And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away Revelation 21 .1
The invasion of Ukraine has changed the world forever. Geography, politics, economics and culture, even the way we feel, will never be the same again. The reverberations of 24th February 2022 will be felt by generations yet unborn. In the next few weeks we at LSS will be running a sequence of pieces in response. They will look at things like how we got here. Back at the age we have lost. How things in our new world may start to play out. The opportunities we have now missed. And maybe, just maybe, how something positive may be salvaged from this mess-if only for the sake of the children.
To start you off, we have chosen Robert Peston of ITV. Always an admirable thinker, his piece called How Putin has killed globalisation and what that means for us, is a must-must-must read. [1] Robert starts with economics, then draws his conclusions appropriately
Firstly, it’s the final death of globalisation (the patient has been sick since 2007). This is bad news for people in new economies like India and China, where living standards have been rising. But it’s good news for people in the old rustbelt towns in the US and elsewhere. Because supply chains will shorten, manufacturing will be repatriated, and wages will rise. However, so will inflation. Traders will no longer be able to source the cheapest product, and the world will divide into “capital blocks”, meaning interest rates will rise and stay high. Security will trump efficiency, always. Perhaps most significant of all is this extract from the end of Robert’s article:
…. unless we recognise the magnitude of the shock this crisis has caused to us, we’ll be less able to challenge the current tyrant, his imitators and successors.…..
……….we may decide that the definitive moment globalisation died was when China, India and South Africa all abstained on the United Nations Vote condemning Putin’s invasion. If they are so alienated from the global rules and norms that have delivered rising prosperity to them in recent decades, we have to look much more to ourselves for our economic security.
To which we add: there can be no economic security without political and military security. You have been warned.
#putin #ukraine #russia #war #invasion #economy
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