What world awaits us after COVID-19? Four experts give us their answer
The world''s inhabitants are navigating these days over important unknowns that stress us when we think about what reality awaits us once the critical health phase caused by the coronavirus has been overcome. No one risks assuring what the post-COVID-19 world will look like, although we are all aware that few things will be the same as before the coronavirus appeared in China at the end of 2019. The World Health Organization itself has clearly predicted that there will be a "new reality" once the health crisis is over, as the virus "will not go away". And that is only from a health point of view. Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari says that "we are in danger of waking up to a different world" (XL Weekly).
Thinkers are also trying to guess what countries and international relations will be like after the emergence and disruption, if it will be like after 9/11 or World War II when new world orders were born. Jürgen Habermas has stated that "never before have we known so much about our own ignorance". But it can and must be refined in the discernment of what awaits us around the corner from the virus. For example, a few days ago, Nuccio Ordine spoke out in an interview in La Vanguardia in favour of a central structure to manage health and education in all countries in a strategy of recentralisation which would have numerous opponents in countries like Spain.
Three university professors and a press correspondent analyze for Atalayar the three key questions of the world that will be born after the pandemic.
Is globalisation to blame for this pandemic? Red plague, smallpox or the Spanish flu spread around the Earth without such advanced means of transport as those we have today. The temptation to deglobalise will be present in many leaders, which may be to the detriment of supranational organisations as we know them today.
Alberto Peláez, Televisa's chief correspondent in Spain, does not see an easy regression in world globalisation. He believes that "globalisation is here to stay and there is no going back. What could happen is that the COVID-19 will lead us to a new model of globalisation different from the one we know today". According to this view, new technologies are too pervasive in globalisation and are the ones that rule the world today, making de-globalisation unlikely.
Similarly, José Antonio Gurpegui, a professor at the University of Alcalá, believes that the global economy is too developed for a sudden reverse process to occur: "In economic terms, globalisation is so closely linked to the world production system that it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to carry out an economic reorganisation of such magnitude. It is possible, however, that there will be greater proximity in terms of products that are fundamental for survival and that will be relocated by the different states".
Javier Redondo, Professor of Politics and Government at the Francisco de Vitoria University, already saw symptoms of states withdrawing into themselves, as in the cases of Trump, tariffs, Brexit or the refugee crisis in Europe: "The most logical and intuitive thing is to think that the virus will accelerate this trend, above all because its first consequence in this respect is the closure of borders. Moreover, the biggest crises often cause these effects, the search for refuge in the known". Redondo believes that "the virus constitutes a defeat of globalisation, so in order to sustain it it must be revised".
Marta Rebolledo, professor of Political Communication at the University of Navarra, sees a clear difference between the response that states have given and the response that has been given at a global level: "Each nation-state has adopted its own measures, restrictions and deadlines, - even seeing differences in criteria between regions. In contrast, there has been a lack of global responses and actions (as in the case of the EU) to a problem that is precisely global or rather 'glocal': something that begins at the local level but breaks the barrier and jumps to the global in such a way that the line between the local and the global is blurred". Despite this reading, Rebolledo does not believe that "this will lead to a retreat from the global. "In the face of global problems and threats, global solutions are needed, and therefore global governance. This could be one of the mantras that will accompany us in the coming years".
The authoritarian tics that democratic governments can commit always come at times of crisis like this. There is a risk of temptations to change the system towards more autarkic and state-run democracies. Alberto Peláez believes that "every time a major issue has occurred in history we have taken refuge in autarchies and authoritarianisms. Hitler's Germany, Allende's Chile or the Spanish civil war. Faced with a situation of uncertainty and chaos, we could return to autarchic models, which only devolve societies".
Javier Redondo also believes that there is reason to believe that attempts are being made to break through the barriers of control established in post-war constitutionalism, and he coined the term "illiberal democracy", a formal democracy but without freedoms: "Experience tells us that when society 'demands' security, powers are strengthened and citizens stop watching out for excesses. Without doubt, this is a breeding ground for the emergence of caesareanisms, warlords, concentration of power and the attribution of exceptional powers".
Marta Rebolledo answers this question emphatically: "Yes, of course. The fact that we find ourselves in a situation of fear, uncertainty, even panic makes us more vulnerable as a society, aligning ourselves and revering the protective State: we look to 'Papa State' to protect us and we embrace him in the face of the unknown threat that is looming over us. This breeding ground may be used by governments to take somewhat questionable measures, from the point of view of freedoms and rights. This is clearly what is happening in Hungary with Orbán".
José Antonio Gurpegui also alludes to Hungary's stateist model when he mentions the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency and the crisis of immigrants in Europe as examples of a certain government authoritarianism in some countries. This would show that it does not take a great earthquake of a global nature like a pandemic for these temptations to threaten states again. Although Gurpegui is the least pessimistic of the thinkers consulted by Atalayar in this regard, considering that "if we have anything to learn from this new 'plague' it is just the opposite: any authoritarian attitude -antiliberal, I would venture to say- will be more harmful than beneficial".
The risk does not only affect semi-dictatorial societies, but also consolidated democracies. Rebolledo recalls that "a democracy does not need a military coup or revolution to disappear. Changes around the weakening of institutions, such as the legal system or the media system, and the erosion of traditional political norms can be so slow that we do not notice the deterioration of democracies, as authors Levitsky and Ziblatt point out in How Democracies Die". And she also warns of the threat of a more state-monitored and state-controlled society being born in which data is collected, for example, to combat COVID-19, but which basically means moving into the realm of rights and freedoms.
This is one of the questions most on the lips of international analysts and political scientists these days, even feeding this question with the current that thinks that the virus could have been created in a Chinese laboratory for this purpose. The American political and economic dominance may be surrendering its banners to the emerging power, and the localism of the U.S. president contributes to that effect. Gurpegui considers that "Trump's victory in the American elections four years ago and the protectionist measures he adopted implicitly showed -or were the natural reaction to the fact- that the United States was losing political leadership and world economic hegemony. I don't dare to predict that China will become a world leader, because it needs more than economic power, but undoubtedly the balance of power and the current geopolitical map will be considerably altered".
Journalist Alberto Pelaez is clear about this: "No empire has ever been forever. The Roman Empire. Byzantium, the Spanish Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the British Empire, all ended up falling and that fall was disastrous. The American one is decadent and has been groped for years. It is not unthinkable that there could be new leadership. China has an iron economic horizon, but not a political one". We can already see that opinions are moving in the direction of questioning the economic leadership of the US, and Javier Redondo believes that everything points in that direction. "But I have my doubts about whether this is going to be the beginning of a new era or simply a phase in the process of rebalancing. China's dominance is linked to other variables: crisis of globalisation, nationalism, crisis of democracy I do sense or see a new cold war between the United States and China and in it the position of Latin America will be key".
Professor Marta Rebolledo situates the first period in a struggle of narrative frameworks: "There will be a struggle between interpretations of responsibility and management of the crisis, which will have geopolitical and therefore economic consequences. In fact, this battle between frameworks has already begun to be drawn with Trump leading the United States and the West and pointing to China as the culprit of this crisis. The new reality will be built, above all, more than in terms of leadership, around a widening gap between the West and China".
Conclusions: the general opinion of the four analysts consulted is that globalisation will not disappear, there will be a risk of authoritarianism, and the distribution of new roles in geopolitics will change substantially.
