Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has argued that the global economy has quietly slipped into the opening phase of a long-term world war, and that investors and the public are missing the scale of the conflict because they remain fixated on short-term headlines.
In an essay for TIME, the veteran macro investor has said the recently announced two-week ceasefire in the U.S.-Israel-Iran war has lulled markets into expecting a quick return to normal, as "Hvylya" reports.
Dalio frames the Iran conflict as one theater in a broader confrontation pitting China, Russia, Iran and North Korea against the United States and its allies. "It may sound like hyperbole to say we are in a world war, but it is indisputable that we are now in an interconnected world that has a number of shooting wars going on," he wrote.
He listed the Ukraine-Russia-Europe fight, the Israel-Gaza-Lebanon-Syria war, the Yemen-Sudan-Saudi Arabia conflict and the U.S.-Israel-GCC-Iran war as interconnected theaters that together resemble past world wars, which Dalio said "were generally slipped into without any clear start dates or declarations of war."
His indicators on the monetary order, domestic politics and geopolitical stability, he said, suggest a transition "from the pre-fighting stage to the fighting stage," comparable to the 1913-14 and the 1938-39 periods. Dalio added that mid-sized states are beginning to reconsider nuclear weapons as both defensive and offensive tools, a shift he called especially dangerous.
The investor stopped short of predicting an all-out global conflict. "I don't know what's going to happen. I still hope for a peaceful world built on win-win relationships rather than damaged by lose-lose ones," he said.
Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on George Friedman's argument that the coming Trump-Xi summit will reshape global geopolitics far more than the Iran war itself.