An age of comfort, freedom and peace, for those of us in the West at least, is coming to an end. A world many judged to be on a trajectory towards free trade, liberal democracy and human rights has been shown to be fragmented, competitive and dangerous.

Russia has launched the war in Ukraine. Its ally China threatens its neighbours and challenges the West, stealing industrial and military secrets as it goes. Iran continues to develop nuclear capabilities. Islamist ideology and extremism, commonplace across Europe, continues to be incited and funded from the Middle East.

The interconnectedness of the modern world was believed to make it safer, but the reality is different. For obvious reasons Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, has rejected calls to increase oil production and reduce prices, but he risks hurrying the West into a new deal with Iran, lifting sanctions and allowing oil exports in return for an agreement on Iranian nuclear ambitions, threatening Saudi security.

The war in Ukraine jeopardises food supplies in Africa, and risks destabilising already dangerous countries. Egypt imports around 85 per cent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Somalia imports most of its wheat from Egypt. Wheat accounts for one third of cereal consumption in Eastern Africa. And with Russia the largest exporter of synthetic fertiliser in the world, some fertilisers have trebled in price, pushing the cost of food up further.

China, already confronting a likely new surge in Covid cases, depends on Ukraine for thirty per cent of its corn imports. International supply chains, stretched before by the effects of Covid restrictions, face further disruption, with Russians and Ukrainians comprising fifteen per cent of the global shipping workforce. Notoriously, despite sanctions, Europe still sends $1.1 billion to Russia every day for energy imports. German industry is funding Putin’s war.

The Complacent Generation of Western leaders who believed in the inevitability of progress, who thought the rest of the world wanted to adopt our values, and who judged that international trade would bring democracy and human rights to autocratic countries, left us dangerously exposed.

Islamist terror attacks showed the futility of leaving extremism unchecked. The financial crash demonstrated the dangers of radical deregulation. The pandemic revealed the problems with depending on stretched international supply chains that lead all the way back to China. The decisions to allow dirty Russian money into London, and the pursuit of a “golden era” in relations with Beijing, which allowed state-backed firms into our telecommunications network and energy infrastructure, now look as stupid as our politicians were warned they were at the time.

The watchword of our age – now and for many years ahead – will be security. We need a stronger defence and better security from those who would do us harm. We need shorter supply chains, more domestic production, and energy security. As a country we need economic security to give us greater resilience and protect us from threats. And families and individuals need greater economic security to cope with the kind of shocks the world economy keeps delivering.

This is the context in which Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, will deliver his mini-Budget, the Spring Statement, on Wednesday. With an approaching squeeze on incomes greater than any during the last half-century, the formidable task before him is to provide relief to families struggling with real-terms cuts in wages, huge spikes in gas bills and petrol prices, and increases in food bills, while still charting the right way forward. Our long-term challenges, like our unbalanced economic geography, poor productivity and ageing population, remain as serious as ever.

As Sunak has already warned, he cannot protect us entirely from the squeeze. He will not reverse the National Insurance surcharge, which tops up funding for the NHS and is due to come into effect in April. Having told the Prime Minister that if he wants more spending, he must fund it with tax rises and not borrowing, and having withstood huge political pressure to change course, Sunak will not u-turn now.

More likely is targeted support for individuals and families on average incomes, while still requiring those with the broadest shoulders to bear more of the pain. Given his desire to reward work and not add to the demand for welfare, and his plan to show that overall taxes will soon start to fall, a tax cut – perhaps changing the thresholds for National Insurance Contributions – looks the most sensible option.

But whatever the short-term relief, long-term economic reform matters more than ever. And the unembarrassed objective of that reform must be growth: to reduce demand for welfare, to increase opportunity across the UK, and to fund the public services, infrastructure and strong defence we need. We must remember, however, that it is not as simple as seeking growth to fund these “optional extras”, for they, along with strong families, community institutions and social trust are themselves vital in the pursuit of growth. The market is nothing without the public goods that sustain it.

Central to long-term economic reform is energy policy. The Prime Minister is promising a new strategy for “energy independence”. But given the self-indulgence of government climate change policies, its intellectual dishonesty about the intermittency costs of wind power, and the self-delusion about how expensive it will be to decarbonise the economy, it is difficult to be optimistic.

Reports suggest the PM has approached Sir Dieter Helm, the expert whom the Government commissioned to report on the cost of energy five years ago. He insists that climate change policy must not trump energy security and that gas is essential as we decarbonise. He argues that we need to fundamentally reform the energy market and its regulation. But since he reported, ministers have studiously ignored what he told them.

All eyes will be on the Spring Statement this week, but we will know how serious the Government is about long-term economic reform by whether it heeds Sir Dieter. We are living through a return to reality: the sooner the Government realises, the better it will be for all of us.