Exporting Grain Through the Black Sea Is a Dangerous Idea | Opinion

On July 17, Russia pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal mediated between the United Nations and Turkey a year earlier. The withdrawal has the potential to drastically reduce grain supply in countries teetering with low growth to extreme poverty. The Russians have spent the two weeks since bombarding Ukrainian ports used to store, load, and ship millions of tons of grain to the international market, prompting NATO to increase surveillance flights in the Black Sea region with maritime and drone aircraft.

The Black Sea grain deal served a useful function—breaking a Russian-imposed embargo of Ukraine's major ports to alleviate a devastating international food supply crisis. The deal was in the interests of both Ukraine and Russia—Kyiv could continue exporting one of its biggest commodities, while Moscow could ship its own fertilizer via the Black Sea. The deal managed to offload nearly 33 million tons of grain and other agricultural products to the world. Moscow's withdrawal from the initiative could single-handedly raise food prices by as much as 15 percent according to the International Monetary Fund.

The desperate situation has generated desperate solutions. Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder believes a naval escort is needed to protect grain-carrying ships without threat of Russian harassment. Retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, proposed a similar idea with NATO in the lead. Today, this recommendation remains an outlier. But if global supplies deteriorate substantially, a fringe idea could become a mainstream policy option.

U.S. and NATO officials, however, shouldn't even flirt with such a scheme. A hypothetical naval escort is riddled with risk and could widen the war at a time when Washington is correctly trying to keep it within Ukraine's borders.

Proponents of a naval escort point to precedent. In 1987, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. Navy re-flagged Kuwaiti oil tankers as U.S. ships in the hope it would deter Iran from attacking crude supplies through the Persian Gulf. The re-flagging worked, but it wasn't without costs. U.S. sailors got into skirmishes with Iranian forces and had to navigate mines. One of those mines disabled a U.S. frigate and injured 10 sailors in the process, compelling the U.S. to respond militarily against Iranian ships and oil platforms. The fighting that ensued was the most serious engagement between U.S. and Iranian military forces until January 2020, when Iranian ballistic missiles targeted U.S. bases in Iraq in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

Needless to say, Russia isn't the pipsqueak power Iran was in the 1980s. While the Iranians could make life difficult for U.S. sailors in the Persian Gulf, they could never beat the U.S. Navy militarily because they never had the capability, capacity, numbers, or skill to dominate regional waters. Iran was a de-facto pariah state with limited resources, fighting a long conventional conflict with a neighbor, Iraq, that had the military and financial support of wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies (and for a time, the U.S).

While it's true Russia is isolated from the West, it's also true that Russian naval forces remain intact. Aside from the highly publicized sinking of the Moskva guided missile destroyer in April 2022, Russia's navy remains practically untouched. Russian ground forces may be taking a big hit in Ukraine—last month, the head of the U.K.'s armed forces assessed that the Russian army lost half its combat power—but Russia's assortment of destroyers, cruisers, and frigates are still functioning. U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of U.S. European Command, told the House Armed Services Committee in April that Russia lost a grand total of one ship since the war began. Cavoli also stated that Russia's Air Force stands at 1,000 fighters and bombers, all of which is to say that escorting grain-carrying ships through water already riddled with mines would be a far more dicey undertaking than what the U.S. Navy dealt with more than 30 years ago in the Persian Gulf.

Threats aren't simply about capability. Intent also matters. Would Russia actually attack a naval escort in the Black Sea, knowing that a strike could internationalize a conflict Moscow already has its hands full managing?

While it's convenient to assume Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn't do something this drastic, nobody can say with total certainty that he would sit by and permit tankers to traverse the Black Sea—particularly when the Russians are now on record saying that every ship sailing in those waters will now be classified as potential carriers of military cargo. These types of ominous threats are enormously frustrating to U.S. and NATO policymakers, yet it would be a dereliction of duty to dismiss them.

If the U.S. and its partners want to bring Ukrainian grain to market, they can do so by reinforcing the multiple rail and road routes now in existence throughout Ukraine. The European Union (EU) is in discussions to expand the number of so-called solidarity lanes, which aim to bolster land alternatives to Ukraine's ports. The EU can also do a better job clearing bottlenecks and cutting down on wait times at border checkpoints.

Ultimately, the most effective way to resolve the problem is to resurrect the Black Sea grain deal. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Putin this week and called on him to do exactly that. The resumption of the grain initiative will require certain concessions to Moscow, distasteful as they may be. The U.S. Treasury Department, for instance, can provide financial institutions with unambiguous assurances that transactions related to Ukrainian grain and Russian fertilizer exports be exempt from its broader sanctions regime against Russia and won't result in fines or prosecution.

There is no question Russia is culpable for a budding humanitarian crisis. But preventing this crisis is a global responsibility—and it need not involve the most extreme option.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at theChicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.