Inflation was running hot even before Russia invaded Ukraine, but disruption in Europe's bread basket certainly hasn't helped matters and there are now plenty of warnings that a global food shortage could be looming. Even if the normal cycle of sowing crops and harvesting them can keep going uninterrupted in Ukraine, wheat exports would still need to get out of the country. With Russia currently blockading the Black Sea, this seems like a major challenge. In this episode of Odd Lots, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis presents one idea to get Ukrainian grains out and to the rest of the world. He suggests reaching back to a military playbook last used in the Tanker War between Iraq and Iran. Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity.
Points of interest in the pod:
How to get wheat out of Ukraine — 3:31
Would this be a provocation to Russia? — 6:51
On reflagging Ukrainian ships — 11:44
Admiral Stavridis’s experience in Operation Earnest Will — 13:12
How far would a naval escort need to go? — 15:17
The relationship between navies and merchant shipping — 16:32
What needs to be done on the land side — 21:30
Labor shortage in the military — 24:04
How tough is it to demine around Ukraine? — 25:43
The importance of supply chains in military conflict — 27:42
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Joe Weisenthal: (00:10)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal/
Tracy Alloway: (00:15)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Joe: (00:17)
Tracy. There are numerous forces that are sort of conspiring, so to speak, to create shortages in various commodities, but a persistent one clearly is the ongoing war, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Tracy: (00:33)
Right. So this is something we've spoken about, I guess, multiple times at this point, but Ukraine of course, sometimes referred to as the bread basket of Europe or whatever cliché you want to use, a big portion of the world's grains are derived from Ukraine. And I mean, there's also lots of grain growing in Russia as well, which is also off limits now, but there's an issue of, obviously Russia is blockading the country. It's hard to get that grain out, which means that there's a shortage, which means that prices are rising, which means that we've seen pressure, I mean, particularly in emerging markets -- places like Egypt that actually get a lot of their food supply from Ukraine.
Joe: (01:09)
Yeah, that's right. And so we can look here at a chart of say wheat futures and the price is obviously going up, but for the American consumer, they're sort of like underlying food commodity prices. They're only a modest contributor to food inflation overall, and in many emerging markets, they're much more exposed directly to the price. And what's worse is not just the price, but outright shortages. So it's one thing to say, okay, the price is up. It's another thing to say, you literally cannot get the grain. You literally cannot get the wheat, but that is the risk that's being faced right now for multiple reasons. But in large part due to this war.
Tracy: (01:46)
Right. And you can imagine that would manifest itself in political pressure in a lot of places in the world. Like when people can't eat, they tend to get angry. I mean, rightfully so.
Joe: (01:57)
Yeah. And so then the question is, I guess there's two questions. One is what is happening with wheat plantings in Ukraine? But then even if plantings were to somehow be sustained amid the war, how much of the grain can actually get out? And as you mentioned right now, there's very little getting out.
Tracy: (02:16)
Yeah. And this sort of goes back to, I guess, the military tension between Russia and Ukraine, but how do you actually get supplies into the country and how do you get vital goods out? Because you still want the supply of wheat and food to be flowing relatively freely. And you also want Ukraine to be able to make some money, right? At a time when it actually needs money and could use that to buy weapons and supplies.
Joe: (02:41)
That too. All right. So for more, we are going to be talking about some of the options to actually do this, and whether there's a way for the US military or Western forces to play a positive role in safely getting grain out of the country. We are going to be speaking to Admiral James Stavridis, he was, was among the things, the 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. He has personal experience in perhaps similar operations or similar situations of moving commodities around the world. He has a really deep understanding of this stuff. So Admiral, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.
Admiral James Stavridis: (03:15)
I really appreciate it. It's great to be with both of you. Thank you.
Joe: (03:19)
Absolutely. Thank you so much. So to start, you give us your assessment of the current situation, why exporting grain from Ukraine right now is so constrained?
James: (03:31)
Well, I'm really struck by a book I just published called ‘To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision.” And it's about decision making under extreme stress. And so here, I think we have a pretty good example of both Vladimir Putin on, if you will, the dark side of the equation, and Volodymyr Zelensky on the lighter side, on our side of the equation. Both of these men are literally risking it all. And one of the crucial components of it is this ability or not to export grain. I think you and Tracy, Joe did a nice job laying out the challenges globally, if it doesn't get out. So we come pretty quickly to okay, Admiral. So how would you get the grain out? You know, I don't need to tell an Odd Lots audience that 95% of all international trade moves by sea. And grain of course, is a commodity that moves out in mass.
And so the idea of trying to truck it out or even train it out of Ukraine, just it doesn't serve. So the problem is Russia has taken their Black Sea fleet -- about 40 war ships -- and effectively they've blockaded the entire coastline of Ukraine. They already control on the land side about 70% of that coastline on the Black Sea, but that remaining 30% has Odesa in it. And Odesa is like Los Angeles, Long Beach in the context of the United States. It's the port. And therefore the key is how can we, if you will, open that port. And at the moment, it's not only blocked by Russian war ships, but it's mined-in both by the Ukrainians and reportedly by the Russians. So it's a very complex maritime problem.
And to very quickly sketch it out, what we would do first is get rid of the mines. I think that's pretty obvious why you need to do that. And maybe some of the listeners can remember back to the 1980s when Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, what did the US do? We got rid of the mines. We certainly have that technology, our allies, there's a standing NATO mine sweeping task force that could be sent up in the Black Sea to do this. We got rid of the mines in the 1980s in the Arabian Gulf. And then we re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers as US vessels. And then we escorted them, put a cruiser, a destroyer, or a frigate alongside every one of them. Provided air cover and simply drove them in and told the Iranians, in effect, ‘don't even think about it’. And that solution could be applied here in Ukraine. And if we don't move in that direction pretty quickly, I think the consequences of global food security are quite dire.
Tracy: (06:50)
So I have a bunch of questions already, but maybe let me start with the most pressing one, but would an escort of ships in the manner that you just described, would that not be seen as a provocation by Russia?
James: (07:07)
I think it would be seen as a provocation and we have to ask ourselves, is it sufficient, the need to do this? Is it sufficient to accept the level of risk. Back to the book I just published – ‘To Risk It All’ -- that's exactly what I examine in the book in a series of maritime case studies, is when are you willing to accept risk? And is it justified by your ability to mitigate the risk? And again, we get rid of the mines. We put escorts with all these ships and we also demarche, we publish NOTAMs – again, I don't have to tell an Odd Lots audience what that is. And we tell the Russians…
Joe (7:54):
Wait, you do.
Tracy: (07:56)
Yeah, both Joe and I just looked at each other.
Joe: (0:757)
You don’t have to tell the audience, but you do have to tell the hosts.
James: (07:59)
Ok, I overestimated.
Joe: (08:02)
No, no, I'm sure the audience gets it. It's the hosts in this case, you need to explain it to me.
James: (08:07)
Okay, indeed. For our hosts, a NOTAM is a notice to mariners. And it can be published about a floating object that's become an obstruction, about newly discovered underwater formations, or about a missile shoot or a gun shoot that a naval warship's going to conduct. It's really just the equivalent of posting public notice of operations. So we would, we would demarche the Russians. What that means is go diplomat to diplomat. And we would issue NOTAMS – notice to mariners, which goes, if you will, mariner to mariner, warships to warships. The calculus then shifts over to the Russians. And here you just have to put yourself in the shoes of the Russians and ask yourself, you know, in the words of Clint Eastwood, are you feeling lucky today? I don't think the Russians would take a shot at a merchant ship escorted by a US warship, therefore highly defended, doing a humanitarian mission, taking grain to a starving world. I just don't see Russia taking that shot.
Joe: (09:17)
You know, there is obviously an incredible amount of hesitance about committing any sort of US, anything that would resemble sort of direct US military involvement. We're willing to send weapons and of course, money to Ukraine, obviously all of NATO, well short of actually anything beyond that, but in your view, something like escorting a ship through the Black Sea, or de-mining the area does not come close to that at all, in your view.?
James: (09:49)
It does not, as follows. Where we have drawn the red line as to US involvement is on the soil of the Ukrainian land or Russian soil. But here we're talking about neither of those. We're talking about international waters. So these ships would not be passing through Russian-claimed waters at all. These would be international high seas. So I think that's a crucial difference and one that we would certainly articulate and be very clear with the Russians, look, we're not entering your territorial waters to conduct this mission. We're going into a Ukrainian port, but through international waters. And of course through the Ukrainian territorial sea with their permission. So I think this passes the risk test, but I will also say at this point, do we really need to worry about provoking Russia? In the sense that they're the ones who have invaded this country with 200,000 troops, committed hideous war crimes, are refusing negotiations and are blocking food from the rest of the world. I mean, at some point you just have to look a bully in the eye and say, ‘no, your behavior is unacceptable. Here's what we're going to do about it.’ I think we've hit that point in this particular course of action.
Tracy: (11:32)
So one thing you mentioned, in your writings on this topic is the idea of having to re-flag the Ukrainian carriers to something else. Can you explain why that would need to be done?
James: (11:44)
I actually don't think that is a crucial step. I think it ups the ante for Russia, but let's face it, as this audience will know, there are many, many flags of convenience all around the seas of the world. Many of these grain tankers are non-Ukrainian, but it does alleviate one aspect of this, which is that it would be Russia, conceivably could say, well, we're engaged in a special military operation. We're attacking Ukrainian targets. So we would say, okay, we'll take down the Ukrainian flag and put up -- really [it] wouldn't have to be a US flag. It could be Panamanian. It could be Greek. It could be any nation willing to participate. Could be any of the NATO nations, if NATO signed up to it. It would just be quite streamlined. And this was the case in the Operation Earnest Will in the 1980s in the Arabian Sea. It's just quicker. You can put a US flag on it because the US government says, yep, we'll take that ship. But is that crucial? No, I don't think so. And I don't think it would change the calculus particularly.
Joe: (12:57)
So you were part of that Operation Earnest Will in the late 1980s to get oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. Why don't you describe your role in that operation and what made it successful?
James: (13:12)
My role was, obviously that was many years ago. I was a very young Lieutenant Commander. I suppose I was in my late twenties, maybe 30 and I was the operations officer on an Aegis cruiser, USS Valley Forge. And as the ops boss, my job was to participate in all the planning that went into the operation, alongside the Admiral's flagstaff and my equivalents from all the other ships that were in the task force. So we would get together on the carrier and kind of sketch out the whole operation, would send it up the chain of command. It would get approved and come back. So step one for me was planning process -- very deeply involved. And then in the execution phase, I was the tactical action officer on board. The Valley Forge, effectively the officer on watch with the firing key.
So if we were overflown by Iranian combat aircraft, I had permission to shoot them down. If the Iranian small boats were to attack the tanker, I could engage them with our gun systems. Naturally if a situation like that developed the captain would come very quickly into the combat information center to make sure Lieutenant Commander Stavridis didn't do anything foolish, but as I described it, we would just sail right up through the Strait of Hormuz and up the center of the Arabian Gulf and go up. And the tankers would load oil up at the ports in Kuwait and then would turn around and take them back down. And when we got them into the Indian Ocean and out of range of Iranian aircraft and Iranian warships, we were able to cut them loose and off they would go.
Tracy: (15:02)
This was actually going to be my next question. So how far would a military escort for ships normally go? Do you take them all the way to, well, presumably you wouldn't take them all the way to their destination, but how do you decide when they're out of, you know, the danger zone?
James: (15:17)
Yeah. In that particular situation, it was relatively easy to calculate by looking at Iranian military capability. How far could their attack aircraft fly? How far did they typically operate warships? Answer in both cases -- not very far. In the case of Russia, I think safely speaking, we would escort them down through the Bosphorus, and out of the Black Sea and into the Aegean Sea. I think that's where you're going to cut them loose. Again, highly unlikely in my view that Russia is going to come after commercial shipping, frankly, whether it's Ukrainian flag or not. But let's say for sake of argument, we've re-flagged, and they're flying a US flag or a Danish flag from a NATO member. Very unlikely Russia’s going to go any anywhere outside their zone of control, which is really the Northern Black Sea.
Joe: (16:16)
More broadly today, what are the existing either US or NATO resources that either have the best equipment or the best experience in working with the safety and securing of commercial fleet?
James: (16:32)
All of the NATO navies do this quite well. And most of the NATO nations have very capable coast guards, including obviously our own. And again, an Odd Lots audience will know well, the close working relationship with the US coast guard to merchant shipping, that's replicated by the French coast guard, the German coast guard, the Danish coast guard. And I think that, you could certainly draw on that expertise. Finally, Tracy and Joe, I would say that, we have experience doing this, much more recently, during the period of time when I was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from 2009 to 2013, we were facing pirates off the coast of East Africa. This of course is the time of Captain Phillips, who is captured from the Maersk Alabama, rescued by a very heroic Navy operation, frankly, one of the case studies in my book ‘To Risk It All,’ is about that operation in that period of time. All of our navies worked very closely with the international shipping community, if you will. And I would go every few months to London, to the International Maritime Organization, which functioned as a kind of umbrella over the major shipping companies. So we had representatives there from all of them and the major navies that were part of the counter-piracy. So we've got very recent experience working alongside our merchant marine colleagues and frankly, that relationship is generally pretty comfortable.
Joe: (18:13)
So can you actually talk a little bit more about the sort of day-to-day relationship between the military and merchant carriers and, you know, I'm thinking, Tracy too, about even some of these conversations that we had with Zoltan Pozsar -- he already talked about this exactly where it's like, you know, what the Fed was to the financial crisis, the military is going to have to be the sort of global commodity crisis. But even before the sort of current acute tension, what is the sort of normal role that the US military or the navy plays in just sort of the securing of the global trade that I guess we all take for granted?
James: (18:52)
Yeah. I think the key phrase there Joe is ‘take for granted.’ And we all of us, the global population, kind of just feels as though there's no problems out there. And yet again, as recently as within the decade, we saw organized strongly land-based pirate operations coming out of Somalia. We continue to see pretty vicious piracy in the Straits of Malacca. We see it off the coast of West Africa. We see kind of hints of it in and around the Caribbean at times. So piracy continues. A second zone and I always say the oceans in many ways are the world's largest crime scene, another major challenge. And, you know, we tend to think of this as merchant ships, tankers, breakbulk, container ships, but how about the thousands and thousands of thousands of significant fishing craft that are out there?
They are commercial and they are under assault frequently. A lot of the piracy is directed against them. And by the way, a lot of them are conducting illegal fishery activities. And some of that is state-sponsored, by the way. So that's a long way of saying there are many problems out there and that's before we get into illegal dumping and pollution, again, that's commercial activity that's going on out there, albeit illegal. So all of the world's navies and coast guards are very focused on this and are working very closely, both ashore with conferences and symposia on exchanging information and data sharing. We share immense amounts of data from US maritime centers, for example, with commercial shipping companies and they reciprocate. It’s a very close and positive relationship. As we all know, the coast guard has a bit of a different role, more law enforcement. So, you know, they're going to have a perhaps less of a warm and cozy relationship. I think navies and commercial shipping are quite close and frankly have been back to the time of the ancient Greeks.
Tracy: (21:13)
So I know your expertise is on the shipping aspect for obvious reasons, but is there anything that would need to be done on the land side in order to get more grains to the port so that they could then be escorted and exported to the rest of the world?
James: (21:30)
Great question, Tracy. First we need to ensure that we're efficiently moving containers and cargos in and out of these ports, and let's face it. We have a bit of a double whammy here in the sense that we're still just coming off Covid in many places. We also are seeing very high inflation. It's impacting labor forces. We're facing a major strike at Los Angeles, Long Beach as we're recording this. And that's replicated around the world as longshoreman, for example, are looking at rising inflation. They want to organize, they want to get more understandably, so they can keep up with inflation. So we have to have efficient, well-run ports that offer good compensation for the kind of quality work we need in those ports.
Number two, we need to make sure that ports are safe and secure. We worked very hard during the period after 9/11 to create much more security around ports globally. And a lot of that is still in place, not unlike the implementation of the TSA regime in all the airports. We need to go back and re-look at that security, I think, and make sure that it meets today's needs. And then third, we need to ensure that logistically we can go from these ports quickly and efficiently into the nations that are receiving. So in the military context, we would say, this is from port to fort. Those railheads, those trucking systems, whatever the means of cargo delivery, is a whole secondary back office, if you will, where we, at least here in the United States, have some well-documented challenges as well. Like everything else in today's world, it's a big, complicated global supply chain. And when a portion of it is distended as it is now by the events in Ukraine on top of post-Covid -- let's hope post-Covid -- on top of staggeringly high inflation. It's a very difficult moment for global shipping and it will have impact on the grain in particular. And that I think, needs to be a key focus.
Joe: (23:55)
Very minor aside question is the military also facing a labor shortage right now? Like other entities are?
James: (24:04)
We are seeing some pressure on our recruiting, yes. And so for the first time in a long while, for example, the army has extended the tours of its recruiters. Those are the men and women who, you know, are out in the field trying to convince high school seniors to come join the military. And the reason they're doing that is because they're facing pressure meeting their targets for all the reasons we've talked about. And by the way, as an aside, it's important to know, and this may surprise many people, you know, who tend to think, ‘oh, well, you know, if I can't go to college or I don't want to go to college, I guess I'll just join the military.’ It's hard to be accepted as a volunteer in the US military. Only about 25% of high school seniors are eligible for military service. You’ve got to be a graduate. You’ve got to have reasonably high grades. You've got to be in essentially perfect health. You've got to have no drug use, no arrests.
Joe: (25:25)
Going back to the challenge right now in Ukraine, de-mining the water around Odesa or de-mining any water sounds difficult. What does it take to do that? And what is the timeframe for just that part to make it safe to move at all?
James: (25:43)
Right. So these are not floating mines. In other words, these are not mines that are just drifting all around. That's a much harder problem. These are mines that are fixed to the bottom and therefore you don't have to take them all out. You just gotta take out enough so that you can drive a tanker up a channel. So you gotta demine the channels. And that's a finite space that you have to do. Now, could Russia do some dirty tricks and throw some floating mines in there? Conceivable, particularly if they felt they could do it without us knowing it. But we're watching for that. They know we're watching for that. So let's take as a entering argument that you have to clear the channels. You have mine sweepers, and there are several classes of these, but there are ships that are devoted to this task. And they're quite capable. They have a very good sonar that can look into the water and find the mines. And then they have remotely-operated apparatus that can go and neutralize it. I don't want to go into more detail than that, but our capability in this regard is quite good. We practice constantly. To clear a channel from Odesa into clear waters of the Black Sea would be a matter of some weeks. It certainly wouldn't be months and months.
Tracy: (27:06)
So one thing we've been talking about on Odd Lots for the past couple of years now are supply chains and logistics, and it feels like the pandemic has really thrown into very sharp relief, just how much those matter and how much they are often taken for granted in the modern economy. And my understanding is that in military conflict, there has always been an emphasis on supply chains and logistics, because those are the things that can win or lose you wars. Can you talk a little bit more, just in general, about the importance of supply chains to military conflict?
James: (27:42)
I can Tracy. An old saying in the military is that amateurs focus on the strategy. The professionals are looking at the logistics. The business equivalent of that expression is ‘execution eats strategy for lunch,’ meaning logistics, right? And you know, again, Odd Lots audience, that's what we all do for a living --moving through these global supply chains and what we've discovered, nd our logisticians are the very best in the world full stop, military logisticians, but they've got a pretty controlled environment. And that sounds funny to say, right, because they're dealing with war, but they're also dealing from stockpiles. They have endless training, they constantly conduct, they have exquisite intelligence. They can mitigate the combat risk quite effectively. The military logisticians do not have to face the big challenge that the global supply chains face, which is that it it's kind of, it's all open source.
It’s in many ways, it's market-driven. It's not like these global shipping firms are getting together and training together and practicing together and write a schedule that they're going to follow for the next 10 years, which the military can do that becaise it has control over all these inputs in a way that big shipping companies just don't have control over the inputs. And as a result of that, the kind of supply chain issues hurt badly because they hit a system that had already moved so far to the just in time principle. But it was very vulnerable to these kind of distortions. And again, first it's Covid. Then it's the war. And then now it's this rampant inflation, all that is severely distending these global systems. It's going to require pretty significant rewiring, I think.
Tracy: (29:48)
Is there anything that private industry could learn from the military when it comes to managing supply chains?
James: (29:55)
Well, I mentioned a couple of things. One is training, another is information sharing with each other and with the government. And of course, you know, they're in competition and that's hard, but you know, look at the airlines on the issue of maintenance and safety. They constantly work together and share information. Thirdly, and we talked about it already, work with the various governments, build those relationships. Fourthly, international organizations being part of shipping professional associations, which many of these are a part of already, but also with the International Maritime Organization, for example, in London, be part of that kind of effort. There's four or five ideas for you.
Joe: (30:44)
Admiral James Stavridis, this was a real treat to hear your perspective and this sort of like deep knowledge that you have in this. Thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.
James: (30:53)
It's my pleasure. And I'll just mention it one more time, new book out, a maritime book that I think this audience would really like – ‘To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision’ -- about making decisions under extreme pressure and real risk.
Joe: (31:10)
I definitely want to read it now because just hearing you sort of like walk through the sort of, you know, the operation risk and the decision making and the difficulties sis really fascinating. Thank you for coming on!
You know, Tracy, just even beyond the acute crisis that we're facing with the war in Ukraine and the commodity shortage, in particular food, the role that the US military or that military plays in normal times, just sort of keeping the global trade operations going is definitely something that we haven't discussed yet.
Tracy: (31:57)
Oh totally. So I think when someone says, ‘oh, we're going to have a military escort for a bunch of ships carrying grain out of Ukraine.’ I think a lot of people, their knee-jerk reaction is like, ‘oh, this is a big, you know, departure from what the military normally does.’ But actually a lot of policing on the seas is done by the military. Someone has to keep those trade routes safe and typically it's the military.
Joe: (32:23)
Yeah. And obviously, you know, as he mentioned, there's piracy or criminality or his line was that the oceans are the biggest crime scene in the world. So this is always going on. And now of course there's this acute issue of, can we get grain out of Ukraine? Can the blockade be broken? Can it be broken in a way such that it doesn't dangerously escalate conflict?
Tracy: (32:45)
And I have to say, I still have some reservations about whether you could do that without provoking a response from Russia. But you know, I also appreciate the admiral’s statement that well, you know, they're the aggressor, so maybe we shouldn't worry so much about the response.
Joe: (33:01)
They’re the aggressor and it's in international waters and it's not necessarily an offensive operation to simply escort a ship carrying grain. So it's an interesting idea. And of course, as you know, it is a crisis, the global food crisis and it's been done before or at least something analogous such as the operation that he was part of in 1987.
Tracy: (33:23)
Yep. All right. Shall we leave it there?
Joe: (33:26)
Let's leave it there.
You can follow Admiral Stavridis on Twitter at @stavridisj.