So it's worth remembering that 99% of the corn in the US isn't food. it's food-for-food or industrial feedstock.

it's also worth remembering that North America is a quarter of the world's refinery capacity and the largest producer of petroleum in the world. Which is good because we're the largest consumer of petroleum by far and our biggest usage is in gasoline for automobiles.

We can't dictate how much ethanol goes into anyone else's fuel. But by cutting our own mix we free up production to counterbalance the Russians. It was never going into corn flakes, corn meal or corn chowder, it was always destined for corn syrup, livestock feed or plastics. And considering Chinese meat consumption is double American meat consumption and most of it is grown in the US, diverting feedstock to ethanol production (1) affects the Chinese more than we do, and they're the ones buying Russian oil (2) prevents agribusiness from experiencing any blowback from geopolitics (3) makes it look like we're doing something about gas prices.

Seems like a whole slew of secondary world power shifts are happening and a lot of them do not seem positive for Europe though maybe good for the USA in the medium term.

It's the death of neoliberalism. The argument was that the US had won capitalism and everyone else was going to fall in line. We now see that US-style capitalism is not a settled thing and that other ideas are competing. In my life we've gone from a bipolar world to a unipolar world to a multipolar world to now maybe a bipolar world again, and capitalism always looks better when you have something to compare it to.

I really don’t see what starving a bunch of countries out and creating global unrest really gains the US either.

Depends. Can you pin it on the Russians? Can you pin it on the Chinese? Because if you can convince everyone else that Putin and Xi are bad but Biden is good, you get more favorable trade terms. The more favorable your trade terms, the less you have to fight for global hegemony. Wallerstein made the point that empires fall the minute you have to back up your global trade with force rather than economic enticement, which isn't new it's just another way to highlight soft power.

What do we gain from high food prices except more wars and refugees?

Haha those refugees spill all over Turkey, Poland, Greece and other brown states. Americans lose their shit about the southern border but it's got nuthin on the Syrian crisis. Meanwhile we get to invite qualified applicants to apply for asylum, same as it ever was. From a geopolitical standpoint you absolutely want to create a refugee crisis wherever you have economic competitors.

There seems to be a much larger global conflict that’s occurring that is occurring at a much grander scale than any one entity can control the strategy for.

You want chocolate or vanilla?

Jason Hickel's The Divide is about the global economic system and how it is used to repress the downtrodden and make life worse for everyone. It is a liberal perspective on all the harm capitalist hegemony causes for the world at large.

Peter Zeihan's The Accidental Superpower is about the global economic system and how it is used to reinforce the righteous and justified rule of the One True People and how everyone else can suck it. Also holy shit the man loves navies.

They both go through the same facts and figures, Hickel pretty much focused on how the rich use economic leverage to make life miserable for everyone else, Zeihan entirely focused on how USA! USA! USA!

Hickel's book is a hard read. He makes the argument that every altruistic thing the United States has ever done was actually a craven powergrab that screwed everyone else nearly immediately. Zeihan's book is an infuriating read. He makes the argument that the suckers deserve it.