Daily Times

The coronavirus pandemic is going to shake and, may be, pulverize national, regional and international political and economic structures and reshape the world order for peace and security. The pandemic has hit over 185 countries touching almost all the continents. The USA has so far failed to rise to the occasion to lead the world to a collective response to the pandemic. President Donald Trump did not show the leadership quality of his two predecessors, – George W. Bush and Barak Obama, who spearheaded the world campaign in the pendency of the financial crunch of 2008 and the Ebola pandemic. President Trump has so far been muddling through long winding prophylactic measures coming out of bureaucratic corridors in all the affected countries.

The democracies, sluggishly passing the long process of debates, consultations, and convergences, have been found ineffective in fighting the surreptitious and stealthy Covid-19 pandemic as contrasted with the autocracies. The democratic regimes finally opted to take recourse to some authoritative measures to make the people realize the gravity of the situation and respect the shutdowns. The people are still wondering how South Korea and Singapore took pretty little time to contain the catastrophe. Similarly, the examples of courage and fortitude, discipline, resilience and selflessness of the Chinese people stand out as a beacon light for all the nations battling against coronavirus. The Chinese nation was entirely focused on the elimination of the treacherous enemy.What is feared is that the autocratic powers arrogated to themselves by the democratically elected regimes as in South Korea and Singapore will be kept even after the pandemic is over. This is quite ominous for democracies that have evolved over long decades in different continents.

One cannot predict how long this pandemic is going to last. One thing is clear the more it lasts, the deeper and far ranging impact it will have on the world with the possible collapse of many governments and the regression of many strident economies. What is apprehended at the moment is that the developed countries will slide into deeper and long economic recession; the international financial system will undergo a massive contraction throwing the world economy into a chaos; the nationalismwill weaken global economic connectivity and bring forth new global players for world leadership.

The man has always lived with dangers caused by him or the nature.The catastrophes in human history of the last three centuriescaused massive changes in the societies and reshaped the world order. The natural calamities which are recalled as horrors in human history were the plagues that harassed human societies for century visiting various countries until the Russian Plague (1772), and the influenza or the Spanish flue that furiously hit the human societies in 1918-1920 devouring some 50 million lives. The recent flues caused by an earlier strain of corona that included swine flu and SARS taking the toll onhalf a million lives were not in any way less devastating. The man, with the tremendous breakthrough in the medical research and inventions,has had successfully contained the catastrophic impact of many bacterial and viral epidemics -yellow fever, tuberculosis, smallpox, polio, meningitis, Ebola – just name a few.

The end of the thirty years war and the conclusion of the Westphalian Treaty in 1648 creating equilibrium in the interstate relations held the world order in good stead for a century or so until the havoc wreaked by the Napoleonic wars in Europe. The French revolution and the defeat of Napoleon heralded a new world order structured on ‘balance of power’ spearheaded by the British Empire.The First World War not only weakened mighty empires but also brought down some of them and shifted the balancing power to the United States of America which held all the levers of an emerging world power. The Second World War hammered the last nail in the coffin of the British and French empires forcing them for a shameful flight from their possessions in Asia and Africa.

Though the world was heading to decolonization, the retreating masters were engaged in a slew of underhand measures to safeguard their political and economic interests in the former colonies

The guns had not yet gone silent in Europe that the three tall leaders of the Allied Powers – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the USSR Secretary General Joseph Stalin started putting their act together to thrash out the blueprint of the new world order.The French colonial possessions, after France’s defeat, were ready to throw away the yoke of slavery. The British imperialists were already looking for a graceful exit from their Asian and African possessions. Though the world was heading to decolonization, the retreating masters were engaged in a slew of underhand measures to safeguard their political and economic interests in the former colonies.

However, the new world order that came to take shape was structured on the balance of power between two antagonistic ideological camps of capital countries led by the USA and the communist bloc of countries that looked to the Soviet Union for strategic, economic and ideological succour. Thus, the world was divided on ideological lines with each superpower jealously guarding its spheres of influence. This bi-polar system exploded with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the USSR in 1990-91. The small countries felt more secure politically and economically in the earlier international order structured on the balance of power between the two competing camps in the over four decades of the Cold War. No doubt, the Soviet Union countervailed the USA.

The power of the USA, after a century or so, has considerably waned. The unnecessary long wars particularly in Asia have taken their toll on the American power and prestige. The American leadership’s response to the coronavirus pandemic leaves much to be desired. Many analysts are veering to the widely held view of President Donald Trump as anincompetent, whimsical and narcissist leaderand see his defeat in the coming elections and the decline of the USA into a second rank power if the Covid-19 spirals out of control in the USA and the world.

The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books