Troubles have come to the eurozone economy not as single spies but in battalions.

First, it was the COVID pandemic, which hit major eurozone economies like those of Italy and Spain particularly hard. Then it was a surge in eurozone inflation to record levels, which will soon force the European Central Bank to slam on the monetary-policy brakes and thereby heighten the risk of a European economic recession. Now it is Russia’s Ukrainian invasion, which has sent energy prices through the roof, severely sapping countries like Germany and Italy that are overly dependent on Russian natural-gas imports.

All this could have serious consequences for the global economy.

Not simply because a slowdown in the eurozone economy could mean less favorable export markets for the rest of the world. The need to slam on the brakes and raise rates at a time when some eurozone countries have very weak public finances could precipitate another round of sovereign-debt crisis. That in turn could raise questions anew about whether the euro can survive in its present form.

As we learned during its 2010 debt crisis, the eurozone is not well-placed to handle economic shocks that hit some member countries harder than others. That is because in 1999 all eurozone members gave up their individual currencies for the euro. As a result, they no longer have their own independent monetary or exchange-rate policies to use as a cushion to promote exports and thereby soften the blow of their economic shocks.

Lacking its own currency to deal with such shocks is especially problematic for countries in the eurozone’s periphery like Italy, which has a large budget deficit and the highest public-debt-to-GDP ratio in that country’s 150-year history. If Italy is to avoid another debt crisis, there is no question it has to place its public finances on a sounder footing.

Italy, however, might once again learn that budget belt-tightening in a euro straitjacket is counterproductive. No longer able to devalue its currency to promote exports as an offset to the economic effect of reduced budget spending, Italy could find itself in another deep economic recession that would curtail its tax-revenue-collection ability.

Over the past two years, the ECB’s bond-buying programs have kept countries in the eurozone’s periphery, including most notably Italy, afloat. In particular, under its €1.85 trillion ($2 trillion) pandemic emergency purchase program, the ECB has bought most of these countries’ government-debt issuance. That has saved them from having to face the test of the markets.

With eurozone inflation having picked up to 7.5% — an all-time high — it must be only a matter of time before the ECB is forced to slam on the monetary-policy brakes. The eurozone’s troubled economic periphery should know such tightening would include a stop to the ECB’s bond-buying programs. The bank has already ended its pandemic emergency purchase program and is intimating it will end its other purchasing programs this fall.

The end to ECB bond-buying would seem to be setting the stage for another round of eurozone debt crisis, especially should the eurozone succumb to another economic recession. This must be of deep concern to the rest of the world economy.

In 2010, the Greek sovereign-debt crisis shook global stock markets and sparked fears of financial-market contagion that might have derailed America’s fragile economic recovery. How much more shock would another round of the eurozone crisis cause today if it were centered on Italy, which has an economy some 10 times the size of that of Greece?

The last thing the world economy needs is another round of the eurozone debt crisis. This is especially the case at a time the Federal Reserve’s efforts to rein in inflation could precipitate a US economic recession and China’s zero-tolerance COVID policy could lead to a marked slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy. Yet we might well have to brace ourselves for such a crisis as the ECB is forced to curtail its bond-buying activities to deal with its own inflation problem.

Desmond Lachman is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was a deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s Policy Development and Review Department and the chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney.