While Americans simultaneously complain about sharply rising fuel prices and sharply declining housing prices, citizens around the globe are complaining about stratospherically high food prices that are leaving millions of people in some of the poorest nations of the world unable to pay for even the most basic necessities of life. Perhaps not surprisingly, this popular discontent around the globe is bubbling up into violent clashes with governments, leading to the very real risk of global destabilization.

Last week, page one stories in both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times highlighted the true extent of the global dislocation caused by rising food prices. Think police in riot gear, massive protests by impoverished citizens and heartbreaking photos of poor citizens rummaging through trash heaps for food. The government in Haiti has already crumbled, and foreign policy advisers are already warning that large-scale violence and rioting could follow in any of 33 different countries, including Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana, and Uzbekistan. This obviously has a lot of people worried. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund just convened an emergency meeting of bankers and high-ranking diplomats to sort out the issues.

On the surface, the solution would seem to be clear: wealthy developed nations need to get food as quickly as possible to poor, less-developed nations, and deal with all the associated costs later. However, it's a bit more complex than that.

For one thing, there's strong anti-American resentment in these nations, with many citizens blaming the U.S. for the higher food prices. Finance ministers in these nations are pointing to the ethanol craze in the U.S., which is pushing up the prices of food crops across the world. Rather than blaming themselves, these nations have found a natural target -- Americans burning corn for fuel. (Turkey's finance minister called the use of food for biofuels "appalling.")

Another factor is that many of these governments are taking a "let them eat cake" approach to the idea of popular revolt. In Haiti, (now deposed) President Rene Preval looked out at a crowd of citizens and taunted them: "[I]f Haitians could afford to carry cellphones, which many do carry, they should be able to feed their families. 'If there is a protest against the rising prices,' he said, 'come get me at the palace and I will demonstrate with you."

To quote one famous revolutionary from another era, What is to be done?