The Hungry Giant: the Grain Trade Game Between the United States and the Soviet Union (1945~1991)

In 1972, like many places on the Eurasian continent, the Soviet Union suffered from a severe drought. The wheat harvest was severely damaged and food problems were imminent. According to the consistent "food strategy" of the United States, this is the time when prices are sky-high. The Soviet Union must pay a huge price if it wants to fill the huge food gap. However, surprisingly, it was not Brezhnev who was on pins and needles at this time, but Nixon in the White House. It turned out that the Soviet Union had long expected a poor harvest. Before the output was announced, it pretended to have a bumper harvest and deceived the investigators specially sent by the United States. In the end, it bought one-third of the United States' grain reserves at a very low price. As a result, the United States made less than 3 billion U. S. Dollars. To make matters worse, U. S. Food inventories have seriously declined, food prices have skyrocketed, and unprecedented food shortages have occurred. In this food game between the United States and the Soviet Union, the United States was completely defeated, so much so that the American media called this incident the "Grain Robbery." And this is the epitome of the decades-long food-centered game between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II... This book takes the grain trade between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991 as the object, and discusses and analyzes the development process, important events, and policies implemented by the two countries and the global grain trade during this period. On this basis, it focuses on a series of changes in the international situation caused by changes in the status and prices of oil and grain from the 1970s to the 1990s, analyzes the evolution of the U. S. Policy of using grain as a "weapon", and restores the impact of the Soviet Union's over-reliance on grain imports on its final disintegration.