Becoming anti-fragile in the age of chaos

Charlie Ang

SINCE the turn of the decade, we have already witnessed two unforeseen crises of epic proportions: the Covid-19 pandemic and Ukraine invasion. According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Covid-19 is “a global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations”. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war is the largest armed conflict in Europe since the end of WWII, elevating nuclear tensions arguably to the highest levels since the Cuba missile crisis at the height of the Cold War.

Both events unleash lasting shockwaves across economic, political, and social dimensions. Their effects are compounded when one crisis is overlaid on top of the other. The consequence, as Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam recently lamented, is that “we are facing risk and fragility that is unprecedented in the last 80 years”.