Who will be winners and losers in new world order (via the Guardian)
A must-read on #postcoronafuture
“In Hong Kong, graffiti reads: “There can be no return to normal because normal was the problem in the first place… The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said: “The relationship between the biggest powers has never been as dysfunctional. Covid-19 is showing dramatically, either we join [together] … or we can be defeated”
Read my 12 bullets on a post-corona future. Read my detailed post-corona future ‘backcasting’ piece.
Watch TheGuardian video below (just hit play)
“There can be no return to normal because normal was the problem in the first place”
“In Europe, the US and Asia the discussion has broadened out. Public life may be at a standstill, but public debate has accelerated. Everything is up for debate – the trade-offs between a trashed economy and public health, the relative virtues of centralised or regionalised health systems, the exposed fragilities of globalisation, the future of the EU, populism, the inherent advantage of authoritarianism.
It is as if the pandemic has turned into a competition for global leadership, and it will be the countries that most effectively respond to the crisis that will gain traction. Diplomats, operating out of emptied embassies, are busy defending their governments’ handling of the crisis, and often take deep offence to criticism. National pride, and health, are at stake. Each country looks at their neighbour to see how quickly they are “flattening the curve””
My comment from last week: “Post-Corona, the European Union is forced (as well as politically authorised) to think and act as a united region – the United States of Europe will emerge much quicker than anticipated, and the USofE will once again work much closer with a post-Trump USA”
“The Crisis Group thinktank, in assessing how the virus will permanently change international politics, suggests: “For now we can discern two competing narratives gaining currency – one in which the lesson is that countries ought to come together to better defeat Covid-19, and one in which the lesson is that countries need to stand apart in order to better protect themselves from it. The crisis also represents a stark test of the competing claims of liberal and illiberal states to better manage extreme social distress. As the pandemic unfolds it will test not only the operational capacities of organisations like the WHO and the UN but also the basic assumptions about the values and political bargains that underpin them”