Just in case the mess the world is in hasn’t con­found­ed and con­fused you enough, here’s anoth­er conun­drum: the “2020 Glob­al Go To Think Tank Index Report” list­ed more  than 8,000 think tanks in 85 coun­tries. So why does it seem to have come as a sur­prise that Vlad­mir Putin could and would, use Ukrain­ian grain as a weapon?

Judg­ing by the wars in Chech­nya and Syr­ia and dai­ly news reports from Ukraine, Putin and the mil­i­tary he com­mands con­sid­er mas­sive destruc­tion a vic­to­ry and civil­ian casu­al­ties incon­se­quen­tial. Equal­ly, the sta­tis­tics being breath­less­ly quot­ed about how much of the world relies on Ukrain­ian grain, were not a state secret when Rus­sia invad­ed. And yet, the block­ade of tens of mil­lions of tonnes of Ukrain­ian grain only made the grade as a “glob­al food cri­sis” when it woke up West­ern lead­ers to what was already a self-evi­dent fact: hunger foments polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, and togeth­er they dri­ve the flow of migrants from sub-Saha­ran Africa. For many Euro­pean coun­tries that seems to be a worse night­mare than the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Vladimir Putin widen­ing his mad ambitions.
How else to explain that the UN and aid agen­cies were warn­ing for months that sev­er­al hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple in Africa, the Mid­dle East and oth­er parts of the world were on the brink of, and in many cas­es already suf­fer­ing star­va­tion, but for all intents and pur­pos­es the West appeared to remain indif­fer­ent until some­one realised Russia’s block­ade was dri­ving up food prices.                                                      SHARING THE PAIN…
A cri­sis, it seems, is only a cri­sis if it threat­ens the lifestyles, and hence polit­i­cal cli­mate, of devel­oped nations.
Head­lines almost glee­ful­ly warned of impend­ing near-doom.
“As glob­al food prices soar, will the EU face food short­ages?” (DW Germany)
“Wheat prices hit 14-year high, food short­age fears rise.” (FOX Business)
CNN Busi­ness tried to offer cau­tious hope with this lede: “Impor­tant­ly, high­er prices and poten­tial­ly falling inven­to­ries could mean greater food inse­cu­ri­ty the US and around the world. But there are actions busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments can take to help ease the pain.”
And there­in lies a malig­nant irony; the “pain” of hav­ing to pay more, maybe eat a lit­tle less, can be eased for peo­ple in the West, and for polit­i­cal rea­sons, it will be. But aid agen­cies whose rai­son d’etre is doing the same for peo­ple in under-devel­oped and impov­er­ished coun­tries will still fall short on their bud­gets. It’s also a safe bet that dona­tion pledges won’t be met. 
I won­der when the “experts” who weighed in with ven­om and alacrity about what they saw as “racism” by jour­nal­ists report­ing from the front lines in Ukraine will notice and react?
In anoth­er cyn­i­cal twist, the car­bon emis­sions that are a dri­ving fac­tor in glob­al warm­ing that spurs drought, floods and famine, would actu­al­ly be low­ered if peo­ple drove less. But it’s com­ing up on sum­mer hol­i­day time, so gov­ern­ments are doing every­thing pos­si­ble to “ease the pain at the pumps” caused by a spike in oil prices.  Among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of that will be the OPEC nations who are mak­ing wind­fall prof­its from ris­ing oil prices, which are being blamed on sanc­tions on Russ­ian oil.
                               RELIEF IS AT HAND
If you’re depressed by the acres of newsprint and hours of TV air time ago­nis­ing, the­o­ris­ing and edi­to­ri­al­is­ing over how much we’re all going to suf­fer, don’t wor­ry. In a cou­ple of weeks, it will all be what print jour­nal­ists call “left hand page below the fold”, mean­ing news you have to hunt for. Don’t believe me? When did you last notice a sto­ry about food short­ages, mal­nu­tri­tion and the immi­nent threat of star­va­tion in Afghanistan?
It was prob­a­bly in March, when the UN report­ed that 95 per cent of Afghans are not get­ting enough to eat. In female-head­ed house­holds the per­cent­age is clos­er to 100.
“It is a fig­ure so high that it is almost incon­ceiv­able,” UN Res­i­dent and Human­i­tar­i­an Coor­di­na­tor Ramiz Alak­barov said, “yet, dev­as­tat­ing­ly, it is the harsh reality.”
But as we all know, let­ting chil­dren starve is nec­es­sary to pun­ish the Tal­iban for order­ing women to wear burqas. 
As for avert­ing a “world food cri­sis”, the U.S. and the Euro­pean Union are fol­low­ing a ver­sion of their Afghan play­book. Offi­cial­ly, mean­ing in pub­lic, they vow that feed­ing hun­gry peo­ple is their first pri­or­i­ty. In pri­vate, they’re argu­ing over pos­si­ble ways to ship Ukrain­ian grain that coun­tries in Africa and the Mid­dle East in par­tic­u­lar are almost total­ly reliant on, with­out giv­ing in to the demands of Rus­sia and Belarus for sanc­tions relief. That’s only like­ly to hap­pen if the grain short­age push­es food prices in the West to polit­i­cal­ly unsup­port­able levels.
Cal­lous as it may seem, the con­flict in Ukraine does to some extent val­i­date the cliché that “every cloud has a sil­ver lining.”
Ris­ing food prices and short­ages (albeit on dif­fer­ent scales of pain) have giv­en the devel­oped and the Third World some­thing in com­mon. NATO has been strength­ened. And won­der of won­ders, it has even pro­vid­ed some com­mon ground for Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans. Sen­a­tors vot­ed 86-to-11 to pass a bill that includ­ed 20-bil­lion dol­lars in mil­i­tary aid for Ukraine.
Now if they could just agree that Amer­i­can teenag­ers don’t need assault rifles…but that would mean find­ing experts from both sides to acknowl­edge a crisis…
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