Control of the Black Sea would give Russia leverage in negotiations with Ukraine. The U.S., under a U.N. resolution, should reestablish freedom of the seas.
It would give Moscow enormous leverage in any eventual negotiations with Ukraine. The U.S., under a U.N. resolution, should quickly reestablish freedom of the seas.
B y its blockade in the Black Sea, Russia controls both grain for the world’s poor and the Ukraine economy. “It’s like a boa constrictor around Ukraine’s neck, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing,” said retired U.S. admiral James Foggo, who commanded U.S. and NATO fleets in Europe.
NATO caused this problem. Last December, as Russia built up to invade Ukraine, NATO and the U.S. pulled all its warships out of the Black Sea, conceding control to Russia. During the previous month, a U.S. warship was operating the Black Sea, with a size larger than California, to demonstrate “continued commitment to collective defense of the European region.” The U.S. European Command explained that “operating and exercising together [in the Black Sea] demonstrates NATO’s commitment to maintaining freedom of navigation in international waters for all nations.” The joint Maritime Command of the U.S. Navy and NATO has not explained why it belied its own words and commitments by abandoning the Black Sea.
As a consequence, the Russian Navy is preventing 100 to 300 ships from leaving the Black Sea. Before the invasion, Ukraine provided about 10 percent of global wheat exports, 14 percent of corn exports, and roughly half of the world’s sunflower oil. The blockade is costing Ukraine’s economy $170 million per day.
The United Nation’s World Food Program has warned that loss of Ukrainian grain could result in 44 million people worldwide falling into starvation. Nearly 25 million tons are sitting in storage facilities, both severely weakening Ukraine’s economy and causing global food shortages. As a substitute route, transporting via rail across Poland to Baltic ports has proven to be costly and inadequate.
“For the first time in decades, there is no usual movement of the merchant fleet, no usual port functioning in Odesa,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said. “Without our agricultural exports, dozens of countries in different parts of the world are already on the brink of food shortages.”
The U.S. and NATO must reassert freedom of the seas. The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization has called for safe corridors to allow the grain-carrying ships to sail without the risk of attack or hitting a mine. Similarly, in the mid ’80s, in response to threats from Iran, the U.S. Navy protected oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Senator Chris Coons (D., Del.), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, has endorsed qualified support for that approach. “If the United Nations authorized a humanitarian corridor and action to enforce it,” he said,” I would expect that, if necessary, the naval resources would come from a number of countries in the region.”
In September, for the first time in 50 years, the White House will host a conference on hunger. Clearly, preventing starvation and enforcing freedom of the seas are bedrock values of the West. Why, then, are the U.S. and NATO not taking action?
There are two impediments. First, the Montreux Convention of 1936 limits the kinds and numbers of warships that non–Black Sea nations can send into the sea. Turkey, controlling the strait that provides entrance, decides how those rules are enforced. Sailing U.S. and other warships right past Istanbul to establish a humanitarian convoy would require contentious bargaining with Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan. Nonetheless, the U.S. is not a signatory to the convention, and Erdogan, if faced with a U.N. resolution, can be pressured.
The second impediment is President Biden’s fear of an armed clash with Russia. His lavish aid to Ukraine is commendable. But he refused to send MiGs, believing that constituted escalation. He allegedly was furious about leaks suggesting that U.S. intelligence aided the Ukrainian sinking of a Russian cruiser. He has prohibited intelligence-sharing that would help Ukraine attack Russian targets outside Ukraine’s borders. Russia can attack Ukraine, but Ukraine cannot attack Russia. President Biden is firm on this point that concedes sanctuary status upon Russia, which is the aggressor.
A humanitarian convoy, however, is not an attack upon Russia. Why Putin would attack our warships is puzzling. If he initiates a tactical clash, the odds are that he loses badly, given Russia’s military performance to date. Avoidance of nuclear escalation, the rationale for staying out of the Black Sea, is based on the assumption that Putin, even in a deranged state, has total, autonomous control. This presumes that his order to detonate nuclear weapons would be carried out by a chain of command that knows that the long-term consequence would be, at best, the infusion of massive military aid to Ukraine, to include MiGs, the immediate refusal of the West to purchase any Russian hydrocarbons, and international isolation of Russia. Its economy would collapse, leading to the dissolution of Russia as a functioning nation-state.
To be deterred by the nuclear threat requires believing that both Putin and his entire chain of command — hundreds of officers — would commit a suicidal act.
There is risk both in taking action and in insisting upon inaction. Russia wasn’t afraid to take action during the Vietnam War. The U.S. at the time had a five-to-one advantage in nuclear warheads. This did not deter Russia from delivering copious military supplies through the North Vietnamese port of Haiphong, sailing with impunity past our warships.
The cost of inaction in the Black Sea is starvation in the poorest countries, a crippling of the Ukraine economy, and global skepticism about America’s naval credibility. Sea control provides Russia with enormous leverage in any eventual negotiations with Ukraine. Putin will claim that the vast Black Sea is a Russian lake, off-limits forever to NATO warships. Ukraine would be allowed to export only under the aegis of the Russian navy. This would provide a perilous precedent. If a bellicose Russia succeeds in excluding the U.S. Navy from the Black Sea, China has the incentive to do the same in the Taiwan Straits, and Iran to again test the resolve of the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf. It is crucial for the U.S., under a U.N. resolution, to quickly reestablish freedom of the seas. The stakes are too high to concede the Black Sea to Russia.