Existential Risk – Why we all need to pay attention to Ukraine

MBMG Thought Leadership

by Paul Gambles

Why we all need to pay attention to Ukraine 🇺🇦 

Tensions in Ukraine could escalate and spiral to become the most significant geo-political conflict in our lifetimes. The risks remain contained at this time, but we shouldn’t underestimate what could happen in a way that would have potentially catastrophic implications, reaching far beyond capital markets and asset prices.

David Lloyd George, the UK Prime Minister from 1916-18 described the outbreak of World War I as “a tragic accident” that none of the powers either wanted or expected, but found themselves backed into a corner, or in his words “ over the precipice" into war. Historian Christopher Clark has blamed political leaders for ‘stumbling into war’ like sleepwalkers. Most of the actual combatants had little idea where Serbia was prior to the ’39 days’ of 1914 that led to hostilities breaking out and even less idea, why the Independence of Belgium was a matter that would tear Europe apart.

Similarly, World War II largely came about because the various political leaders assumed that their shared lack of appetite for a resumption of global hostilities would outweigh any obligation to take up arms because of Germany’s occupation of Poland. There are worrying signs that Ukraine could become the present-day equivalent to Serbia or Belgium or Poland – that the consequences of underestimating the significance of Ukraine could quickly escalate and spiral out of control.

That’s certainly not a base case but it is a risk that while small, is no longer negligible and, bearing in mind that over half the global population were born after 1991, this could prove to be the biggest geo-political risk most people have experienced.

This is not a political statement or an academic history paper. It is simply intended to provoke readers to realize that when any sides in a dispute fail to try to understand the perspective of the other, the outcomes can be sub-optimal. In geopolitics, sub-optimal outcomes have cost millions of lives.

To read the full article, click https://mbmg-group.com/article/existential-risk-why-we-all-need-to-pay-attention-to-ukraine