A "Devil" Disclosed

In his Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes begins with a stark warning that the unexampled prosperity of the recent past had left people unprepared for the possibility of real economic catastrophe. He argued that Thomas Malthus, at the dawn of modern political economy, had "disclosed a Devil" lurking below the surface of prosperity—the specter of mass starvation. During the affluence of the late 19th century and the belle époque, Keynes wrote, "the Devil [...] was chained up and out of sight." But with the harsh peace terms imposed on Germany in the wake of the First World War, Keynes argued, "Now perhaps we have loosed him again."

Keynes' invocation of Malthus was unfortunate (though in keeping with his contrarian affection for the oft-maligned cleric). As Alex de Waal has argued in a famous book on famine theory, Malthus' concept of catastrophic famine has little empirical support. It is more an a priori deduction from the (highly questionable) assumptions of his theory than a historical reality. There never really was a truly Malthusian famine, and there probably never will be. 

Still, Keynes's basic point continues to resonate today. His argument was that the policy of cutting Germany—and Bolshevik Russia—out of the global economy through ruinous reparation payments in the first case and trade restrictions in the second (an embargo that we would now describe as a form of economic sanctions) was bound to have negative repercussions for human society as a whole. Such policies were therefore not only a morally-dubious form of collective punishment; they would also ultimately prove self-destructive (he prophesied), even for the victorious powers. 

It is hard not to hear echoes of these historic events in the debates we are having today. As calls continue to mount from Ukraine for Western governments to freeze and expropriate Russian central bank assets as reparations, as Western sanctions remain in place on most parts of the Russian economy, and as global food prices mount, it seems we too are facing down a "Devil" of mass hunger and global economic disruption that we thought had been eradicated. 

Now, as then, the Devil has been brought on by the desire to punish a nation for the crimes of its leaders. Now, as then, the moral dilemmas involved in doing so are grave. The argument for retaining the sanctions  in both cases was based on principles of retribution and deterrence: it was right that the aggressor should pay the costs of their own actions, it was argued, and necessary in order to ensure that they would not be motivated to attack their neighbors again. And the argument against them in both cases was also the same: it is not just to punish the innocent along with the guilty. 

Of course, we don't yet know exactly how much a role Western sanctions may be playing in the current global food shortage, as opposed to Russian aggression. The answer seems to depend on whom you ask. 

For the past several months, as global food prices soared and grain supplies shrank, competing narratives emerged as to who was to blame. Western governments and media primarily attribute the shortages to Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports and the interruption of Ukraine's normal agricultural operations due to Putin's unprovoked aggression. Putin's regime, by contrast, blames the shortages on Western sanctions, which they say have disrupted the export of Russian grain and fertilizer that much of the Global South depends on to feed its population. 

Western media tends to report the first explanation as neutral fact, while presenting the second—when referencing it at all—as unsubstantiated "Russian claims," and leaves it at that. The absence of further analysis in much of the news reporting makes it hard to assess what impact, if any, Western sanctions might actually be having on the global food supply. We know that Western leaders have included specific exemptions for grain and other basic humanitarian supplies from any trade restrictions. But whether the sanctions might be having other, less direct negative effects on food supplies in more opaque. 

To be clear, it is certain that Putin is primarily to blame for the current crisis. How so? First, by starting the war in the first place. Second, by blockading Ukraine's ports (though grain exports are supposed to start flowing again this week, under a freshly-brokered deal). Moreover, it has to be said that many of the Russian government's warnings about the fate of the world's poor hinging on Western sanctions relief seems to have the dual sense of a mobster's pitch: "Nice global food supply you have there; be a shame if anything happened to it..."

Still, this leaves unanswered the question of whether Western sanctions might also be having a secondary effect on global food prices, on top of what Putin is contributing directly to the problem. Leaders in the impacted Global South countries seem to think they are. Of course, they are aware that the sanctions do not directly ban food or fertilizer exports (much of which are sourced globally from Russia). But they note that broader financial sanctions are making it hard to process any transaction with Russia, regardless of the articles being purchased. 

A New York Times piece from earlier this month—one of the few to delve into the possible negative impacts of Western sanctions on global food prices—quotes the chairman of the African Union and president of Senegal Macky Sall, who noted that the ban on Russian access to the SWIFT system was making it particularly difficult for Global South countries to purchase food and fertilizer: "When the SWIFT system is disrupted, it means that even if the products exist, payment becomes complicated, if not impossible," he said. 

What it amounts to is both simple and foreseeable: cutting off one of the world's major economies from the rest of the planet's financial systems is going to have larger ripple effects; effects, moreover, that primarily harm the most vulnerable—exactly as Keynes predicted, in the otherwise quite different context of the early twentieth century. His "Devil" has been loosed among us: hunger. Worldwide, food is already becoming more dear, and the people worst affected are those who were already enduring humanitarian crisis and conflict for other reasons: people in Yemen, Afghanistan, the horn of Africa, etc. 

The question then becomes: are these sanctions justified? We mentioned the two principal arguments usually adduced in support of them above: retribution and deterrence. First, retribution: Russia is the one who invaded Ukraine; isn't it right that Western governments should seize their central bank assets in order to pay back the damages of their own actions? Second, deterrence: If Putin doesn't feel the economic pain from his decision to invade, what incentive would he have to halt the war or refrain from attacking his neighbors again in future? 

The trouble with both these arguments is that they borrow from the philosophy of the criminal law, which is designed to deal with single moral agents who can credibly be asserted to be responsible for their own actions; not with nations compounded of innumerable private individuals who may have no role in the actions of their government,  or may even actively oppose those actions. 

Is it right that Russian civilians should suffer for Putin's invasion? Surely not. And surely it is even less right that the innocents of other distant countries, like Yemen or Somalia, should suffer for it. As Keynes wrote, in arguing against a policy of dismantling the German economy and saddling future generations in the defeated country with ruinous debt: "nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents or of rulers."

Thomas Hardy, writing in a quite different context, once noted that the testimony of organized religion is by no means so clear on this subject as Keynes implies. But, characteristically, when the claims of human sympathy conflict with the prerogatives of Divine Providence, Hardy sides with the former. In one of the many outbursts against the cruelty of the Deity strewn throughout his Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Hardy writes: "though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature[.]"

I suggest that our own moral instinct should incline, in the present case, to side with Hardy's "average human nature," and Keynes' "natural morals," against the claims of collective punishment. But if we lay them aside and accept for a moment that the imperatives of retribution and deterrence really are so overwhelming in the present instance as to justify unleashing mass hunger and penury on the innocent, we should at least ask why these principles are not being being applied more consistently. 

After all, Yemen's hunger—while it may be compounded by the global food shortage stemming from Putin's invasion—is not primarily the result of events in Eastern Europe. Originally, it was the product of a quite different war: a brutal Saudi-led campaign that has gone on now for more than seven years and has decimated much of the country. It is a war that the United States has not only tacitly condoned but—across three different presidential administrations—actively facilitated. 

When asked why they don't withdraw their support for the Saudi government—despite its well-documented war crimes in Yemen and human rights violations at home—the Biden administration tends to cite the need to balance the other obligations of statesmanship against humanitarian concerns. In a just world, perhaps, the Saudi royals would be punished for their atrocities, and the U.S. would stop supporting a murderous air campaign that is killing so many innocent people in Yemen. But, the Biden administration argues, they have to weigh the practical necessities of statecraft (such as the need to find other fuel sources in a time of rampant energy price inflation) alongside the claims of justice. 

If the demands of justice and retribution can indeed sometimes be deferred for the sake of some ulterior purpose, is it not all the more essential that we be willing to sacrifice them partially to prevent the mass starvation of human beings? The children of Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen should not be sacrificed on the altar of deterring Russian aggression. If the United States is not willing to address our own policies that are contributing to the humanitarian crises in all three countries (our logistical support for the Saudi intervention, our military involvement in Somalia, the "Carthaginian peace" we imposed on Afghanistan after our withdrawal) then we should at least consider some sanctions relief as a way to partially mitigate the economic suffering caused by the ongoing war in Ukraine. 

But Russia, we may protest, is creating this global food crisis precisely in order to force us to offer sanctions relief. They are the ones who invited sanctions, knowing full well what the consequences of their invasion would be. They are the ones taking the world's poor hostage. They are the ones who have placed the Afghan, Yemeni, and Somali people in this position. They hold the power to end the crisis, by withdrawing their troops, ending the war, and restoring the global economy to normal operation.

All of this is true. If I could control or influence Putin's actions, this is all I would be arguing for: a unilateral Russian withdrawal from Ukraine and the disputed territories. That remains the best and most preferable way to end the war and prompt the lifting of sanctions. 

But I do not particularly control or influence Putin's actions. What, then, are my options? I can rail against the injustice of it. I can support retaining sanctions even as they drive the world community and many of the planet's most impoverished and vulnerable into starvation, and then say, when asked, that it is not me or my country who did it, but rather Putin who was to blame. And I'd be right. But what value, exactly, would there be in my rightness? 

In his novel The Wild Palms (also known under the title If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem), William Faulkner describes a character who is "consistently and incontrovertibly right, but withal tragic too since in the being right there was nothing of consolation nor of peace." In repeating over and over again that Putin is the one to blame for the world's food crisis, the United States is in much the same position as this character. They are incontrovertibly right. Putin is to blame. But in this rightness, there is "nothing of consolation nor of peace."

It will not matter to the starving who is to blame. There will be no consolation for the hungry to know that it was really more Putin who did it than us. There will be even less consolation if the United States's other actions are also fueling the same humanitarian crises they are facing by other means (again, our support for the Saudi war, our theft of Afghan central bank assets). If we can lessen the misery by rolling back sanctions (which should not—to be clear—mean lessening or withdrawing our support for the Ukrainian defense), then we should do so.