The resilience of the world economy is built on illusion - it's time the West woke up

Since 2022, a steady drumbeat of forecasts has warned that cascading military and political upheavals - war in Ukraine , conflict in the Middle East , an accelerating tariff war , the weaponisation of sanctions and the disruption of energy supplies - would eventually overwhelm the world economy’s capacity to absorb shocks. The most destructive of those scenarios have not materialised, or at least not yet. As the IMF's managing director Kristalina Georgieva stated last year, while previewing the fund's World Economic Outlook, the global economy "has generally withstood significant strains from various shocks".