Sea Control - Sea Control 325 - Ukraine is Not Enough with Dr. Ian Ralby

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Links1. "Ukraine is Not Enough: Just the Beginning of Russia's Assault on the World," by Dr. Ian Ralby, Dr. David Soud and Rohini Ralby, Irconsilium.com, February 25, 2022.2. "Why the U.S. Needs to Act Fast to Prevent Russia from Weaponizing Food Supply Chains," by Dr. Ian Ralby, Dr. David Soud and Rohini Ralby, Politico, February 27, 2022.3. I.R. Consilium.4. Putin hails $117.5 bln of China deal as Russia squares off with West, by Vladimir Soldatkin and Chen Aizhu, Reuters, February 4, 2022.5. China Welcomes Russian Oil Tankers with Alternative Payment Methods, by Chen Aizhu, Reuters, March 4, 2022.

Hey folks, Sherrod here. Today I'm joined by Dr. Ian Ralby, and we'll be discussing his article, Ukraine is not enough. The article covers the Russian threat to the world food supply, China's role in all of this, and more. We record this late Friday evening, March 4th. This will publish March 6th, so if there's anything we haven't counted for in between, that's the reason. This episode was edited and produced by Joshua Gruver. We are still looking for audio editors to add to our team. If you're interested, please email us at ccontrol at simsec.org with your resume. I did want to highlight a couple of developments over at the main website. In the last two months, we've launched the Flotilla SimSec's Warfighting Society, focused on tactics, as well as our Naval Wargaming Discord.

You can find more information at simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pums. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pot of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security Aloha, showmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control

My guest today is Dr. Ian Rowby, and we're going to discuss his piece for irconcilium.com I think you can also find it on Politico now, but we'll have links to both of those in the show notes The piece is entitled, Ukraine is Not Enough, Just the Beginning of Russia's Assault on the World I should add this piece was written with his co-authors, Dr. David Saud and Rohini Rawley. So, Ian, thank you for joining us. It is extremely late. We're doing this a little bit on the fly, working around some toddler bedtimes and some other commitments that we have. But would you mind introducing the audience to yourself again, provide a little bit more about your background? Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be back on Sea Control.

And I am a maritime lawyer by background, but I've been working in maritime security for most of my career. and have worked with and for many different U.S. government agencies, international organizations, and have worked alongside a lot of foreign navies around the world. In fact, I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of the Black Sea navies and Coast Guards over the last few years and pleasure to be able to share some of the results of our analysis with you on the podcast today. Well, thank you again for coming on. We are recording this Friday night. This should be up on Sunday. So as you're listening to this, it's two days old. If anything is changed on the ground over the course of those two days, that's what the time delay is.

But thank you again for coming on. As a reminder, all of these opinions are our own and not representative of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So jumping straight into the piece, is it fair to say that the thesis here is really the intended occupation of Ukraine as part of a systemic push to control food supplies? Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'd say that it's part of a systemic push to control food supply so much as the intended takeover of Ukraine is connected to a broader push to reestablish the borders of Russia, or at least the Russian dominance over what President Vladimir Putin sees as Russia. And the use and indeed weaponization of food supply chains is one of the tactics that he is starting to and will continue to use to accomplish that end. He's been, as has been reported, very keenly aware of old imperial Russia or the Russia Imperium. And he isn't just looking to rebuild the Soviet Union. He's looking to go back further and rebuild that. And that is a worrying sign for what is yet to come, because Ukraine is a major piece in that puzzle, but it is by no means the end of it.

And so what we were looking at is the very clear connection between sort of Russian tactics regarding starvation and trade policy as being a major means of creating both the chaos and the dependency that might leverage states to either support the Russian efforts to gain sovereignty over sovereign nations, and at the same time to be a distraction for us, for the West. And so in creating chaos, he can both create new adherence to his own cause and create enough of a disruption to our own thinking process and our approach to both resolving conflicts elsewhere and resolving humanitarian crises elsewhere that he can make significant

advances well beyond Ukraine. You also postulated that because of Russian agreements with China on oil and gas, that Russia would be effectively insulated against sanctions. I think when you publish this, there's probably prior to the sanctions packages that have been rolled out. Do you want to revisit that sort of hypothesis based on the sanction packages that we've seen from the US, UK, EU and others? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. I think I would still stick to that in that there's a difference between the sanctions and how they're affecting the Russian people and how they are affecting the ability of the Russian state to survive economically. And that is still possible, despite all the crippling effects of the current sanctions. And so let me go back to the 4th of February, in fact, a month ago, exactly from when we're recording this, to an agreement reached in the sort of margins of the Beijing Olympics between Russia and China.

And that deal was not exclusively about oil and gas. And that is one of the important points, I think, that needs to be highlighted in what led to Russia invading Ukraine on the 24th of February. On the 4th of February, what was decided was that Russia would be able to sell all of its oil and gas if it wanted to, to China. China is the biggest consumer. It is hungry for hydrocarbons. And so the trade pact allows for massive purchasing of Russian oil and gas. That is set against the backdrop that now we're seeing, as has been occurring for now two weeks, a major shift in market dynamics such that Russia is going to struggle to continue supplying oil and gas to Europe. We've already seen changes trying to reroute other supply chains to provide Europe with the necessary supplies. But just today, G-Captain and other outlets started reporting that Chinese ports were still receiving Russian shipments, despite all the sanctions, despite all the challenges relating to SWIFT, relating to banks.

The traders and the refiners were paying in cash and they were using new types of cash transfer schemes to be able to do that. And Russia has been at the forefront for years of alternative payment methods. They've been doing that both in the legitimate space and in the illicit space. And so the leadership of Russia is extremely well-versed in illicit supply chains and illicit financial flows of gold, of all kinds of other trade-based money laundering. They have done a very impressive job of piloting all kinds of new ways of getting payment. And so despite the sanctions, we aren't talking about a situation yet where Russia is sufficiently closed off from the world so that it cannot survive economically, partly because China will continue to be a big purchaser, not only of the oil and gas, but also of the grain. And I want to come back to the grain now, because that is the sort of critical element that's been most overlooked.

So even though the oil and gas is the main focus because it's the big money and we feel as Americans, we feel the crunch of the fuel pump first. The grain piece is massive. Between Russia and Ukraine, they account for about 30 percent of the world's output in wheat. Wheat is in everything from bread to pasta to cereal to stuff we eat every single day. And so this reliance on essentially a third of the world's wheat supply between those two countries is massive. They account for a huge portion of that supply. What China managed to, well, what I guess Russia managed to do was change China's stance on buying Russian wheat and other grain, barley, soybeans, corn, other things. And what they had initially done for years was limit the amount they could purchase to grain that was grown in the eastern portion of Russia, closest to China. The 4th of February saw that completely eradicated such that they can now buy grain produced anywhere in Russia.

And as we are seeing, Russia's definition may be changing in the coming weeks. That is a critical point because China has been driving up their own wheat consumption for years and also corn consumption. And while Russia is not a huge producer of corn, Ukraine is the fastest growing new producer of corn anywhere on Earth. They have gone from a fairly small producer to accounting for 16 percent of the global export market in recent years. And for a number of years, they were the number one supplier to China. The U.S. temporarily overtook them in 2021, but that is likely to change regardless of the situation in Russia and Ukraine. But Ukraine is very much at the forefront of that ability to meet Chinese demand. So essentially, China can buy up anything Russia can produce, either on the oil and gas front or on the grain front, and keep the Russian economy afloat at least enough to allow for the onward expansion of this Russian imperium.

And so that is a really important sort of piece of that puzzle. So China and Russia are definitely in a relationship that Putin is relying on. And in many respects, China is also relying on because it is such a key supplier to them. And so we have a situation where we have to make a choice as to how we're going to treat these two great powers with which we've been competing for years and decide how to treat this new pact. So is there no way to offset the loss of Ukrainian grain production with a domestic product from the U.S. or Canada or other grain producing nations? So a number of countries have had a major decline because of climatic reasons. So drought hit Canada last year and there was a 34 percent decline in its own output. That's a huge amount to withstand.

The U.S. has the ability to somewhat surge production. That's a time consuming issue. We can't we can't surge grain production quite the same way that we surge oil and gas. And we also have to think about this hemispherically. Right now, the U.S. is not producing any any more grain. The growing season doesn't allow us to do that. So we are we can reshift some of the supply chains and some of the trajectories of trade flows. But that requires a pretty concerted effort to cooperate with other states to do that. And one of the things that we argued as an approach to countering some of this is, OK, China, you've made your choice.

You no longer need our grain supply. We're going to work with the other suppliers that were going to China on corn and wheat. Those include France. They include Canada. They include Australia. Some very close allies and friends. And we're going to essentially take those shipments that would have gone to China and use them to backfill the gap in the market created by Ukraine coming offline. Forget Russia for a moment, but let's start with focusing on Ukraine. Going to countries like Indonesia, Yemen, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Gulf states in the Middle East, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, make sure that those key states also do not have a food supply crisis, but are working with this sort of conglomerate of suppliers to help hold Ukraine's place in the market. So we could build, we could take that grain, we could try to maximize our output and, you know, in the coming months, maximize what we can export right now and try to essentially guarantee Ukraine's economic sovereignty, even while their physical sovereignty is being threatened.

So this would be a very clear non-military way to try to support the sustained existence of Ukraine as a sovereign entity. And it would also put pressure on China to make a choice. Are they really going to go fully into this relationship with Russia or are they going to feel a little bit uncomfortable about being cut out of the more diverse market and make a change? So that is that is one of those, I think, trade based options for for how to simultaneously minimize the impact of what could be a terrible food security crisis around the world and support Ukraine's sovereignty, while also potentially driving an awkward relationship between Russia and China. What is actually necessary for Russia to control access to that food supply? Do they need to occupy the entirety of Ukraine, just maritime approaches? So the majority of the international exports beyond the immediate neighbors go through two channels. One is the Kerch Strait. One is the Odessa Oblast.

So there are 17 ports in Odessa, and those ports account for a huge amount of the grain transport. So if, as Russia already has, they're able to get the supply routes out of Ukraine to be shut, either as a policy matter or as a matter of physical control, they can do that. And they've already cut those two channels. So the Kerch Strait is under the control of Russia and the ports are closed commercially. But equally, Russia has positioned quite a few assets, both military and essentially proxy commercial assets in the in the areas immediately surrounding Odessa. What do you believe Russia would do with control of the grain market? It's just a side benefit of this operation for them?

Or is this a geopolitical lever in the way that Nord Stream 2? Very much a lever. And it's not dissimilar from Nord Stream 2, but it's much more expansive. Russia's been taking a much more global approach for years. We've seen it in a lot of different and somewhat strange spaces. So, you know, I think the last time we spoke, we were talking about IUU fishing. IUU Fishing is actually one of the areas where Russia has showed up in different parts of the world, the Gulf of Guinea and elsewhere. We've seen the presence of Russian naval craft turning up in the Caribbean, in the Gulf of Guinea.

There was a counter piracy task force sent from the Russian Northern Fleet just this past autumn in September, October. And that got some very high level attention after they actually intervened in the piracy attempt against the MSC Lucia on the 25th of October, just off of sort of not far from Equatorial Guinea in Sao Tome in the Gulf of Guinea. And that sort of naval presence is also backed up by a much more expansive proxy presence through the private military company called either Wagner or Wagner, depending on your preference for how you pronounce it. And, you know, that group of essentially little green men has turned up in Venezuela, it's turned up all over Africa, it's turned up in Asia. And so Russia has had tentacles around the world for a number of years, and we've seen them trying to build a naval base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. And we've seen them turning up much more in East African operations of different sorts. So this ability to essentially weaponize the food supply chains means that Russia could, if they chose, target certain states to create essentially a short term food security crisis. Take Yemen, for example, roughly 50% of the grain going into Yemen at the moment comes from Ukraine. That is now stopped. Ukraine is critical to Yemen's survival, and many people did not even factor that in.

And that was not sort of in the general conscience prior to about last week. But Yemen is a country on the brink of famine. It's got millions of people already living under famine conditions. And most of the food coming into the country comes through the single port of Hodeidah and some of the others along the Red Sea and Gulf Coast. And that has stopped. That spigot has turned off. That means that we have we have a very short window to to make up that supply for humanitarian reasons. If Russia starts being more targeted in its control, look well beyond Yemen and look at places where they could essentially create enough of a disruption in the food supply that they could essentially fabricate a conflict. You know, many, many analysts continue to say that the Arab Spring was primarily born of the price, the change in the price of corn.

Food prices are critical for being a tipping point, a straw that breaks the camel's back, if you will, when things are already tough. And a lot of states are already feeling all kinds of hardship born of the pandemic and a variety of other factors. And so it would not be difficult to intentionally withhold grain shipments to certain countries, put them under enough strain such as to create civil unrest, maybe even full conflict, and then be the provider to relieve that tension, relieve that conflict, or take them off the brink, which is something that President Putin has loved to do, is create some sort of near crisis and then resolve it. And so as that sort of benevolent power providing the relief from tension, from stress, from strain, you know, that could be given somewhat in exchange for recognition of sovereignty claims over Ukraine or Moldova or Georgia or Kazakhstan or elsewhere, depending on how far the push towards sovereignty is looking to go. Now, what did China really stand to gain from this beyond just securing a food supply? That's a great question, and it fits very well with the sovereignty point. I mean, part of it is having access to a supply of oil and gas and the supply of food. There are two other issues. One is the sovereignty issue over Taiwan.

Obviously, we are in a precarious position vis-a-vis a potential military invasion of Taiwan as much as I hate to even say that. But it has been a longstanding sort of push of China to intimidate Taiwan and move towards some kind of hostile takeover. We've seen everything from dredging sand to literally diminish the area of Taiwan to huge amounts of incursion into Taiwanese airspace and various hybrid aggression tactics. And this sort of gray zone conflict has been going on for a long time and wouldn't take much, particularly under the current climate, to tip into a more conventional conflict. Regardless of that, though, this sort of trading of sovereignty claims and sovereignty recognition is potentially another motivation. So if Russia, another major power, another member of the P5 on the Security Council, recognizes China's claims to Taiwan in exchange for China recognizing Russian claims to Ukraine or elsewhere, that could be a very beneficial or mutually beneficial trade. And I think that, you know, a lot has been said about the sovereignty issues and China has had a more tepid response of late. They were initially very forthright in saying Ukraine had sovereign rights and we can't violate them.

But the more closely aligned they have become over the last few days with the economic future of Russia, the more hesitant they have been to be as forthright in saying that, and certainly have not been nearly as critical as I think many would have hoped of this clear illegal violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. And part of that is that Russia has been pushing this false narrative of Ukraine never having been a sovereign state to begin with. And that is a really, I think, important piece of the Russian claim. I mean, it's bogus, it's baseless. We've long used the term lawfare. Major General Charlie Dunlap coined that term to indicate the use of law and legal processes as a means of gaining what would have otherwise been a military objective.

This is kind of unlawfare. It's using false legal arguments, baseless legal arguments, to accomplish a military objective. And we've seen China do the same thing with some of their bogus claims in the South China Sea relating to the ability to exclude foreign warships and warplanes from the exclusive economic zone. We've seen them make very bogus claims about the sovereign rights over artificial islands.

But this would be sort of part of that hybrid warfare approach that Russia had been teeing up for years in Ukraine to use a false narrative as the justification for its action. And that narrative seems to be that Ukraine never had sovereignty. It was never a sovereign state to begin with. But I think beyond this whole trading of recognition, the other thing that China has to gain from this is potentially weakening the global order

such that the U.S. and our allies are repositioned. And that that is something else that I think China has had a tendency to look towards and benefit from. You know, I remember the beginning of, you know, March 2020. Many of us were saying that the pandemic would change the world order and that China was going to collapse and fall. Well, they certainly haven't. They just hosted the Olympics and they remain very much a formidable military, economic and global power. perhaps even stronger than they were two years ago, which is somewhat striking. And that should be a lesson in that they have actually benefited from global chaos. They have benefited from the breakdown of supply chains elsewhere.

They've benefited from the U.S. having to fight a whole bunch of different domestic conflicts, essentially, in our own political system that have distracted us from foreign affairs and have distracted us from having a coherent global strategy. And as a result, China is probably not terribly opposed to having onward chaos of the sort that Russia is more than happy to try and create. Basically, thumbing their nose at the West is the final benefit of this, in addition to the trade base and the sovereignty claims. And that shouldn't be overlooked as being a real draw.

Well, Ian, you've somehow remained cogent past midnight your time now as we tip over into Saturday morning over there on the East Coast. I really appreciate you coming on today. Do you remind the listeners where we can find you online and then tell us about the other projects you've got going? Absolutely. I'm online at irconcilium.com. You can find me pretty easily on most of the social media platforms, be it Facebook, either personally or IR Concilium. Same with LinkedIn, same with Twitter. But right now, working on a whole range of efforts involving maritime domain awareness and continuing to try to support Ukraine and the other Black Sea states in the efforts to maintain some degree of rule of law within the Black Sea. That is becoming, I think, a pressing concern because of all the things that we've discussed, the maritime space is the conduit for making them happen.

And so we have to genuinely maintain sea control. So I don't think there could be a more fitting end than to say that. But that's what I'll be working on in the coming days and weeks. Now, I look forward to talking with you again as some of these projects come to fruition. Thank you again for joining us. To the listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. We'll be right back.