For several years now, there have been repeated statements and speeches throughout the world affirming the end of the geography of place under the effect of globalization and the supremacy of the notion of the small global village.
However, we have been caught in the trap of not seeing the scenario of the transmission of the coronavirus epidemic from China to the countries of East and West. How did this happen?
How did this small village, which relies on the Chinese manufacture, not think that this manufacturer could be tied down for a short period of time for an urgent reason? Also, how could a virus so imperceptible to the naked eye challenge so many constants and assumptions that the world had accepted for so long?
Well, the world that has come a long way in the process of globalization has flunked the first real collective test. At the first threat to the modern world, existing systems of international cooperation failed.
In the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the virus is “the greatest challenge facing the world since the World War II.” The resulting crisis could trigger an economic depression unprecedented in the recent past.
Yet measures to combat it are being taken at national, not collective, level. Yes, unprecedented and effective strategic collaboration exists between Russia and its traditional Atlantic rivals, Italy and France. So does China with a range of Western countries. However, at least in the media and research communities of both hemispheres, doubts and blame for the spread of the epidemic still dominate.
If the UN does not have good mechanisms to deal with such crises, apart from the limited coordinating role of the WHO, the world must now turn the tide. The search for global cooperation mechanisms that can develop better capacities to overcome the effects of the crisis must be accelerated.
Global solidarity begins with effective plans to smooth the rising infection curve through firm collective action to prevent millions of people from becoming infected and to avoid the collapse of national health systems. Otherwise, there is a risk of health disasters not just from the coronavirus, but from a long list of chronic diseases and viral contagions that are more harmful and disastrous than the coronavirus. All of this is having an economic, psychosocial and social impact on our societies and countries.
The advice that many people around the world are repeating today is to prepare for the worst in the epidemic scenarios of the coronavirus، no vaccine or cure is available for the virus so far. This advice takes into account the situation in densely populated countries and the difficulty of controlling the epidemic in their populations, as well as the serious social and economic cost of each scenario.
The most dangerous scenario, which the world must in fact avoid, as the UN Secretary-General has said, is a wider epidemic in the poor countries of the Global South. The less developed South will not be able to cope with the danger that advanced health systems, with their great potential and resources, have failed to curb.
In such a scenario, the world will lack specialized institutional capacity to manage the crisis. Nevertheless, we have institutions capable of ensuring global coordination in the face of the epidemic.
The international financial institutions could mobilize resources and distribute them to the countries that need them. In the face of extraordinary circumstances, extraordinary procedures must be followed.
I am aware that, in those circumstances, the world needs a biological miracle to save millions of lives from infection or an organizational miracle to work together to counter the threat of the coronavirus, especially with the tendency of some parties to play politics with the crisis. Some parties will use health and financial aid programs. Others show more schadenfreude than a real concern to save the world from this dreaded virus.
But faith hangs on the rationality and wisdom of a few leaders to steer the world to safety in these tough straits. As historical experience shows, it is from crises that great leaders and wise souls of the world are born.
