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The World in Review: "2022 - The Most Turbulent Year We Have Known"
Oded Eran 01/01/2023
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Imagine a few large meteorites hitting the earth at the same time and you will get a picture of the world in the past year. Among the various components: the COVID-19 pandemic; the war in Ukraine and its impact on the supply of food and energy to the international markets; the competition of the superpowers and its effect on the supply chains; the shrinking of the leading economies, mainly China, the US, and Europe; and the climate crisis.
Another annual conference on the climate crisis did not fundamentally correct the backwardness of most countries of the world, including Israel, in dealing with the consequences of the continued use of traditional energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas. The war in Ukraine, beyond the danger of degeneration into a nuclear conflict, forces Europe to look for oil and gas in other markets in the short term, even though in the longer term it will accelerate the transition to green energy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the regime in China. President Xi Jinping did indeed extend his term beyond what generally accepted limits, but the mass and prolonged closures brought citizens to the streets, and economic growth will only reach half of the goal set by the regime. The "zero Covid" policy was replaced by a policy of few restraints.
Russia, which had sold a barrel of oil for $120 in early 2022, sold a barrel of oil at the end of the year for less than $60. The Russian tanks that invaded Ukraine at the end of February 2022 were mostly destroyed and Russia withdrew from large areas it had conquered. The leaders of China and Russia, who formed an ideological-strategic alliance on the eve of the war, failed to hide their differences on the subject of the war in their conversation at the end of the year.
President Biden, who opened 2022 with a relatively low ratings in the US polls, managed to prevent the transfer of control of the US Senate to the Republicans at the end of the year, and Trump, who was expected to be his opponent again in 2024, is immersed in legal disputes. On the other hand, the American economy was caught in rising inflation in the face of a reduction in economic activity that forced the government to resort to interest rate hikes on the one hand and capital injections through huge infrastructure development budgets and the return to supremacy in the chip industry on the other.
The year 2023 opens with all the crises that marked 2022 still with us. The bright spots in 2022 were few. One of them was the understanding of most actors in the global arena that managing the competition between them requires responsibility. It is hoped that this understanding will lead to the advancement of solutions to the problems that threaten humanity. By the way, this insight of "competition out of responsibility" is also relevant for Israel, which experienced a governmental upheaval in 2022.