Page 97 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

An underlying reason for the “no winner” argument is an
intriguing idea put forward by several academics, most notably

Niall Ferguson. Essentially, it says that the corona crisis has
exposed the failure of superpowers like the US and China by
highlighting the success of small states. In the words of Ferguson:
“The real lesson here is not that the U.S. is finished and China is

going to be the dominant power of the 21st century. I think the
reality is that all the superpowers – the United States, the People's
Republic of China and the European Union – have been exposed

as highly dysfunctional.” [100] Being big, as the proponents of this
idea argue, entails diseconomies of scale: countries or empires
have grown so large as to reach a threshold beyond which they
cannot effectively govern themselves. This in turn is the reason
why small economies like Singapore, Iceland, South Korea and

Israel seem to have done better than the US in containing the
pandemic and dealing with it.

Predicting is a guessing game for fools. The simple truth is that
nobody can tell with any degree of reasonable confidence or

certainty how the rivalry between the US and China will evolve –
apart from saying that it will inevitably grow. The pandemic has
exacerbated the rivalry that opposes the incumbent and the
emerging power. The US has stumbled in the pandemic crisis and

its influence has waned. Meanwhile, China may be trying to
benefit from the crisis by expanding its reach abroad. We know
very little about what the future holds in terms of strategic
competition between China and the US. It will oscillate between

two extremes: a contained and manageable deterioration
tempered by business interests at one end of the spectrum, to
permanent and all-out hostility at the other.

1.4.4. Fragile and failing states

The boundaries between state fragility, a failing state and a
failed one are fluid and tenuous. In today’s complex and adaptive
world, the principle of non-linearity means that suddenly a fragile
state can turn into a failed state and that, conversely, a failed state

can see its situation improve with equal celerity thanks to the
intermediation of international organizations or even an infusion of

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