Where You Are Now - A Macro Look (Part 2)
Part 2 of my multipart series looking at the world in 2022 and projecting an outlook.
Europe
Europe is obviously in a crazy situation, let’s start with the major pain point currently and that’s the war in Ukraine and we’ll extend outwards.
Russia initiated a full scale war against Ukraine. I’ve covered it all in detail on this Substack, so we’ll continue on a granular level. The Russian military pretty much embarrassed itself in the first phase of the war and got many of their troops killed unnecessarily by doing things like having paratroopers go out and take airfields but provide them zero support. Blitzing with tanks and support could not catch up to them so they ran out of fuel. Seeing theses Russian blunders, Ukraine gained confidence that they could actually defeat them. Russian’s readjusted their strategy realizing they can’t blitz Ukraine. They became more conservatives and began making gains in the south and connected Crimea and the Donbas. Ukraine counterattacked and took back some territory and claimed a lot of equipment that was left behind. Russia then initiates a draft to get more troops in the war.
Russian Economics
This war put Russia in a bad position, western businesses and allies can no longer do business with it. Some people believe this is no big deal but they’re fooling themselves. Even without sanctions Russia’s GDP was close to the size of Brazil’s and a lot of their equipment and industries used western tech. Money and tech aside, Russia’s birth rate was already an issue and now the war is making it much worst with now over possibly 100k casualties in 2022.
A few amazing things Russia has going for it is It’s abundance of gas, food and fertilizer. They supplied most of Europe with natural gas and a lot of the world with fertilizer.