I don’t think there is a simple framing for it, and I don’t think it’s a binary decision. You might frame it in terms of how to make more of Africa food-independent regardless of this year’s crises. You might frame it in terms of carve-outs for sanctions. You might frame it in terms of escalating militarily instead of economically (at the risk of a LOT more death). Or even try to estimate the longer-term hedonic cost of just letting Russia attack without repercussion.
All of these involve comparisons of world states conditional on actions. They rarely can be done by picking two population numbers as representative of the entire outcome.
[Bowing out, here. Feel free to respond or make final comments. ]
I don’t think there’s a good way to make that comparison, because it’s strongly embedded in a false dichotomy.
What framing do you think would be better for thinking about the unintented consequences of letting a significant number of Africans starve?
I don’t think there is a simple framing for it, and I don’t think it’s a binary decision. You might frame it in terms of how to make more of Africa food-independent regardless of this year’s crises. You might frame it in terms of carve-outs for sanctions. You might frame it in terms of escalating militarily instead of economically (at the risk of a LOT more death). Or even try to estimate the longer-term hedonic cost of just letting Russia attack without repercussion.
All of these involve comparisons of world states conditional on actions. They rarely can be done by picking two population numbers as representative of the entire outcome.
[Bowing out, here. Feel free to respond or make final comments. ]