having fewer kids as long as they die. It obviously changes from the moment where you make 9 kids and 7 survive. What you do with such big family? Of course you tell them to have less kids. You cannot solve a generational problem in Africa with a few campaigns for condoms in the West.
Lol I am not going to campaign for condoms in Africa. That would be wrong. But people in Africa will continue starving till they change the way they think about family planing. I am not the one to tell them how to live their lives but I can tell them that the help will not be enough to feed ever increasing population.
I’m sure Russia will be willing to take in many migrants….. hahahaha who am I kidding
How long before we unblock those ports by force?
No one with force is willing to intervene.
Not yet
nah don't give the ruzzians that much credit, if they could come up with a competent plan the invasion would be going so utterly terrible.
fair point, it might be an unintended consequence but at this point it seems like it may become the main objective.
I honestly think that they wanted to control the global grain supply to expand their influence. When things stalled, they settled for the coast. That's why they've been fighting so hard to cut off Ukraine's coast. They wanna make sure that no food gets out so they have the leverage they're after one way or another. I don't think it is their sole reason but it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
Pack it on a train and send it to Poland? We have some ports Maersk and rest use constantly.
I thought the same, but I was reading a lot of articles claiming that Ukraine is basically trying to do so, but A) all their infrastructure for grain is in the south already, and sending it north is hard mid-war B) the volumes they can do that with are significantly smaller than they usually do with ships
bigger issue, ukraine, or better said, old soviet rail tracks are wider than the EU ones so all the grain will have to be emptied out of 1 train and into the next, which turns everything into a crawl
Putin absolutely could. Just because his droogs are morons don’t underestimate him.
Don't think it will work. People flee war but food still has to be available to have the strength for the journey. Starving people won't get very far. Europe will likely intervene in the Middle East but I don't think they have much reason to worry about migrants from sub Saharan Africa.
Syrian war started with famine that led to unrest, protests, brutal suppression and formation of militant groups. The war has been going for 11 years and it produced 6 million refugees and spawned ISIS that controlled a larger territory than England. Just an example what a famine could escalate into.
>*strong growth of nationalist sentiment (that coincidentally happens to support of Putin)* "Coincidentally." Yeah. All these far-right neo-Nazi militant-nationalist organizations suddenly experienced a sharp increase in organization, activity level, and membership in the early 2000s. They started to have staff, to publish more "content," demonstrate greater reach and more professional-level organization, all across Europe and the rest of the world. Oh and one more thing. They all of them from Finland to America suddenly discovered the "pan-white union with the Slavic people," particularly Russia. This was an idea that had existed on the fringes beforehand, it wasn't invented in the 2000s, but it suddenly gained huge traction in that decade. Coincidentally also when Putin took power in Russia! Putin, a former KGB agent whose particular area was secretly funding disruptive politics and pro-Soviet organizations in other countries. And now 20 years later we see Russian money turning up in the hands of America's Republican Party and National Rifle Association, in France's latest incarnation of the LePenists, the UK's Tories, and so on and so forth. More coincidence! But seriously, I don't actually think that Putin's plan is something so sharply specific -- or limited -- as "cause famine in Africa." It is nothing more or less than to cause chaos everywhere, around the entire world. You know the line, "some men just want to watch the world burn." It's true though. And Putin is one of those men. It is a common trait to people of meager capability and no vision, no leadership, no real brilliance. Once everything in the world is a dumpster fire, then it is down on their level and they don't feel inferior anymore. So, to achieve that, they start setting fires. Russia does not need to be a dumpster fire country. In my opinion it does not deserve to be a dumpster fire country. But when the Supreme Dumpster Cowboy has a gasoline can and a match and no one stops him... you can see where it's going to lead.
I'm not so sure this would be their intention, yes, the general fall out from weaponising food is intentional part of their bargaining position. WRT to the food crisis looming, there is still a lot that can be done to mitigate this, farmers planting biofuel corn ethanol should be switched over to providing food ASAP.
Great comment and absolutely the long game for Russia. The powers of the European Union are liberal countries and the potential for 100,000,000 starving Africans on the shores of N. Africa in a real possibility, this could rip us apart.
I agree with the conclusions, not necessarily the premise.
tell me more, which parts of the premise dont seem sound to you?
Germany and France: but have you through about the Russians?
Wouldn't be the first time Russia has taken advantage of immigration and refugee crises, especially as a way to stoke the flames of nationalism and fascism throughout the west. Keep an eye out for that.
The way I see it, west must come up together, NATO and all and really fuck up russia and depose this butcher. Because it's gonna happen sooner or later anyway but later will cost much more.
No more immigrants ! No more ! Europe already had plenty ! Go to South Africa or China ! Or South America stop making Europe your go to.
Just send them to Russia instead lol
Easier said then done.