Page 80 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

1.4. Geopolitical reset

The connectivity between geopolitics and pandemics flows
both ways. On the one hand, the chaotic end of multilateralism, a
vacuum of global governance and the rise of various forms of
nationalism [76] make it more difficult to deal with the outbreak. The

coronavirus is spreading globally and sparing no one, while
simultaneously the geopolitical fault lines that divide societies spur
many leaders to focus on national responses – a situation that

constrains collective effectiveness and reduces the ability to
eradicate the pandemic. On the other hand, the pandemic is
clearly exacerbating and accelerating geopolitical trends that were
already apparent before the crisis erupted. What were they and
what is the current state of geopolitical affairs?

The late economist Jean-Pierre Lehmann (who taught at IMD
in Lausanne) summed up today’s situation with great perspicacity
when he said: “There is no new global order, just a chaotic
transition to uncertainty.” More recently, Kevin Rudd, President of

the Asia Society Policy Institute and former Australian Prime
Minister, expressed similar sentiments, worrying specifically about
the “coming post-COVID-19 anarchy”: “Various forms of rampant
nationalism are taking the place of order and cooperation. The

chaotic nature of national and global responses to the pandemic
thus stands as a warning of what could come on an even broader
scale.” [77] This has been years in the making with multiple causes

that intersect with each other, but the determining element of
geopolitical instability is the progressive rebalancing from the
West to the East – a transition that creates stresses and that, in
the process, also generates global disorder. This is captured in
the so-called Thucydides’ trap – the structural stress that

inevitably occurs when a rising power like China rivals a ruling
power like the US. This confrontation will be a source of global
messiness, disorder and uncertainty for years to come.

Irrespective of whether one “likes” the US or not, its progressive
disengagement (the equivalent of a “geopolitical taper”, as the
historian Niall Ferguson puts it) from the international scene is

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