A friend of mine, in reaction to the almost certain pending war between Ukraine and Russia, replied with a "I don't care".
Everyone ought to care.
Why?
Here's a few reasons.
A February/March war between the two countries, if we are to believe the threats about sanctions, will result in a nearly complete cutoff of exports from the Russian oligarchic petrostate. While in the long term, that may lead to Putin's downfall, in the near term it means oil prices will race up to over $120/bbl.
How high will they do? We can't tell, but seeing prices of $150/bbl for a while aren't impossible.
That will spur, maybe, enormous revived oil and gas production in the US, which is already seeing that occur now, but it will also push inflation into double digits.
If Russia pulls it off, which it will in the short term, it'll also convince Leninist China that it can do the same, making the near term likelihood of an invasion of Taiwan, which will involve the US directly if it occurs, that much more likely.
Because this is obvious, the military budget of the US, which had been thankfully and finally declining, will start to increase once again. It'll have to.
It'll also mean that an isolated Russia will be more likely to take direct action against the former pieces of its empire outside of NATO. Why not? It'll have nothing to lose. Byelorussia may be doing Moscow's bidding right now, but within the next year. . . well, it'll just be a reincorporated par of Mother Russia.
In the meantime, a modern terrorist war will develop in Ukraine. Ukraine has prior experience with these, and they've all been really nasty.
None of these are good things.
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