Post-Covid world order

The world is witnessing scenes never seen before, being swept by the Covid-19 pandemic. As I write, around 210 countries and territories around the world affected and around 4.9 million confirmed cases globally along with nearly 320,000 fatalities, it is potentially changing the globe in every possible way.

In addition to the loss of life, the global economic cost of the pandemic is expected to be around US$4 trillion, according to the Asian Development Bank's projections, thereby affecting people of nearly all religions, ethnicities and races.

With the virus changing epicenters from China, to Europe and currently the US, it is an invisible attack on humanity. It is the most dramatic, unusual and global crisis since the Spanish flu of 1918, which infected around 500 million people (about a third of the global population).

While this new virus is more global in nature, the world is turning inwards. People are locked down, borders are insulated, institutions of global cooperation are witnessing decline; protectionism, xenophobia, hyper-nationalism and inequality are on a rise. We are, in general, moving toward a world of isolation over the world of cooperation - just when the requirement is exactly the opposite.

The future of the idea of globalization needs to be analyzed in this context. After the Second World War, liberal institutionalism and globalization were considered to be the means to stop worldwide bloodshed. Francis Fukuyama even termed the ascendency of Western liberal democracy as the "end of history" or the end of man's ideological evolution. Authors like Kenichi Ohmae looked at the globalized system as a "borderless world"; others like Marshall McLuhan looked at the entire world as a "global village" because of the increased interconnectedness. Some others like Jagdish Bhagwati advocated for a more globalized system because of its potential for unprecedented growth, and trickle-down effect on poverty eradication.

Just before the pandemic seized the world, optimists had started to hope that the world would be more collaborative when the US and China signed the "Phase 1 deal" to ease a long-running trade war. But ever since Covid-19 struck humanity, things have gotten worse, with increased blame games on the origin of the virus, especially between the US and China, and protectionism reigning supreme.

Globalization may be blamed for the worldwide devastation, leading to responses like travel bans, reduced international cooperation, immigration being stopped and trade exchanges getting crippled. Countries have started to debate whether autocracies like China handled the situation better than democracies in Europe and North America.

Correlations are being confused with causations by linking the depth of economic ties of these countries with China and the intensity of Covid-related damage in these countries. The voices advocating less globalization are overpowering the advocates of more globalization with each passing day.

Threatened liberal institutionalism The idea behind the establishment of multilateral institutions after World War II was to create a permanent arrangement for cooperation and communication, to promote understanding among different sovereign global actors for long-term peace, to deter proliferation of weapons, and to deal with the balance-of-power crisis.

Gradually the international organizations were entrusted with more functions such as promoting trade, and protecting the environment, world heritage sites and various vulnerable groups such as laborers, women, children and refugees, among others.

However, the organizations responsible for managing global commons are time and again accused of asymmetric methods of functioning, inherent biases and becoming a theater for global politics and cold wars (first between the US and USSR and now between the US and China). The current US administration's decisions to leave the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) were already proof of the increased trust deficit.

According to Indian academic Shailendra Deolankar, "The World Health Organization (WHO), responsible to keep the world healthy, to track emerging infections, developing vaccines, helping the underdeveloped and the developing nations has been facing stern accusations for its lackluster attitude in handling the Covid pandemic, misguiding the world on the nature and the mode of transmission of the virus and a delayed response in declaration of Covid as a pandemic."