This is only absurd if you consider the nation-state to be the fundamental unit of mutual aid.
If you consider a different division of population - the corporation, or the city-state, or the tribe, or the individual, for example - it makes perfect sense. Even before "monstrous" capitalism, you'd get plenty of situations where one tribe would actively pillage the farms of a neighboring tribe - food "exports" and local starvation.
You might argue that this is monstrous as well, and I'd even agree with you, but that's an argument against being shitty to your fellow human beings, and not specifically against capitalism. Capitalism is just yet another definition of "tribe", where the corporation that employs you is the tribe that you owe allegiance to, damn all the other tribes.