Covid-hit US has lost stature as global leader

MK Bhadrakumar
Former Ambassador

MK Bhadrakumar
Former Ambassador

It is at once possible to underestimate or to exaggerate the impact of the global spread of Covid-19 on international politics. The ‘butterfly effect’ in game theory comes to mind. On a winter day, almost 60 years ago, Edward Lorenz, a mild-mannered meteorology professor at the MIT, entered some numbers into a computer programme simulating weather patterns and then left his office to get a cup of coffee while the machine ran. When he returned, he noticed a result that would change the course of science, overthrowing the idea of the clockwork universe with his groundbreaking research on chaos.

Lorenz was repeating a computer simulation he’d run earlier, but had rounded off one variable from .506127 to .506. To his surprise, that tiny alteration drastically transformed the whole pattern his programme produced. The result led Lorenz to a powerful insight about the way nature works: small changes can be very consequential. The idea came to be known as the ‘butterfly effect’ after Lorenz suggested that the flap of a butterfly’s wings might ultimately cause a tornado. The butterfly effect has a profound corollary: forecasting the future can be nearly impossible.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused global tension and is impacting international life. The Olympic flame arrived in Japan on March 20, but Tokyo’s Olympic cauldron will not be lit in July. The Victory Day parade on the Red Square may not go ahead on May 9 to mark the diamond anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The Pentagon has announced a rollback of the US participation in the ‘Defender Europe 2020’ exercise in which some 20,000 American soldiers were expected to form the backbone of the massive NATO drill, which Moscow had called ‘provocative’.

All this is for a start. A renowned German disease control expert, Prof Lothar Wieler, president of Robert Kock Institut in Berlin, Germany’s public health institute which closely monitors the coronavirus, expects the pandemic to continue for two years.

However, when it comes to the world order and concrete problems of history, we need to take a more or less long-term framework involving the whole span of human development where the pandemic will have to be synthesised with the actual process of historical development. We cannot possibly speak of the ‘world order until March 11’, the date on which the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. The present forms part of a historical process.

The shift in power and influence from the West to the East is a historical process. Covid-19 will accelerate it. China has been quick to react, whereas the US and Europe have been slow and haphazard — and that weakens their global standing. But the fundamentally conflictive nature of world politics predates Covid-19. Nations are circling their wagons but it will be premature to predict the death of globalisation.

Economic self-isolation will not help on the path of recovery. Historically, severe shocks induced peace. The Concert of Europe formed in 1815 in reaction to the devastation of Napoleonic Wars or the United Nations formed after World War II are such examples of great-power cooperation, including powers with very different domestic political systems.

Clearly, the shift away from US-centric globalisation to a more China-centric globalisation, which has been evident for some time, will accelerate. This is partly due to America’s loss of faith in globalisation and international trade, which is also a historical legacy — although often attributed to Donald Trump. Europe, on the other hand, cannot do without international trade, is dependent on globalisation and, therefore, globalism and market economies are here to stay.

With an eye on China, Europe is entering into a grand strategy debate in the direction of a hardheaded internationalism that rebuilds an open system but with new forms of protection and capacities to manage interdependence, which could provide a global infrastructure of pragmatic multilateral cooperation. Paradoxically, what Covid-19 highlights is that 21st century technologies are global not just in their distribution, but also in their consequences.

Yet, the pandemic is a landmark event insofar as the US has irretrievably lost its stature as global leader. Its bungling incompetence, coupled with its narrow self-interest, is on full display, significantly diminishing its credibility. No amount of blame game can detract from this. Much depends on the outcome of the November election in the US.

Make no mistake that under a Democratic President in the White House, the zero-sum geopolitical contest, politically and economically, with China may give way, induced by the realisation that to improve the well-being of the American people and reverse the continuing deterioration of their social condition requires cooperation with China.

Given the toxic US political environment toward China prevalent in the most recent years, this may appear unlikely, but with the economic damage and social collapse that is unfolding in America, there may not be much choice in the matter. Admittedly, this involves a larger question of how to reframe American strategy toward China. The challenge is to manage a ‘cooperative rivalry’ with China. The Covid-19 crisis presents a test.

Trump’s new national security strategy focusing on great-power competition is shown to be inadequate. The stunning evidence lies in Trump’s overture to Russian President Vladimir Putin to coordinate actions on stabilising the situation in global oil trade and minimise the negative effect of oil price volatility on the global economy — and to salvage the shale industry from sudden death.

What it underscores is that the US can no longer protect its security by acting alone and needs great-power cooperation and coordination. Covid-19 has made this realisation possible.