At least 18 ships, including loads of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, have departed. Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports had sent food prices soaring and raised fears of more hunger in the Middle East and Africa. The latest: Grain shipments from Ukraine are gathering pace under the agreement hammered out by Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations in July. Yet the threat Russia poses remains one that Europeans could handle themselves, with America acting as a supporter rather than the leader. In the security environment now emerging, with Russia menacing Eastern Europe, the United States is set to face major costs and the ultimate risk: great-power war between nuclear peers. share), and the gap between its economic output and that of Western Europe was several times smaller than Russia’s shortfall today. During the Cold War, by contrast, the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact boasted land forces superior in number to those of NATO (including the U.S. Although Russia has built a formidable military, one that enables it to launch wars like that in Ukraine, NATO’s European members collectively outspend Russia on defense. After all, the Russian economy is roughly one-fifth the size of that of the European Union, and that was before the severe sanctions of the past week.
At the same time, Russia poses far less a threat to overrun Europe and threaten American security or prosperity than the Soviet Union did. The prospect of further Russian aggression in Eastern Europe cannot be dismissed as negligible, as it was in the 1990s or 2000s. Russia’s assault on Ukraine ends that chapter and begins a new one.
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