Good morning.
Lots of coverage this weekend on how the Ukraine war has changed the world. Check out this in the Wall Street Journal, this from TIME, and this from Chatham House. But let’s narrow the frame a bit: How has the war changed business? Still pretty profound. We’ll leave aside the continuing tack away from globalized supply chains—that was going on before the war started, and was only accelerated by Russia’s invasion. Same for inflation—the war worsened a preexisting problem. But beyond that, consider:
—Companies can no longer ignore geopolitics. This isn’t just because of far-reaching sanctions, of the sort the U.S. had already imposed on Iran. It’s because investors, customers and society at large now expect companies to take a stand, and are holding them accountable. There is some precedent for this in the anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s, but the anti-Russia reaction was much faster, bigger, stronger and pervasive, and driven in part by the relentless flogging from Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.
