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The Beginning Of The End Of Globalization
- The global pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Western sanctions that followed have sparked a new debate on the future of globalization as we know it.
- In Q2 2020, at the dramatic start of the pandemic, global trade was down 18.5%, compared to the same period the previous year.
- “Rather than the cheapest, easiest and greenest sources, there’ll probably be more of a premium on the safest and surest.”
There is an eternal debate among various experts as to when globalization actually started; whether it was with the Silk Road, the Vikings, Columbus's voyage, or even before then, with the earliest human migratory routes.
Now, it’s no longer relevant when it started. Instead, the new question is whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will end it.
Russia’s war on Ukraine and the Western sanctions that necessarily followed, could have a lasting impact on globalization, a process that regardless of when the first seeds were planted, really became entrenched a few decades ago.
Globalization was under attack on some level prior to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Most significantly, the global pandemic let us all see very clearly the vulnerabilities, especially with supply chains and our dependence on their global nature.
Now, everyone is desperately calling for “independence”, whether it is of energy or other resources.
