THE world as we know it may not be the same again. The coronavirus has shut the world down. The globe is out for a very long lunch break. And so is geopolitics.
Sure, a few old powers are still disturbing the universe of people here and there, but they will soon be reduced to pleas for help as their hubris is soon flayed by Covid-19.
Global governance has been in very bad health for a long time. Notwithstanding the presence of the League of Nations, and now, the United Nations, big and powerful nations just went to war as they fancied. They even invented excuses to start some.
Global leaders, mostly members of the UN General Assembly, did urge the world body every now and then to stop big powers from destroying the world. None listened.
Now, Covid-19 has got their attention. The irony is this: a diseased world needs a disease to bring it together. But at least two things must be made to happen before this Humpty Dumpty of a world can be put together again.
Firstly, the hubris of the five UN Security Council members must be flung out of the window, willingly or unwillingly.
Neither China nor the United States (or for that matter the rest of the West) should plan to mould the world in their image. No one political or economic model should be imposed on everyone.
For decades, the leaders of the West, especially the US and Britain, have imposed their liberal political and market values on the rest of the world. To paraphrase John Gray, a one-time professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, there is no place for such barbarism though it comes clothed with the charm of Western virtues.
We can’t make the past “unhappen”, but we sure can try not to repeat the neoconservatives’ delusional programmes of the past. But we can only harbour such hope if US President Donald Trump and his version of America change for the better. China has lots of mending, too.
A world with a subdued West doesn’t mean the East must be ascendant. All it means is that the game of global governance must be played on a level playing field.
Secondly, the world, the rich and poor, must pool our resources together to fight our common enemy on two fronts: public health and economy. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres put it thus on March 19: “We are in an unprecedented situation and the normal rules no longer apply. We cannot resort to the usual tools in such unusual times.”
Let’s take public health. Trump has done one good thing: he has issued a presidential order asking reluctant General Motors to produce ventilators on the double.
Other world leaders must do the same. We do not normally indulge in Trump emulation, but this one is an exception. Let the mask diplomacy begin.
The world economic ailments, too, must be approached with a similar united global force. In the calculation of The Economist newspaper, Covid-19 has wiped out a whopping US$23 trillion in global market value since mid-February.
Some firms may not see the light of day again. But some that do may require more than national stimulus packages. Time, at last, for the elusive global stimulus package.