Peter Isackson | Fair Observer

When inflation dominates headlines day after day, the public’s psyche focuses on tracking prices. In today’s consumer society, every upward variation can become trauma-inducing. Sri Lanka, Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina are now rattled by the protests of their citizens blaming their governments for inflation. In the recent history of developed nations, such as the US or France, rising gas prices alone have become signals that the social fabric may be on the verge of being torn apart.

Governments in the West have begun using the war in Ukraine to explain away inflation as a consequence of Russia’s invasion, but, as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell admitted during last week’s Senate hearings, the aggravating effect of the war on inflation has been marginal. Inflation was already endemic before the war.

The Ukraine war has produced effects far worse than the inflation of consumer prices. It has disrupted the global economy to the point of threatening famine in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and making businesses across the globe unprofitable. But prices are not the only example of inflation. The inflation of propaganda and particularly the rhetoric of politicians concerning the war may produce consequences far worse than consumer price inflation. Every day, political rhetoric brings us closer to accidental nuclear conflagration.

This aggravation appears to have begun influencing at least some political and military leaders to think beyond the dogmas of official rhetoric. Recently the first hints have appeared that the propaganda war may be loosening up to the point of permitting thought, if not action, evoking a possible negotiated settlement of the war.

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Jens Stoltenberg has provided one of those hints. Most people would expect the Secretary General of NATO should have significant influence on decision-making in NATO affairs, even while admitting that, like any good secretary, he knows how to take dictation from his bosses in Washington DC and Arlington, Virginia. Speaking in Finland earlier this month, he appeared to acknowledge a divergent view pointing towards resolution rather than indefinite........

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