For now, it even seems that the impact on the Portuguese pockets of this war 5000 kilometers away is greater than that of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, despite Kiev being some 3300 kilometers away from Lisbon. But don’t forget the inflation that arrived at the time via the rest of Europe, as well as the indirect impact of the end of Russian gas supplies to industrial colossi such as Germany, one of our great economic partners. It is almost impossible not to have an impact when there is war somewhere and it continues. For example, the Houthis’ attacks on Israel, in support of Hamas after the attacks of October 7, 2023, and especially on merchant ships sailing in the Red Sea, forced shipping companies to switch from the shorter Suez route to the Cape of Good Hope, with the inevitable increase in transport costs being reflected in products, especially those coming from Asia.
Of course, there are wars that affect us, in theory, less from an economic point of view, such as some conflicts in Africa, whether in Sudan or in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even if from a conscious point of view it is not at all comfortable to know that there are people dying in the African Great Lakes region because of the greed for rare metals that make it possible to produce batteries for the cell phones we carry in our coat pockets. But this affect less is always illusory, just think about how the distant civil war in Syria brought a million refugees to Europe in 2015 alone, with an impact still felt today in Germany, where a party hostile to immigration is already the second force in Parliament. Or how the various forgotten wars in Africa destroy the hopes of many young people of building a life in their own country and, thus, push them to a desperate emigration (not at all welcome for many) to Europe, crossing deserts before the final adventure of crossing the Mediterranean, generally while being exploited by mafias that traffic human beings.
Let’s hope that the war in Ukraine ends soon, and that the war in Iran doesn’t last forever either. May diplomacy work and may there be solutions. Functional, concrete. First of all, so that populations do not live in a daily life of fear. But also so that globalization can be felt again, above all, for good reasons and not for bad ones. Let us have no doubt that what is happening on the other side of the world can reach the most distant corners, even that corner that is still peaceful today in western Europe, even if nothing is comparable to being under bombs.
A warning of the risks, in fact, was made by Robert Kaplan, an American geopolitical expert, in an interview a few months ago with DN. Referring to one of the major sources of tension in the world, another strait, that of Taiwan, he even compares the possible impact of a war there with the wars in Europe and the Middle East (the one in Gaza, which is not now in Iran): “If we had a war in the Pacific between the two or three biggest economies in the world, and I’m talking about the United States, China and Japan, because of Taiwan, or because of the South China Sea, whatever, people would look at their bank accounts, at their investimentos, e veriam uma queda dramática. Os mercados financeiros mundiais incorporaram o impacto das guerras na Ucrânia e em Gaza. Mas não poderiam fazer o mesmo para uma guerra no Pacífico. Isso mudaria o nosso mundo. Os mercados iriam declinar dramaticamente. E os bancos centrais não teriam os meios para corrigir. Porquê isso? Porque teríamos uma guerra entre as duas ou as três maiores economias do mundo. Os Estados Unidos, a China e o Japão são as maiores economias. Teríamos uma guerra sobre as redes de abastecimento, as redes de abastecimento mais importantes. Teríamos uma war over the main maritime trade routes. In the South China Sea and Taiwan. As the world economy came to have a geographic center, that center was increasingly in the Pacific. That’s why I say that a war in the Pacific would change our lives and our world much more dramatically than what happened with the wars in Ukraine or the Middle East.
Worrying. A reminder that the world is interconnected, full of tensions involving powers. And that ignoring what happens far away is not just turning a blind eye to suffering, but can bring surprises.
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