Few days ago, the world woke up with the kind of headaches that may take quite a while to dissipate, the kind of headaches that indicates a much deeper disease than a simple transitory pain that we all have from time to time and that goes away on its own (Listen to the podcast post here). It’s becoming clear that the world is undergoing a major tremor which will affect our reality on many levels.
To begin with, it makes us focus on those who are the most directly affected. And of course, we have to think about the Ukrainian population itself. They are the most exposed to the sufferings and pains of war as we speak.
The second level is more pragmatic and it affects the stability of prices around the world; we have already warned about inflationary pressures that are underway after the shock experienced from the COVID crisis. The current conflict is just bringing us to another plateau of inflation with energy prices and food prices skyrocketing once again in the last few days.
The third level is more institutional. These events are going to have an impact on instruments of decision, on elections, on the very organizations that are involved in our lives. Here is France, you can feel that the center of focus for the presidential election is now shifting to that crisis. In the US, the midterm elections will clearly focus on the topic as well. These are 2 members of the security council at the UN. In fact, even the security council seems to be under intense internal tensions.
The fourth level is about the rest of the world; this conflict is not just about Europe and we need to wien the scope of our analysis. Indeed, we can already see that it will also pull other countries into positioning themselves. Turkey for example, a major emerging country is also controlling a key passage to the Black Sea through the Dardanelles strait. Ukraine has asked Turkey to prevent Russia’s navy from using that straight. India is also in an uncomfortable posture given the geopolitical tensions taking place around it as well. So that needs to be taken into account as well and will certainly be as important as the 3 other levels mentioned above.
Let me know what you think and looking forward to hearing from you.