Page 91 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

enforce pandemic preparedness. Like other similar UN agencies,
for example on human rights or climate change, the WHO is

saddled with limited and dwindling resources: in 2018, it had an
annual budget of $4.2 billion, miniscule in comparison to any
health budget around the world. In addition, it is at the perpetual
mercy of member states and has effectively no tools at its disposal

to directly monitor outbreaks, coordinate pandemic planning or
ensure effective preparedness implementation at the country
level, let alone allocate resources to those countries most in need.
This dysfunctionality is symptomatic of a broken global

governance system, and the jury is out as to whether existing
global governance configurations like the UN and the WHO can
be repurposed to address today’s global risks. For the time being,
the bottom line is this: in the face of such a vacuum in global

governance, only nation states are cohesive enough to be
capable of taking collective decisions, but this model doesn’t work
in the case of world risks that require concerted global decisions.

The world will be a very dangerous place if we do not fix

multilateral institutions. Global coordination will be even more
necessary in the aftermath of the epidemiological crisis, for it is
inconceivable that the global economy could “restart” without
sustained international cooperation. Without it, we’ll be heading

towards “a poorer, meaner and smaller world”. [87]

1.4.3. The growing rivalry between China and the
US

In the post-pandemic era, COVID-19 might be remembered as
the turning point that ushered in a “new type of cold war” [88]
between China and the US (the two words “new type” matter
considerably: unlike the Soviet Union, China is not seeking to

impose its ideology around the world). Prior to the pandemic,
tensions between the two dominant powers were already building
up in many different domains (trade, property rights, military bases

in the South China Sea, and tech and investment in strategic
industries in particular), but after 40 years of strategic
engagement, the US and China now seem unable to bridge the

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