Page 88 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

policies, norms, procedures and initiatives through which nation
states try to bring more predictability and stability to their

responses to transnational challenges. This definition makes it
clear that any global effort on any global issue or concern is
bound to be toothless without the cooperation of national
governments and their ability to act and legislate to support their

aims. Nation states make global governance possible (one leads
the other), which is why the UN says that “effective global
governance can only be achieved with effective international

cooperation”. [84] The two notions of global governance and
international cooperation are so intertwined that it is nigh on
impossible for global governance to flourish in a divided world that
is retrenching and fragmenting. The more nationalism and
isolationism pervade the global polity, the greater the chance that

global governance loses its relevance and becomes ineffective.
Sadly, we are now at this critical juncture. Put bluntly, we live in a
world in which nobody is really in charge.

COVID-19 has reminded us that the biggest problems we face

are global in nature. Whether it’s pandemics, climate change,
terrorism or international trade, all are global issues that we can
only address, and whose risks can only be mitigated, in a
collective fashion. But the world has become, in the words of Ian

Bremmer, a G0 world, or worse, a G-minus-2 world (the US and
China), according to the Indian economist Arvind Subramanian [85]
(to account for the absence of leadership of the two giants by
opposition to the G7, the group of seven wealthiest nations – or

the G20 – the G7 plus 13 other significant countries and
organizations, which are supposed to lead). More and more often,
the big problems besetting us take place beyond the control of
even the most powerful nation states; the risks and issues to be

confronted are increasingly globalized, interdependent and
interconnected, while the global governance capacities to do so
are failing perilously, endangered by the resurgence of

nationalism. Such disconnect signifies not only that the most
critical global issues are being addressed in a highly fragmented,
thus inadequate, manner, but also that they are actually being
exacerbated by this failure to deal with them properly. Thus, far

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