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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres
speaks at a UN Security Council meeting titled
Concept paper ‘Maintenance of International Peace and Security’ in
January 2020. (Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
North America/Getty Images News).
Three scenarios for world order
after COVID-19:
Can multilateral cooperation be
saved?
Richard Higgott (2020)
Dialogue of Civilisations Research Institute
Berlin
Project on
Reinventing multilateralism in a post-pandemic era
Concept paper
First draft
Three scenarios for world order after COVID-19:
Can multilateral cooperation be saved?
Prepared by Richard Higgott, 1 June 2020
Comments to richardhiggott0@gmail.comThree scenarios for world order after COVID-19:
Can multilateral cooperation be saved?1
Executive summary
This paper demonstrates how a global pandemic like COVID-19 can change the relationship
between states and the international system in an era of heightened and unequal contest
between the forces of nationalism and global cooperation. It looks at what we know and
speculates about what we can only conjecture at this stage. We know four things:
• The world is likely to be less prosperous and a global depression of greater or
lesser magnitude is now virtually inevitable, at least in the short term.
• The world, if trends in train prior to COVID-19 continue, will be less economically
open. Decreasing free trade, increasingly distorted by subsidies, and economic de-
coupling will be the order of the day.
• The world will be less ideologically neoliberal and states will be more
interventionist. Globalisation in its Hayekian guise is over. Indeed, the world is on
the verge of a major rethink on globalisation.
• The world is likely to be less politically free in an era of digitalisation. As seems
probable, and if not resisted, increased digital surveillance is likely to remain long
after its utility in the battle against COVID-19 has declined.
The paper speculates about what this means for scenarios of world order – noting a scenario
is a way of telling a story about the future – and about how governments and other
1This is a shortened version of a longer (and fully referenced) analysis available at richardhiggott0@gmail.com.
Thanks for comments on first draft to Professors Kim Nossal, Simon Evenett and Luk Van Langenhove of Queen’s
University, Canada, St Gallen University, Switzerland and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel respectively; and
Jonathan Grayson and Ekaterina Jarkov of the DOC.stakeholders will respond. While we could identify a wide range of scenarios, the paper settles
for just three:
• Scenario 1 reflects the analytically complacent plus ça change position, assuming
a return, more or less, to the status quo ante after the pandemic is contained.
• Scenario 2 reflects the apocalyptic view of chronic global breakdown potentially as
bad as that of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
• Scenario 3, the core of the paper, reflects views of the ‘what is to be done?’ variety
concerning whether we are to see a positive reset of world order.
Four factors will matter in any reset:
• Morality and solidarity. A sense of international community must be developed.
• Multilateralism. A re-commitment to international institutionalism is needed.
• Networks – especially digital networks – probably more so than the post-World War
Two international institutions.
• Internationalism. But it must be ‘hard-headed’ internationalism adapting to the
changing role of the principal agents (the Great Powers) and the new global
structures, especially the digitalised ones, of the current age.Introduction: COVID-19 and international relations; Assumptions and questions
A global pandemic brings about shifts in international economic and political power in ways that we
will only be able to accurately describe with the benefit of hindsight. So, what can we know? At the
very least, COVID-19 will inflict a permanent shock on the world economy, especially in the emerging
world. At the very least, the virus has exposed weaknesses in economic and political systems and
structures that never really recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. At the very least, the hyper-
globalisation of the last few decades is unlikely to return following the containment of the current
pandemic. At the very least, nationalist political trends reasserting the sovereignty of the state will
continue. Structures and practices of world order will not be the same as they were prior to COVID-
19.
COVID-19 is the largest collective analytical failure since we failed to foresee the end of the Cold
War and the break-up of the Soviet Union. At this stage, it is too early to announce who will write the
most persuasive post-COVID-19 narrative, so moderation and intellectual openness to alternative
futures is required. This paper provides three competing narratives:
• Narrative 1: the analytically complacent plus ça change scenario.
• Narrative 2: the apocalyptic, chronic global breakdown scenario; in all probability as bad
as the Great Depression of the 1930s.
• Narrative 3: reflects a ‘what is to be done?’ scenario, if a global reset is to happen.
Narrative 1 considers the prospect of a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. Narrative 2 looks at the worst-
case scenario of a drift towards a contested and conflictual bipolar, post-liberal order. Narrative 3
looks at prospects for a reset post-liberal order. It recognises the continuing influences of
Westphalian international relations. But it offers a normative defence of the principles and practices
of multilateral cooperation in which global institutions are in need of serious reform if they are to have
a utility, indeed in some instances survive, post-COVID-19.
Four assumptions and are at the heart of any analysis of what the post-COVID-19 international order
might look like:• Assumption 1: The world is likely to be less prosperous and much more indebted; a global
recession is inevitable and a depression probable.
• Assumption 2: The world will be less economically open. Decreasing free trade and
growing economic (and political) de-coupling will be the order of the day.
• Assumption 3: The world will be less ideologically neoliberal. Globalisation, in its extreme
Hayekian guise is over. Indeed, the world needs a major rational rethink, as opposed to
an ideological rethink, if de-globalisation is to be sensibly mitigated.
• Assumption 4: The world is likely to be less politically free in an era of digitalisation.
Increased digital surveillance will almost certainly remain after its utility in the initial battle
against COVID-19 has declined.
Several overarching questions also follow for any such analysis. Key empirical questions focus
primarily on whether the global order of the post-world war two era – a partially liberal, partially global,
US-led order underwriting a process of contained multilateral collective action problem solving – is
past its sell by date. Equally important, empirical questions also focus on whether we are destined
to see an increasingly nationalist, combative geopolitical system of states turn inwards in search of
that mythical beast called ‘national sovereignty’ and whether this leads to a new Cold War stand-off
and a new bipolarity between the world’s two major powers, the US and China.
Additional questions reflect a test of human political will and humanity’s ability to engage in
cooperative international relations, i.e., whether some kind of reformed order capable of collective
action to solve global problems like biological pandemics, global warming, and the SDGs is possible;
and if so, how we might practically reassert the utility of multilateralism in the face of bilateral
transactional international relations nourished by a growing populist-nationalist zeitgeist since at
least 2008 and exacerbated by COVID-19. For this to happen, a collective social commitment and
political will is required. Conclusions are not encouraging. Major threats facing humanity are unlikely
to be resolved by national responses alone. Global problems require global solutions.
In looking at the practicalities of multilateral potential in a post-COVID-19, reformed world order, this
paper outlines 14 more specific questions:Q1: Can we reset the global order in such a way that privileges humanity’s cooperative instincts at the expense of its selfish instincts? Q2: To what extent can change be steered in the direction of a moral narrative for trans-sovereign cooperation post COVID-19? Q3: Is the idea of solidarity beyond the level of the state a chimera? Q4: Can we use COVID-19 to build a narrative for an extra-national community of destiny? Q5: If COVID-19 cannot generate a new transformation in how humanity cooperates, can it, at the very least, enable us to set the terms for the forthcoming debate? Q6: Can COVID-19 highlight for us, in theory at least, the case for a new eco-social political economy providing universal basic services to protect us in the future? Q7: If it cannot supply itself in an emergency –such as a pandemic – can it really claim to be sovereign? Q8: What is the appropriate role for the 21st-century state to play in the state-market relationship? Q9: How long can the world wait for the US to regain its equilibrium and China to develop an ethical, as opposed to an instrumental, sense of global responsibility? Q10: Can we ask whether, and if so how, the need for a joined-up global health policy might kick start a new multilateralism? Q.11: Is the international community capable of (re)-creating an independent institution (or at least a set of practices) for monitoring and coordinating a joined-up global health system? Q. 12: How can frail institutions be pulled back from a slide into permanent decay?
Q. 13: To what degree can the principles of multilateralism be re-
booted?
Q.14: Which institutions are deemed important enough to save
and at the same time lend themselves to potential reform rather
than redundancy?
Narrative 1: Back to the future or plus ça change … a lingering for liberal order
There is little to be said here. This first scenario finds little support outside of what we might call an
anti-Trump US foreign policy establishment. It underplays the relationship between COVID-19 and
the demise of the current global order. As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, says, “…not every crisis is a turning point” and as ‘Mr Soft Power’, Joseph Nye, suggests
“big causes do not necessarily lead to big effects”. But, while they both expect a less liberal world
order, this COVID-19 crisis will not spell the immediate end of it.
In this scenario, the US, largely due to both its long-term soft and hard power, will remain preeminent.
And China’s set-backs – arising, amongst other things, from its failed COVID-19 propaganda drive
– will constrain its rise. Also implicit in this view is an assumption that a new US president will (i)
reverse the nightmare of the Trumpian interlude in US foreign policy, and (ii) introduce a reformist
agenda for multilateralism that will encourage a return to a more globally cooperative world
order…and pigs will fly overhead in this happy land!Narrative 2: The new geopolitical age and US-China bipolarity
This scenario assumes a continued, dramatic decline in the world order as it existed prior to COVID-
19. There are two elements to this decline:
• A general breakdown in global economic and political order. Although stopping short of
war, it remains the darkest, worst-case scenario with no clear exit strategy.
• An accompanying trend towards combative geopolitics and geo-economics and a
growing regionalisation of world order built around a US-China bipolar Cold War.
This scenario expects a post-pandemic order reflected in an economic collapse as great as the
1930s and the emergence of new spheres of geopolitical influence. It will also be accompanied by
growing socio-economic inequality, the rise of populist political authoritarianism in a world of
declining social justice, declining basic freedoms, and increasing environmental instability.
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the logic of globalisation; exposing flaws in a system based
on breaking up production processes into geographically separated steps and an internationalised
division of labour in which elements such as design and marketing were retained in developed
countries while manufacturing and assembly were outsourced to developing countries. What was
not anticipated was the dramatic increase in negative, endogenous unequal distributive
consequences in the developed world; notably the US.
The internationalisation of supply chains that fuelled globalisation is now seen, especially through
populist political lenses, to have generated deleterious economic, and political, risks. As a
consequence, the search for self-reliance has become an increasing watchword for nationalistically
minded governments. Re-nationalisation, global de-coupling, and reshoring of economic production
will continue to take place, notwithstanding increased costs and welfare losses arising from them.
Similarly, a reversal in the growth of international mobility and a decline in open borders can be
expected as governments attempt to claw back what they see as lost national autonomy. This
understanding is embedded in the wider, and for many irrational, assumptions of the loss of
sovereignty that has been a growing issue for populist-nationalists since the 2008 financial crisis.Hawkish security strategists assume that COVID-19 will provide an opportunity for geo-strategic and geopolitical disruption. Western analysts suggest it will embolden not only China but also encourage greater non-cooperative behaviour on the part of other powerful states who will: (i) become increasingly isolationist; (ii) instigate controls on foreigners and migration; (iii) enhance digital surveillance systems to continue monitoring people and their movements once the worst elements of the pandemic are over. This scenario further assumes the continued decline of any vestiges of a liberal order as the clamour for ‘national sovereignty’ grows stronger. To the extent that COVID-19 has anything to do with this process, it is as an accelerator, not a cause. It has provided further fuel, if any were needed, to facilitate a drift towards authoritarian politics, nationalism, and protectionism in the hands of ‘strongman leaders’ seeking to externalise the blame for COVID-19. Finally, this scenario expects state claims to represent not just a historic territory, or a particular language or ethnic group, but a distinctive civilisation. Civilisational politics de nos jours reflect not only the populist backlash against economic globalisation but also the rise of Islamophobia, increased antisemitism, nationalist-identitarian politics, and the weakening of multiculturalism and multilateralism. A Huntingtonian ‘clash of civilisations’ discourse is threaded through this scenario. 2.1 COVID-19 and the US-China relationship The Trump Administration’s aggressive transactional attitude to international relations in general and the bilateral relationship with China in particular has now been crowned by COVID–19. What started out as a question of trade imbalances has morphed into an increasingly fractious economic and political contest further exacerbated by COVID-19. The US – and to a lesser extent Europe – is the major victim of COVID-19 in both real, economic, and diplomatic terms. The US, with 4% of the global population, accounts for +/- 25% of the casualties. This has to be contrasted with successful East Asian responses to the epidemic. In
diplomatic terms, the US response to the pandemic has not won it any international admirers. COVID-19 has diminished trust in America as a global leader in areas where it has hitherto been admired: its support for key global public goods; innovation and expertise; and policy competence, especially at the leading edges of technology. At the same time, China has pursued a muscular diplomacy in its efforts to develop an alternative global infrastructure. There is, of course, no guarantee that China’s initiatives will pay off. Short-term Chinese wins will not easily overturn long-standing suspicions; especially in the US, where hostility is strongly, and unusually, bi-partisan; and in Western Europe, where ‘mask diplomacy’ has met with mixed success. Both the US and China have suffered blows to their international standing and prestige arising from COVID-19; the US for its incompetence in handling the virus and China for its initial cover-up and sub-optimal and blatantly instrumental assistance. Both have made mistakes. China has practiced the sin of overreach. The US the sin of abdication and under-commitment. The future battle between them in a post COVID-19 containment era will be different. The future contest will be about securing primacy in the principal global systems of exchange: to see who will control the networks, standards, and platforms of the information age. Both are battling to establish suzerainty over global digital, cyber, and AI technology. Driven by a geopolitical and techno-nationalist struggle, we are heading towards a bifurcated global digital ecology in which China, regardless of occasional setbacks, appears to be making major inroads into erstwhile US primacy. A major question of concern is whether, in the short run, we can avoid a ‘Wag the Dog’ scenario precipitated by either the US or China.2 Donald Trump will certainly want a major diversion in the run-in to the November presidential election and Xi Jinping will need diversions to deflect attention away from his growing economic problems. 2 The phrase ‘Wag the Dog’ (as in the 1997 film of that title) is used to indicate that attention is purposely being diverted from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance.
In this scenario, the US comes out of lockdown too early (a serious prospect), or a second wave of
coronavirus emerges (an equally serious prospect). Either way, deaths continue to rise, and the US
economy continues to freefall. In his desperation to stave off defeat in the November election, the
president and his supporters dramatically escalate the China blame-game. In similar vein, Xi Jinping,
in the wake of a dramatically declining economy, creates his own distraction – revving up nationalist
sentiment and conspiratorial propaganda that COVID-19 was in fact introduced into China by the
US. He too sees the political benefits of an international conflict somewhere in the Pacific region.
A post-Covid-19 order: The pessimistic scenario
Economics
• Decline of neoliberal ideology; • Economic nationalism;
• Return of the state; • De-globalisation;
• Surveillance capitalism; • Protectionism;
• Economic populism. • De-coupling
• US-China bipolarity.
Politics Digitalisation International Relations
• Surveillance state; • End of the liberal order;
• Hardened imagined • New Cold War;
communities; • Clash of civilisations;
• Communities of origin; • No community of common
• Identitarian politics; destiny.
• Nativism. Society & CultureNarrative 3: Relearning multilateralism and the case for a global reset
Narratives 1 and 2 – complacent on the one hand, apocalyptic on the other – need to be tempered
by a positive and reform-minded approach if the new normal is not to be continued de-coupling,
continued de-globalisation, and growing geopolitical and civilisational competition. Thus narrative 3
asks questions rather than provides answers.
Q1: Can we reset the global order in such a way that privileges
humanity’s cooperative instincts at the expense of its selfish
instincts?
3.1 Community and moral solidarity matters
Moral narratives underwrite community behaviour. Most states are “imagined communities”
(Anderson, 1983) or “communities of origin” (Judt, 2008). What humanity lacks is a meta-narrative
that extends our social and political boundaries to encompass a trans-sovereign global community;
that is, a ‘community of destiny’ (again Judt, not Xi Jinping) beyond the level of the state that can
address problems that cannot be resolved by communities of origin. Of course, humanity has not
been totally bereft of an ability to engage in practical cooperation beyond the level of the local and
the national community. Indeed, 75 years ago, an international architecture of sorts was created to
rebuild the post-WWII world: the UN system, the Bretton Woods System, etc.
In theory, crises or existential shocks should enhance the prospect of cooperation. Sadly, the
evidence is that COVID-19 is enhancing a trend away from cooperation and towards nationalism,
nativism, and anti-globalisation. As a consequence, moral solidarity is to be found principally at the
level of the state and below. Communities of origin are consolidating. A set of questions follow:
Q2: To what extent can change be steered in the direction of a
moral narrative for trans-sovereign cooperation post COVID-19?
Q3: Is the idea of solidarity beyond the level of the state a
chimera?Q4: Can we use COVID-19 to build a narrative for an extra-national
community of destiny?
Q5: If COVID-19 cannot generate a new transformation in how
humanity cooperates, can it, at the very least, enable us to set the
terms for the forthcoming debate?
Q6: Can COVID-19 highlight for us, in theory at least, the case for
a new eco-social political economy providing universal basic
services to protect us in the future?
If a global pandemic, with no ready-made treatment or cure, does not confirm the interconnectedness
of humanity, then what will?!
While a more fragmented world is coming into being, a global population of over 7.5 billion is too big
to exist via self-sufficient communities of origin alone. Moreover, most of humanity does not wish to
return to small, closed communities. But de-coupling is not simply a US obsession. As other states
become increasingly self-focussed, their instincts will also be to look inward. So, the question of the
moment for nationalist political forces, is as follows:
Q7: How does a state reinforce its sovereignty? If it cannot supply
itself in an emergency –such as a pandemic – can it really claim
to be sovereign?
But this is the wrong question. It is built on a 19th-century absolutist understanding of sovereignty
that is located in a 21st-century setting.The golden age of sovereignty that modern-day populist leaders appeal to is at best political
posturing and at worst a political fiction. The idea of states as unitary, rational, and self-contained
policy actors has always been a fiction. The correct question here is this:
Q8: What is the appropriate role for the 21st-century state to play
in the state-market relationship?
Such a question has been off the agenda during the Hayekian era of hyper-globalisation. It has
regained a new legitimacy in the context of pandemic. For the first time since the end of the Cold
War, we are seeing competing narratives of how the relationship between society and the market,
both domestically and internationally, should be governed.
For COVID-19 not to be a permanent threat, it has to be addressed globally. An eventual vaccine
must be seen as a global public good. In the absence of strengthened global cooperation, our ability
to prevent future outbreaks will always be limited. The positive narrative will need to recognise not
only the renewed importance of governance but also public trust and civic input. At the extreme,
COVID-19 is killing both truth and trust. But the message from COVID-19 is not all bad. Combatting
the pandemic has, in many instances, seen altruism challenge self-interest. Most obviously here,
front-line workers have taken and continue to take great risk in support of a wider community good.
While neoliberal globalisation may have imploded, liberal globalisation is unlikely to unravel. Much
international activity, especially in the trade domain, is too deep-rooted and its economic,
commercial, and digital logics are too powerful. Globalisation, let us recall, has lifted more than a
billion people out of poverty. The rest of the world – and notably China – shows fewer signs of
inwardness than the US. Moreover, moves towards greater national resilience will not eradicate the
need for global problem-solving for those issues that cannot be controlled within national
policymaking communities – especially pandemics and climate issues. Reinvestment in global
institutions and hard-headed internationalism will come later if not sooner. Solidarity must be global
if we are to avoid a permanent healthcare crisis and the prospect of attendant economic collapse
and human immiseration, especially in the Global South.3.2 Multilateral institutions matter Future solutions will require a re-build of the international institutional architecture to reverse the policy fragmentation that has beset multilateral organisations in recent years. The challenge is to understand how the coronavirus, as the newest global hazard, has exposed flaws in our models of international decision-making. At the very least it has told us that we will need to exhibit more hybrid, participatory, and multi-faceted approaches to governance with due consideration for those requiring social protection in the post-COVID-19 era. For this to happen, both the destructive and predatory practices of the great powers towards the international institutions need to be resisted. The great powers need to be multilateral facilitators, not spoilers. This is especially the case in institutions such as the WTO and the UN and its ancillary organisations, for example, the WHO, UNCTAD, and the FAO, and the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and World Bank, all of which have been increasingly challenged by the destructive tendencies of the current US administration and the predatory, expansionist tendencies of China, with its desires to gain greater control of the UN and other agencies. Liberal internationalists still committed to multilateralism must be prepared to struggle for a new and pragmatic international institutional cooperation, rather than bemoan multilateralism’s passing. Most of the world’s governments have no appetite for building new institutions. Thus, we need to learn de novo the lessons we have unlearned in recent years. The institutional architecture was mostly established in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. This was not an era of globalisation; this was not an era of increasing environmental damage; this was not an era when the Global South was capable of exercising political voice; and this was most definitely not an era of digitalisation. As a consequence, much 20th-century international architecture is not fit for dealing with the problems of the 21st century. Even prior to COVID-19, the prospects of international institutional reform were drifting in the face of both active undermining and passive neglect. Moreover, so-called ‘strongman’ leaders have a preference for expanding authoritarian power at home rather than enhancing international cooperation abroad.
We would perhaps be well served by going back to first principles if we are not to forget why
multilateral institutions proliferated in the second half of the 20th century and what they do when they
are working well. In point form and without elaboration, multilateral institutions:
• Create and broker norms, ideas, and expectations;
• Lower transaction costs through the provision and sharing of information;
• Reduce uncertainty;
• Help make promises credible;
• Facilitate deal-making;
• Enhance enforcement and compliance of agreed norms and rules;
• Set limits and define choices of and for members;
• Provide venues for dispute-resolution.
This is a powerful list of benefits. For sure, multilateral institutions do not always work optimally and
from time to time, as now, they need major reform, or in some instances even mothballing. But,
notwithstanding the current critique of many international organisations, if they did not exist, we
would need to invent them. To take the obvious example, by any other name we are going to need
a World Health Organization in the post-COVID-19 era. Reform and specifically the re-establishment
of its scientific impartiality and credibility, not its abolition, is what is required. Its credibility may be
damaged, but no other organisation exists to coordinate health policies across borders. The flow of
shared, credible, scientifically sound, and neutrally arbitrated medical information will remain vital in
the future.
The tribulations of the WHO reflect a deeper malaise for multilateral institutions. COVID-19 may have
crystallised what we intuitively know: that the politicisation and absence of independent leadership
has, over time, weakened the legitimacy of some international organisations. To be credible long
term, they must be neutral and impartial, not pawns in the political games of their major members.
This argument applies across the board; from the UN and its ancillary organisation through the
Bretton Woods institutions to the newer institutions such as the China-led Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank.Some argue this malaise can only be addressed by a new Bretton Woods-style initiative. The original Bretton Woods and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were geared to providing an international architecture with a sense of regularity to international finance, trade in agriculture, raw materials, manufactures, and later services; all of these were then amenable, to a greater of lesser extent, to control at border. By contrast, the new architecture – especially for digital technologies and global pandemics – must reflect new priorities in an era of an under-managed, globalised world in which neither digital technologies, e-commerce, nor pandemics respect borders. COVID-19 has demonstrated why new digital industry self-regulation and health industry national regulation would be totally inadequate. COVID-19 has become a driver of digitalisation; both pandemics and digitalisation are global. In addition to its role in pandemic monitoring, the growth of digitalised supply chains is likely to make e-commerce the norm. The pandemic, and subsequent recovery from it, will continue the acceleration of digitalisation. But demand for a new international institutional architecture exceeds supply and a new Bretton Woods would also need to assist the Global South’s participation in this process if it is not simply to be a US-China bipolar contest that transcends any of the existing global governance institutions. A few dominant firms in just two countries – be it Apple, Facebook, Google, or Amazon in the US or Huawei, Tencent, Baidoo, or Weibo in China – are unlikely to protect the global public good. Collective institutional governance is required. 3.3: Networks and organised hybridity matter The restoration of traditional multilateralism alone is insufficient for the organisation of global cooperation after COVID-19. Other actors are important in a world of networked organisational interaction. Nowadays, much global policymaking, research innovation, and capacity-building transpires through the interaction of modern networks. Networks, increasingly facilitated by digitalisation, change the nature of state power, international relations, and diplomatic practice. Digital, networked communication changes approaches to international bargaining and strategy from
the pre-digital age. While networks can, and do, exhibit the characteristics of the international organisations identified above, they also move us beyond the traditional state-centric multilateral governance structures in the direction of issue-specific or sector-specific governance, with the additional engagement of hybrid multi-sector stakeholders in the policy process. We need more precisely defined minimal conditions for multilateral cooperation that recognise that digitalised network activity, and corporate power, change the nature of global decision-making. Networks do not require government sanction, rather they encourage self-organisation. In an age of pandemic, policy specialisation and policy compartmentalisation typical of 20th-century policymaking become less important and the need to resolve the question of open governance versus closed governance and open versus closed digital spaces in competing, centralised-versus- decentralised systems becomes more important. Maintaining the openness of networks requires cooperation amongst a wider, hybrid range of actors, including not only states and international organisations – the traditional stuff of multilateralism – but also non-state participants from the worlds of corporations and civil society. In a digital context, these actors include not only the major providers identified above. They also include users and digital rights-defenders, all of whom are, or should be, stakeholders in global governance decision-making. 3.4: Internationalism matters: Three proposals to underwrite a reset We must aspire to re-create a re-booted multilateralism, underwritten by a spirited-but-pragmatic internationalism suitable to the times. Contemporary internationalism must be hard-headed. Its core principles must reflect: (i) A recommitment to the international institutions – in both principle and practice. Global cooperation is going nowhere without it. Of course, institutions at times get captured or compromised, as with the WHO or UNESCO. That an institution might be functioning sub- optimally is in the first instance a reason to reform it, not to get rid of it.
(ii) A recommitment to saving a reformed globalisation from itself if it is to continue
as the world’s principal generator of growth and wealth.
De-globalisation is in train. Trade as a share of GDP peaked in 2008 and has declined since then.
For sure, COVID-19 has made states keen to be less reliant on other states. But these arguments
are not new – they are frequently applied to food supply – and this is not the end of globalisation. It
is not unreasonable for a state to wish to secure essential medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and
antibiotics, without reliance on another single country. Production in these, and other sensitive areas,
will be brought back on shore by states that can do so. But resilience is different to self-
sufficiency/autarky, which is impossible in a globally inter-connected world. Resilience is not simply
a matter of ‘domestic sourcing – good, global sourcing – bad’. Diversification of production and
supply is not only about efficiency; it has been, and must continue to be, a core principle of risk
management.
To survive, globalisation must become more ethical and fairer if it is not to unravel in a catastrophic
way for the global economy. Globalisation’s unequal distributive consequences need to be
addressed. At the risk of cliché, what the world needs is more Keynes and Piketty and less Hayek
in its policy diet. The post-COVID-19 era needs a new balance between national resilience, market
efficiency, and social justice.
(iii) Most importantly, hard-headed internationalism requires that great power
competition between the US and China be compartmentalised and contained.
Both states, of course, have the right to protect their interests; but not at the expense of the
functioning of the wider world. Distrust and scepticism of each other’s motives
notwithstanding, it should be possible to identify where their wider interests and those of the
global community align. The danger we face is that their mutual animosities reach a level
that inhibits rational decision-making for the collective good. Both states should learn to
practice ambiguous tolerance towards one another if we are to minimise the polarisation
and geo-strategic disruption implicit in a new bipolarity. But while the US and China mightbe the principal parties to the major global contests, they are not the only ones with an
interest in them. Other states will have to work within the constraints emanating from a new
Cold War.
A post-Covid-19 order: The optimistic scenario
Economics
• End of neoliberalsim; • Reformed globalisation;
• Liberal welfarism; • Open international economy;
• Mitigation of inequality; • Reformed international
• Containment of digital economic institutions;
oligopolists. • Restored cooperation;
• Managed polycentricity.
Politics Digitalisation International Relations
• Digitalisation in support of a • Towards a global ‘Community
New Democracy; of Destiny’;
• Open imagined communities; • Salvaged, reformed liberal
• Mitigation of cultural wars; order;
• Rollback of populism. • Human rights shape a managed
Society & Culture migration regime.
Conclusion: Nature hates a (power) vacuum
The preceding proposals are predicated on large assumptions. Firstly, that the US will
behave responsibly and ethically and with a modicum of commitment to the wider global
public good. Secondly, the same proviso applies to the other major players, especially
China, but also India and Russia. Thirdly, that the EU and influential middle powers, such
as Australia, Canada, South Korea, and the Nordics, can think and act multilaterally in the
absence of the leadership, or even the support, of the US. While a renewed collective action
is not impossible, a second-term Trump administration in 2021 will clearly not assist attempts
to re-boot multilateral collective action problem solving.Yet, multilateral action, absent the US, is already on view in some responses to COVID-19. In May 2020, twenty global leaders, minus the US, pledged to support an US$8 billion multilateral action package through the WHO to accelerate cooperation in the shared development and globally equitable distribution of any coronavirus vaccine. Similarly, multilateralism still lives at the embattled WTO. Absent the presence of the US, the EU, Australia, Canada, Singapore, and twelve other members have established a Multiparty Interim Appeal Arrangement (MPIA) to substitute for the Arbitration Dispute Mechanism rendered inquorate and non-functioning by the refusal of the US to ratify the appointment of judges to the Appellate Body. The flowering of such non-hegemonic leadership is to be welcomed. Yet even if the EU and the principal middle powers were to continue to lift their game as cooperative international actors, longer term international cooperation is not going to occur without the positive input of both the United States and China. But the credibility of US leadership has been progressively diminished. This has come about, inter alia, by overreach in the Middle East, a US-generated global financial crisis, its increasingly combative transactional international relations, and now the dysfunctional manner in which it has tackled COVID-19. Similarly, China, notwithstanding its endeavours to paint itself in the most favourable light, has not covered itself in glory in its response to COVID-19. We live in a world of poor great power leadership. We are not going to see a recovery of the global economy from its most severe crisis since the depression of the 1930s if it becomes less open, less free, more nationalist, and more protectionist and if we must wait for leadership from either of the world’s two major powers. A Pax Sinica will not replace a Pax Americana. A key question is therefore,
Q9: How long can the world wait for the US to regain its
equilibrium and China to develop an ethical, as opposed to
a purely instrumental, sense of global responsibility?
For too long, misperception and cognitive dissonance have been more significant drivers of great
power foreign policy than is good for us. We should not expect a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment as
politicians recover a belief in multilateralism. A realisation among global leaders that events like a
global pandemic can fundamentally influence the future of international relations – in both the agency
of the principal policy actors and structures of the international system – does not appear likely. An
oligarchic state-centric vision of the world in which major powers exhibit a political culture of habit-
driven, increasingly nationalist, and realist geopolitics predominates.
At the most basic of levels, in contrast to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, in which the G20 played
the role of crisis-buster, neither the G20, nor the G7, have yet made anything other than minor
contributions to the containment of, or provision for, the management of the post-COVID-19 era.
Indeed, no effective G+ formula for a collective response to COVID-19 appears imminent. Similarly,
responses to economic stabilisation and assistance have been, at best, ad hoc: a debt moratorium
(not cancellation) for 77 of the poorest developing countries and IMF debt relief to its 25 poorest
members. But these actions only put off the day of reckoning. There has been little action worthy of
note from the UN and, of course the US has directly cut funding to the WHO in an attempt to
emasculate it.
As we head deeper into a global recession, and the US fails to show leadership in the management
of the international recovery, COVID-19 is shaping up to be the page-break between the old post-
World War Two US-led order and a new bipolar order. This will certainly be the case if we do not
take the opportunity presented by such a profound crisis to rethink where we are going. The progress
of humanity requires it. But both the US and China seem keener on the blame game than dialogue.
Hegemonic posturing, by both rising and declining great powers, takes insufficient account of three
factors. Firstly, global economic interdependence is not dead. We still have a global market in goods
and finance, increasingly underwritten by digital technology. Secondly, the US and China are not theonly global actors. We have a diversity of actors; not just states but also major corporations, civil
society actors, and networks in play. Thirdly, challenges in contemporary international relations
require different modes of thinking for the pandemic era.
Nothing is written in stone. Hard-headed analysis accompanied by innovative normative thinking
should force us to think beyond traditional positioning in international relations. For example:
Q10: Can we ask whether, and if so how, the need for a joined-up
global health policy might kick-start a new multilateralism?
After all, global pandemics logically require global policy responses. An exit strategy for COVID-19
without global cooperation makes no sense. If the pandemic can shock the major global leaders into
recognising what is lost by the pursuit of competition and a failure to cooperate in multilateral
decision-making on global policy issues, then COVID-19 would have served at least one useful
purpose.
If we are to arrest current trends towards a further de-coupled, closed, nationalist world order, states
will need a new – hard-headed and pragmatic – internationalism. Manageable, medium-term reform
of the institutions and mechanisms of international cooperation will be a minimum necessary defence
against future global pandemic threats. What happens to the WHO over the short-to-near-term future
will be a fundamental test of the ability of the international order to function for the greater collective
good.
Q.11: Is the international community capable of (re)-creating an
independent institution (or at least a set of practices) for
monitoring and coordinating a joined-up global health system?
If future pandemics are to be contained, the development of appropriate health policy responses has
to be international, not local. For this to happen, the WHO needs to be strengthened both financially
and in terms of personnel.
Q. 12: How can frail institutions be pulled back from a slide into
permanent decay?
This is both a generic and a practical question. Generically, the question is,Q. 13: To what degree can the principles of multilateralism be re-
booted?
And practically,
Q.14: Which institutions are deemed important enough to save
and at the same time lend themselves to potential reform rather
than redundancy?
That we were not ready for a very predictable pandemic should be a wake-up call. A return to
business as usual invites the next disaster. Now is the time to recognise that it can happen again
and to start developing necessary frameworks for global co-ordination to address further tragedies.
Only by jettisoning nationalist rhetoric and practice and embracing stronger international cooperation
can governments protect their citizens. A start will be to fix those existing international institutions
that remain relevant. Our global future must be a shared future. Global problems, such as pandemics
and the effects of climate deterioration, will only be addressed by enhanced global cooperation.
The Westphalian system of states has a monocultural essence that does not fit 21st-century reality.
Its ‘nationalist universalism’ minimised cultural diversity. This makes no sense in today’s digitalised,
networked world. A future post-pandemic world order will need to accommodate to a ‘civilisational’
diversity. International order is not coterminous with American hegemony and any future order
cannot be underwritten by the US alone – even if the US were so minded. International order in the
21st century is more complex and hybrid than in the previous century. Other actors – not only states
and not only China among states – count. China, and revisionist powers such as Russia, India, and
others, need to learn the habit of real cooperation, as opposed to symbolic and rhetorical gestures.
At the same time, the US needs to rediscover the habit of cooperation. Even Henry Kissinger, the
quintessential superpower realist, recognises this. No country, he says,
"… not even the US, can in a purely national effort overcome the virus. The necessities of
the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program" (Wall
Street Journal, 3 April 2020).The endeavour proposed in this concept paper is at the core of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute’s (DOC) mission; that is to develop a way of thinking about multilateral, international cooperation that accounts for the nature of global diversity. The DOC’s agenda is to ensure that lessons learned from COVID-19 lead to a positive narrative, suggesting multilateral collective action problem solving should prevail over nationalist narratives exhorting nativism, the scapegoating of foreigners, and a closed global economy. This is an inflection point for the world of politics as well as an economic moment. It should present an opportunity to re-boot the collective endeavour. Virtual communication presents an opportunity to the DOC, and other like-minded actors, to advance dialogue. It is the purpose of this paper to kick-start a conversation as to how we might do this. Professor Richard Higgott, Budapest, 1 June 2020 6,900 words: comments welcome: richardhiggott0@gmail.com
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