Give Ukraine more artillery, and let the Navy break Russia’s blockade

Although neither the world nor Americans want the United States to be “the world’s policeman,” for decades, the world’s (relative) orderliness and prosperity have depended on the U.S. Navy policing the global commons: the oceans. Hence, for example, the Navy’s freedom-of-navigation exercises that today contest China’s lawless sovereignty claims concerning the South China Sea.

However, the Navy’s strenuous but noble and global mission is perhaps being abandoned where today it matters most: in the Black Sea. Russian naval forces there are preventing exports of the Ukrainian grain that the Russians are not stealing…

Naval forces — including Britain’s mine-clearing talents (to remove mines Ukraine placed to deter Russian attacks from the sea) — should be promptly employed to break Putin’s illegal blockade before it has its intended effect of mass starvation. If Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling deters the nations supporting Ukraine from using their ample naval competencies to execute a humanitarian policy, his contempt for the West will be ratified, and his appetite for additional aggressions will be whetted.