By Zanny Minton Beddoes
The editors of the Collins English Dictionary have declared “permacrisis” to be their word of the year for 2022. Defined as an “an extended period of instability and insecurity”, it is an ugly portmanteau that accurately encapsulates today’s world as 2023 dawns. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the biggest land war in Europe since 1945, the most serious risk of nuclear escalation since the Cuban missile crisis and the most far-reaching sanctions regime since the 1930s. Soaring food and energy costs have fuelled the highest rates of inflation since the 1980s in many countries and the biggest macroeconomic challenge in the modern era of central banking. Assumptions that have held for decades—that borders should be inviolable, nuclear weapons won’t be used, inflation will be low and the lights in rich countries will stay on—have all been simultaneously shaken.
Three shocks have combined to cause this turmoil. The biggest is geopolitical. The American-led post-war world order is being challenged, most obviously by Mr Putin, and most profoundly by the persistently worsening relationship between America and Xi Jinping’s China. The resolve with which America and European countries responded to Russia’s aggression may have revitalised the idea of “the West”, particularly the transatlantic alliance. But it has widened the gap between the West and the rest. The majority of people in the world live in countries that do not support Western sanctions on Russia. Mr Xi openly rejects the universal values upon which the Western order is based. Economic decoupling between the world’s two biggest economies is becoming a reality; a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is no longer implausible. Cracks are also appearing in other longstanding geopolitical certainties, such as the alliance of convenience between America and Saudi Arabia.
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