The US’ raison d’être is (hopefully) not knowingly starving millions of people to death. When you’re making a deal of that size (between countries, not a company and consumer) no deal is purely transactional, there are ramifications.

Not that any other country would have acted differently. I am not here to metaphorically shit in the yard of the US. It is just business as usual when it comes to politics. Sadly. I just don't expect people to act with integrity when in positions of power. I still like to be pleasantly surprised if it happens - I just don't expect it.

Edit: Typo

Of course the US is complicit (just not solely complicit as you imply I claimed - nice rhetorical figure by the way just a bit too obviously applied). They knowingly let a dictator pay them in natural resources while these resources were lacking for the people and this lead to famine and mass starvation.

So to stay in your image: When Remington sells me a shotgun knowing I will go and use it to kill my family (because it was clearly visible) they are complicit.

If the US would not have know the consequences of their deal with Stalin for the ordinary people we would be talking about a different situation here. But the US knew. And they still took the grain and other resources. And that makes them complicit.

In my world, that makes the U.S. very clearly an accomplice to a dictator who is starving his people. And also profiteers from such a system.

But hey as if this were something new or shocking. I don't know about US educational system, but i thought it was public knowledge, that the US acted that way as their standard modus operandi for many decades now.

No matter if with South American dictators, with African dictators or even with dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, as long as they do not become too rebellious and do not challenge the supremacy of the USA the US are willing to trade and not look too closely towards the crimes against humanity these dictators are performing.

Take Saddam Hussein as an example.

Wasn't it the U.S. that continued to financially and militarily support Saddam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war even after he openly used chemical weapons? Without the U.S., Saddam would never have become head of state in the late 1970s. And the US gladly bought his oil - ignoring what he did.

This is the same as we Germans are currently also responsible (at least in part) for the prolongation of the war in Ukraine, because we still do not want to give up the gas supply from Russia. We are prolonging the war because our money is helping to finance Putin's military advance.

Our convenience and the intransigence of our government makes us complicit in the death of many civilians.

No, that's a very different metaphor.

The item being bought causes no harm. The problem is reckless spending. That puts the bar of responsibility in a very different place.

So he sold the grain that would feed his people in exchange for USD, Deutschmarks, Pound Sterling that he could use to buy industrial equipment.

I mean, it's not exactly out of place for Stalin to sacrifice his people's lives to realize his goals for Mother Russia. Plus the added benefit that the people dying were troublemakers anyways (Ukrainian nationalists).

Do note that when the famine did strike, those same foreign countries offered famine relief that Stalin promptly turned down.

The US was probably a net grain exporter at the time, so I think you are not presenting the situation very well. There is certainly complicity in working with an oppressive government that is starving its people, but saying it was done for "cheap food" when USSR was selling the food elsewhere and paying in dollars isn't the right way to present it.

had to or chose to?

It's an interesting thread, thanks for the link, but "knowingly and gladly" is not supported there, I don't see how you can lay any responsibility for Holodomor at Henry Ford's feet.