59 Ukraine
Alex Smith
About half of all wheat consumed in Lebanon in 2020 came from Ukraine, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Relying on bread and other grain products for 35 percent of the population’s caloric intake, Lebanon is critically dependent on Ukrainian wheat. Of the 14 countries that rely on Ukrainian imports for more than 10 percent of their wheat consumption, a significant number already face food insecurity from ongoing political instability or outright violence. For example, Yemen and Libya import 22 percent and 43 percent, respectively, of their total wheat consumption from Ukraine. Egypt, the largest consumer of Ukrainian wheat, imported more than 3 million metric tons in 2020—about 14 percent of its total wheat. Ukraine also supplied 28 percent of Malaysian, 28 percent of Indonesian, and 21 percent of Bangladeshi wheat consumption in 2020, according to FAO data.
Smith (2022) A Russia-Ukraine War Could Ripple Across Africa and Asia
Tooze (2022) Strategy of tension
Tooze on Cooper
In an impressive report from December 2022, Luke Cooper discussed the logic of “Market economics in an all-out-war?” that is at work in Ukraine. In the name of anti-corruption drives and austerity Kyiv seems wedded to a minimal state vision, whereas the opposite is actually required. “A genuinely modernizing economic strategy should start from ensuring the capacity of the state to protect its citizens and the environment. Investment in capital projects for a green transition, public services like healthcare and education, and the social safety net, will be critical to ensuring Ukraine’s long-term development.”
Tooze (2023) Ukraine’s War Econmy
Cooper (2022) Market economics in an all-out-war
59.1 Peace Deal
Welsh
So, there can be no deal, because Russia and Putin don’t believe that the West in general and the US in particular (they have contempt for EU leaders who the know simply follow US orders) can’t be trusted to keep it.
That means there’s really on one way to have a peace deal: hostages.
It’s an old idea. If there’s no trust, in the old days you had people the other side cared about, usually family members, live with you. Break the deal and they get it in the neck.
So if there’s to be a deal with Ukraine, there have to be hostages, and they have to be given to Russia. Not people, in this age, but something the US cares about. Perhaps the contents of Fort Knox? Perhaps something else? (Suggest possibilities in the comments.)
I personally can’t think of anything that would be enough, so I can’t see a peace deal now.
The deal will happen when it’s a surrender deal. When the Ukrainians firmly admit they are losing and losing badly. And world war I style deal, where the victor sets the terms.
As such, I don’t see Ukraine keeping Odessa, for example. The deal will be ugly.