The war in Ukraine has affected most of the world, even though it is a very local war that shows that the global village is more than a sound bite, then it is our reality.
U-turn in refugee attitudes
Putin will lose the war, but it will take him a while to realize it. In the meantime, Denmark can expect that in the long run 100,000 refugees will come from Ukraine. Many are here already.
It is different from what we have experienced before, as they are almost all mothers and children, ie not whole families, and they want to go home as soon as possible.
In a short time, they have turned the political stance around foreigners upside down.
Very different in 2015
Honestly, there are no limits to the level of kindness they encounter. One cannot help but remember the reaction to the fact that the Syrian refugees went down the highway in 2015. At the time, it was a race to the bottom among politicians and journalists to see who could be the most negative and compassionate.
The media has played a big role. The tales of mothers and children leaving their homes with just a weekend bag and a doll or a teddy bear fleeing across borders to the neighboring western states have had a massive impact.
It’s a 180-degree turn in our stance. We are now waiting to see if this sympathy will spread to the Syrian camp children or Afghan translators. At the very least, it is hopefully a beginning for politicians to dare to show their human side again.
To cope with an energy crisis
But even though politicians are nervous about the arrival of refugees, there are bigger problems to face.
The sanctions have revealed an energy imbalance in the light of Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. Prices have risen sharply and we may face shortages. But it has at least made us rethink our supply chains, so from a climate perspective, it’s still the makeover we needed.
It is time for nuclear energy to prevail. About 50 years ago, we condemned it in the same breath as nuclear weapons, but today we are happily importing nuclear energy and sleeping soundly at night under NATO’s nuclear umbrella.
Even the gas fields in the North Sea, which were closed and cordoned off, will probably be opened for some time to remedy the shortage.
Inflation a concern again
The energy crisis has caused fuel prices to rise, along with most other commodities, meaning that inflation, an irrelevance for the last decade, is now a major concern again.
But there is one advantage: we will soon be able to say goodbye to negative interest rates on bank deposits – a hard nut to swallow as it is against everything we have ever learned about money and banks.
The importance of institutions
If we have not learned anything else from the war in Ukraine, we now know how delicate our global harmony is and how necessary it is to build institutions to deal with a world of unpredictable leaders like Putin, Orban and Trump. It emphasizes the importance of the EU.
It has also reminded us of the importance of solidarity, and when the world is back on its feet, we can face climate change with renewed determination – together with Russia back in the loop, as we are all citizens of this: our only world.
Source: The Nordic Page