In East and West alike, decision-makers and researchers worry about the strategic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic on the world order. This goes for the Arab world too. There is a near-consensus that the current world order will undergo radical structural changes that will rearrange hegemony and influence. Most analyses and reports look at two key variables.
First, there are the economic ramifications of the outbreak and how states react to and mitigate those ramifications. Second, there is how the major powers are engaging in their international relations in the context of the pandemic and how the crisis is affecting their foreign policies.
For example, China, according to many, has managed to stem the coronavirus crisis, cut human and economic costs and gradually return to some measure of normalcy, even in the cities and regions that were local and global hotbeds of the epidemic.
China has cooperated with many countries to counter the virus and has provided medical assistance to Europe and around the world. In contrast, the US has been reluctant to help and has abandoned its traditional role since the Second World War.
It has even announced a freeze on World Health Organization (WHO) funding. The reason given was that the WHO was siding with China in the crisis and helping to hide the spread of infection at the beginning of the crisis.
This time, the US missed the initiative to assist the world. This is not surprising, given the Trump administration’s isolationist policies premised on the principle of “America First! ” Protectionism has sowed a lot of mischief in international relations in recent years.
China, on the other hand, has provided medical assistance to several European countries in urgent need of masks, respirators and rapid detection devices for coronavirus infections (COVID-19). Arab countries have also received specialized medical kits to ward off the spread of the virus.
This situation, whether or not it affects the world order, will have political consequences. A well-known American expert in international relations, Richard Haass, made a remark that struck me as interesting.
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Haass said, “We are going through what, in all respects, is a great crisis.” So it’s natural to think that this may be a turning point in modern history. The author cites the controversy among scholars and researchers about the implications of this crisis. “But the world following the pandemic is unlikely to be radically different from the one that preceded it. COVID-19 will not so much change the basic direction of world history as accelerate it.”
Granted, with the coronavirus crisis, the dysfunctions of the world order have come to the surface. Its complex problems, such as the weakness of existing international cooperation mechanisms and organizational and institutional structures, were felt very hard.
International bodies have missed the boat altogether. The picture was coloured by isolated policies that set aside the discourses of globalization and international cooperation you hear in conferences and policy platforms around the world.
But before discussing the idea of restructuring the world order, let’s stress that the idea was not born today. US researchers addressed this theme many years ago, as part of extensive theses that deal with the end of the American era. For some of them, the beginning of the end of the American empire would be due to the rapid rise of China. Others cited structural problems in the American leadership of the world order.
For more than two decades, the theory of the demise of the US era had been floated by analytist whenever a crisis broke out. This point was first raised on several occasions, from the war in Iraq to the financial crisis of 2008. Then Trump came to power and refused to respect his country’s international responsibilities to its strategic partners, whether NATO or other organizations, and the idea came up again.
A decade ago, some even felt that the US was on the verge of economic bankruptcy, judged by the difficulty of managing the US budget for expenditures incurred as a result of the military presence in Afghanistan. The US could have lost its world leadership.
Dozens of research papers were published in the US and elsewhere on the hypotheses of a continuation or an end to US domination over the current world order, the face of the post-American world, alternatives, potential substitutes, capabilities, and modes of domination.
Without going into detail, there are a number of things that need to be paid attention to that can guide the compass of this stimulating theoretical debate. Among them, American hegemony over the world order is based on several factors, not limited to defence spending and global military capabilities. The American model is also unique, despite several setbacks in recent years.
But the US still retains much of its influence and can keep up its tradition. This is not a bias. It simply is the conclusion reached by the research community over the last two decades. The overall economic, cultural, industrial, scientific and military capabilities of the US still provide many of the ingredients for global leadership.
This leadership has been influenced by the Trump administration’s renunciation of humanitarian and health assistance and its refusal to fund the WHO and its hostile positions on refugees and other controversial practices. That said, it is too early to say that US Leadership in the world is in its final moments.
To sum up, the coronavirus pandemic crisis has, in my view, somewhat taken the world off balance. But it is too early to draw any definitive conclusions about the structure of post-crisis global leadership.
