Much ado about everything

The G7, NATO, & ECB meetings this week provide a sense of the scale & scope of current global challenges, and some of the emerging responses

‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions’, Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act IV, Scene V)

An eventful week of international meetings in Europe demonstrates the scale and scope of the challenges facing decision-makers around the world.  From the G7 meetings in the Bavarian Alps, to the NATO Summit in Madrid, and the ECB conference in Portugal, policy-makers have a full and complicated agenda.

Three things struck me from this week’s discussions: the multiple, intersecting economic and political challenges that governments are dealing with; the global reach of events in Europe, and the strengthening coherence of the West (for now); and the rapid adaptation of countries and institutions to a disruptively changing world.

Polycrisis

The G7 and NATO meetings were dominated by the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  But there are also a broader set of economic and political challenges, which policy-makers are struggling to address.

The G7 again communicated fu…