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Macroscope | The world is facing alarming security challenges – and they are all economic
- Leaders are being distracted by ‘national security’ issues when the graver threat is a deep and protracted global recession as inflation, looming debt and financial system crises threaten starvation and unrest
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It was ironic that at the Shangri-La Dialogue, resumed recently after a lengthy pandemic hiatus, the focus was on “national security” when the world has never been confronted with the kind of economic insecurity it faces now.
The litany of challenges facing the world economy is alarming and yet the dialogue, held in Singapore by the UK International Institute for Strategic Studies, was full of militant talk about defence issues and calls for stepped-up cooperation among strategic allies.
This is suggestive of a world that has lost its compass, where defence secretaries rather than finance or economy ministers decide policy, and where presidents and prime ministers allow the broader public interest to be subverted to the pursuit of supposed national security.
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Where economic security was mentioned during the Singapore dialogue, it was in the context of things such as defence against cyberattacks by foreign powers or the need to prevent access to sensitive technologies. This was largely irrelevant to the multiple economic issues the world faces.
Consider the background against which the debate took place. We are teetering on the brink of a probably deep and protracted recession as broad-based price inflation climbs to levels not seen in four decades, and as business confidence and investment ebb while corporate distress increases.
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This is just the start of the list of travails. Food shortages and even starvation threaten many countries as commodity costs rise savagely. Energy prices are climbing to where suffering and privation are a real risk, and social strains are mounting as a result.
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