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Three scenarios for world order after COVID-19: Can multilateral cooperation be saved? - Dialogue of ...
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres
                                  speaks at a UN Security Council meeting titled
Concept paper                     ‘Maintenance of International Peace and Security’ in
                                  January 2020. (Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
                                  North America/Getty Images News).

Three scenarios for world order
after COVID-19:
Can multilateral cooperation be
saved?

Richard Higgott (2020)
Three scenarios for world order after COVID-19: Can multilateral cooperation be saved? - Dialogue of ...
Dialogue of Civilisations Research Institute
                            Berlin

                         Project on

Reinventing multilateralism in a post-pandemic era

                         Concept paper

                            First draft

       Three scenarios for world order after COVID-19:

           Can multilateral cooperation be saved?

              Prepared by Richard Higgott, 1 June 2020

              Comments to richardhiggott0@gmail.com
Three scenarios for world order after COVID-19:

               Can multilateral cooperation be saved?1

Executive summary

This paper demonstrates how a global pandemic like COVID-19 can change the relationship

between states and the international system in an era of heightened and unequal contest

between the forces of nationalism and global cooperation. It looks at what we know and

speculates about what we can only conjecture at this stage. We know four things:

    •   The world is likely to be less prosperous and a global depression of greater or
        lesser magnitude is now virtually inevitable, at least in the short term.
    •   The world, if trends in train prior to COVID-19 continue, will be less economically
        open. Decreasing free trade, increasingly distorted by subsidies, and economic de-
        coupling will be the order of the day.
    •   The world will be less ideologically neoliberal and states will be more
        interventionist. Globalisation in its Hayekian guise is over. Indeed, the world is on
        the verge of a major rethink on globalisation.
    •   The world is likely to be less politically free in an era of digitalisation. As seems
        probable, and if not resisted, increased digital surveillance is likely to remain long
        after its utility in the battle against COVID-19 has declined.

The paper speculates about what this means for scenarios of world order – noting a scenario

is a way of telling a story about the future – and about how governments and other

1This is a shortened version of a longer (and fully referenced) analysis available at richardhiggott0@gmail.com.
Thanks for comments on first draft to Professors Kim Nossal, Simon Evenett and Luk Van Langenhove of Queen’s
University, Canada, St Gallen University, Switzerland and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel respectively; and
Jonathan Grayson and Ekaterina Jarkov of the DOC.
stakeholders will respond. While we could identify a wide range of scenarios, the paper settles

for just three:

    •   Scenario 1 reflects the analytically complacent plus ça change position, assuming
        a return, more or less, to the status quo ante after the pandemic is contained.
    •   Scenario 2 reflects the apocalyptic view of chronic global breakdown potentially as
        bad as that of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
    •   Scenario 3, the core of the paper, reflects views of the ‘what is to be done?’ variety
        concerning whether we are to see a positive reset of world order.

Four factors will matter in any reset:

    •   Morality and solidarity. A sense of international community must be developed.
    •   Multilateralism. A re-commitment to international institutionalism is needed.
    •   Networks – especially digital networks – probably more so than the post-World War
        Two international institutions.
    •   Internationalism. But it must be ‘hard-headed’ internationalism adapting to the
        changing role of the principal agents (the Great Powers) and the new global
        structures, especially the digitalised ones, of the current age.
Introduction: COVID-19 and international relations; Assumptions and questions

A global pandemic brings about shifts in international economic and political power in ways that we

will only be able to accurately describe with the benefit of hindsight. So, what can we know? At the

very least, COVID-19 will inflict a permanent shock on the world economy, especially in the emerging

world. At the very least, the virus has exposed weaknesses in economic and political systems and

structures that never really recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. At the very least, the hyper-

globalisation of the last few decades is unlikely to return following the containment of the current

pandemic. At the very least, nationalist political trends reasserting the sovereignty of the state will

continue. Structures and practices of world order will not be the same as they were prior to COVID-

19.

COVID-19 is the largest collective analytical failure since we failed to foresee the end of the Cold

War and the break-up of the Soviet Union. At this stage, it is too early to announce who will write the

most persuasive post-COVID-19 narrative, so moderation and intellectual openness to alternative

futures is required. This paper provides three competing narratives:

      •   Narrative 1: the analytically complacent plus ça change scenario.
      •   Narrative 2: the apocalyptic, chronic global breakdown scenario; in all probability as bad
          as the Great Depression of the 1930s.
      •   Narrative 3: reflects a ‘what is to be done?’ scenario, if a global reset is to happen.

Narrative 1 considers the prospect of a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. Narrative 2 looks at the worst-

case scenario of a drift towards a contested and conflictual bipolar, post-liberal order. Narrative 3

looks at prospects for a reset post-liberal order. It recognises the continuing influences of

Westphalian international relations. But it offers a normative defence of the principles and practices

of multilateral cooperation in which global institutions are in need of serious reform if they are to have

a utility, indeed in some instances survive, post-COVID-19.

Four assumptions and are at the heart of any analysis of what the post-COVID-19 international order

might look like:
•    Assumption 1: The world is likely to be less prosperous and much more indebted; a global
        recession is inevitable and a depression probable.
   •    Assumption 2: The world will be less economically open. Decreasing free trade and
        growing economic (and political) de-coupling will be the order of the day.
   •    Assumption 3: The world will be less ideologically neoliberal. Globalisation, in its extreme
        Hayekian guise is over. Indeed, the world needs a major rational rethink, as opposed to
        an ideological rethink, if de-globalisation is to be sensibly mitigated.
   •    Assumption 4: The world is likely to be less politically free in an era of digitalisation.
        Increased digital surveillance will almost certainly remain after its utility in the initial battle
        against COVID-19 has declined.

Several overarching questions also follow for any such analysis. Key empirical questions focus

primarily on whether the global order of the post-world war two era – a partially liberal, partially global,

US-led order underwriting a process of contained multilateral collective action problem solving – is

past its sell by date. Equally important, empirical questions also focus on whether we are destined

to see an increasingly nationalist, combative geopolitical system of states turn inwards in search of

that mythical beast called ‘national sovereignty’ and whether this leads to a new Cold War stand-off

and a new bipolarity between the world’s two major powers, the US and China.

Additional questions reflect a test of human political will and humanity’s ability to engage in

cooperative international relations, i.e., whether some kind of reformed order capable of collective

action to solve global problems like biological pandemics, global warming, and the SDGs is possible;

and if so, how we might practically reassert the utility of multilateralism in the face of bilateral

transactional international relations nourished by a growing populist-nationalist zeitgeist since at

least 2008 and exacerbated by COVID-19. For this to happen, a collective social commitment and

political will is required. Conclusions are not encouraging. Major threats facing humanity are unlikely

to be resolved by national responses alone. Global problems require global solutions.

In looking at the practicalities of multilateral potential in a post-COVID-19, reformed world order, this

paper outlines 14 more specific questions:
Q1: Can we reset the global order in such a way that privileges
humanity’s cooperative instincts at the expense of its selfish
instincts?

Q2: To what extent can change be steered in the direction of a
moral narrative for trans-sovereign cooperation post COVID-19?

Q3: Is the idea of solidarity beyond the level of the state a
chimera?

Q4: Can we use COVID-19 to build a narrative for an extra-national
community of destiny?

Q5: If COVID-19 cannot generate a new transformation in how
humanity cooperates, can it, at the very least, enable us to set the
terms for the forthcoming debate?

Q6: Can COVID-19 highlight for us, in theory at least, the case for
a new eco-social political economy providing universal basic
services to protect us in the future?

Q7: If it cannot supply itself in an emergency –such as a pandemic
– can it really claim to be sovereign?

Q8: What is the appropriate role for the 21st-century state to play
in the state-market relationship?

Q9: How long can the world wait for the US to regain its
equilibrium and China to develop an ethical, as opposed to
an instrumental, sense of global responsibility?

Q10: Can we ask whether, and if so how, the need for a joined-up
global health policy might kick start a new multilateralism?

Q.11: Is the international community capable of (re)-creating an
independent institution (or at least a set of practices) for
monitoring and coordinating a joined-up global health system?

Q. 12: How can frail institutions be pulled back from a slide into
permanent decay?
Q. 13: To what degree can the principles of multilateralism be re-
               booted?

               Q.14: Which institutions are deemed important enough to save
               and at the same time lend themselves to potential reform rather
               than redundancy?

Narrative 1: Back to the future or plus ça change … a lingering for liberal order

There is little to be said here. This first scenario finds little support outside of what we might call an

anti-Trump US foreign policy establishment. It underplays the relationship between COVID-19 and

the demise of the current global order. As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign

Relations, says, “…not every crisis is a turning point” and as ‘Mr Soft Power’, Joseph Nye, suggests

“big causes do not necessarily lead to big effects”. But, while they both expect a less liberal world

order, this COVID-19 crisis will not spell the immediate end of it.

In this scenario, the US, largely due to both its long-term soft and hard power, will remain preeminent.

And China’s set-backs – arising, amongst other things, from its failed COVID-19 propaganda drive

– will constrain its rise. Also implicit in this view is an assumption that a new US president will (i)

reverse the nightmare of the Trumpian interlude in US foreign policy, and (ii) introduce a reformist

agenda for multilateralism that will encourage a return to a more globally cooperative world

order…and pigs will fly overhead in this happy land!
Narrative 2: The new geopolitical age and US-China bipolarity

This scenario assumes a continued, dramatic decline in the world order as it existed prior to COVID-

19. There are two elements to this decline:

   •   A general breakdown in global economic and political order. Although stopping short of
       war, it remains the darkest, worst-case scenario with no clear exit strategy.
   •   An accompanying trend towards combative geopolitics and geo-economics and a
       growing regionalisation of world order built around a US-China bipolar Cold War.

This scenario expects a post-pandemic order reflected in an economic collapse as great as the

1930s and the emergence of new spheres of geopolitical influence. It will also be accompanied by

growing socio-economic inequality, the rise of populist political authoritarianism in a world of

declining social justice, declining basic freedoms, and increasing environmental instability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the logic of globalisation; exposing flaws in a system based

on breaking up production processes into geographically separated steps and an internationalised

division of labour in which elements such as design and marketing were retained in developed

countries while manufacturing and assembly were outsourced to developing countries. What was

not anticipated was the dramatic increase in negative, endogenous unequal distributive

consequences in the developed world; notably the US.

The internationalisation of supply chains that fuelled globalisation is now seen, especially through

populist political lenses, to have generated deleterious economic, and political, risks.         As a

consequence, the search for self-reliance has become an increasing watchword for nationalistically

minded governments. Re-nationalisation, global de-coupling, and reshoring of economic production

will continue to take place, notwithstanding increased costs and welfare losses arising from them.

Similarly, a reversal in the growth of international mobility and a decline in open borders can be

expected as governments attempt to claw back what they see as lost national autonomy. This

understanding is embedded in the wider, and for many irrational, assumptions of the loss of

sovereignty that has been a growing issue for populist-nationalists since the 2008 financial crisis.
Hawkish security strategists assume that COVID-19 will provide an opportunity for geo-strategic and

geopolitical disruption. Western analysts suggest it will embolden not only China but also encourage

greater non-cooperative behaviour on the part of other powerful states who will: (i) become

increasingly isolationist; (ii) instigate controls on foreigners and migration; (iii) enhance digital

surveillance systems to continue monitoring people and their movements once the worst elements

of the pandemic are over. This scenario further assumes the continued decline of any vestiges of a

liberal order as the clamour for ‘national sovereignty’ grows stronger.

To the extent that COVID-19 has anything to do with this process, it is as an accelerator, not a cause.

It has provided further fuel, if any were needed, to facilitate a drift towards authoritarian politics,

nationalism, and protectionism in the hands of ‘strongman leaders’ seeking to externalise the blame

for COVID-19.

Finally, this scenario expects state claims to represent not just a historic territory, or a particular

language or ethnic group, but a distinctive civilisation. Civilisational politics de nos jours reflect not

only the populist backlash against economic globalisation but also the rise of Islamophobia,

increased antisemitism, nationalist-identitarian politics, and the weakening of multiculturalism and

multilateralism. A Huntingtonian ‘clash of civilisations’ discourse is threaded through this scenario.

2.1 COVID-19 and the US-China relationship

The Trump Administration’s aggressive transactional attitude to international relations in general and

the bilateral relationship with China in particular has now been crowned by COVID–19. What started

out as a question of trade imbalances has morphed into an increasingly fractious economic and

political contest further exacerbated by COVID-19.

The US – and to a lesser extent Europe – is the major victim of COVID-19 in both real, economic,

and diplomatic terms. The US, with 4% of the global population, accounts for +/- 25% of the

casualties. This has to be contrasted with successful East Asian responses to the epidemic. In
diplomatic terms, the US response to the pandemic has not won it any international admirers.

COVID-19 has diminished trust in America as a global leader in areas where it has hitherto been

admired: its support for key global public goods; innovation and expertise; and policy competence,

especially at the leading edges of technology.

At the same time, China has pursued a muscular diplomacy in its efforts to develop an alternative

global infrastructure. There is, of course, no guarantee that China’s initiatives will pay off. Short-term

Chinese wins will not easily overturn long-standing suspicions; especially in the US, where hostility

is strongly, and unusually, bi-partisan; and in Western Europe, where ‘mask diplomacy’ has met with

mixed success. Both the US and China have suffered blows to their international standing and

prestige arising from COVID-19; the US for its incompetence in handling the virus and China for its

initial cover-up and sub-optimal and blatantly instrumental assistance.

Both have made mistakes. China has practiced the sin of overreach. The US the sin of abdication

and under-commitment. The future battle between them in a post COVID-19 containment era will be

different.

The future contest will be about securing primacy in the principal global systems of exchange: to

see who will control the networks, standards, and platforms of the information age. Both are

battling to establish suzerainty over global digital, cyber, and AI technology. Driven by a

geopolitical and techno-nationalist struggle, we are heading towards a bifurcated global digital

ecology in which China, regardless of occasional setbacks, appears to be making major inroads into

erstwhile US primacy.

A major question of concern is whether, in the short run, we can avoid a ‘Wag the Dog’ scenario

precipitated by either the US or China.2 Donald Trump will certainly want a major diversion in the

run-in to the November presidential election and Xi Jinping will need diversions to deflect attention

away from his growing economic problems.

2
 The phrase ‘Wag the Dog’ (as in the 1997 film of that title) is used to indicate that attention is purposely being
diverted from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance.
In this scenario, the US comes out of lockdown too early (a serious prospect), or a second wave of

coronavirus emerges (an equally serious prospect). Either way, deaths continue to rise, and the US

economy continues to freefall. In his desperation to stave off defeat in the November election, the

president and his supporters dramatically escalate the China blame-game. In similar vein, Xi Jinping,

in the wake of a dramatically declining economy, creates his own distraction – revving up nationalist

sentiment and conspiratorial propaganda that COVID-19 was in fact introduced into China by the

US. He too sees the political benefits of an international conflict somewhere in the Pacific region.

                              A post-Covid-19 order: The pessimistic scenario

                                                  Economics

        •    Decline of neoliberal ideology;                       •    Economic nationalism;
        •    Return of the state;                                  •    De-globalisation;
        •    Surveillance capitalism;                              •    Protectionism;
        •    Economic populism.                                    •    De-coupling
                                                                   •    US-China bipolarity.

            Politics                             Digitalisation                      International Relations

        • Surveillance state;                                      •   End of the liberal order;
        • Hardened imagined                                        •   New Cold War;
          communities;                                             •   Clash of civilisations;
        • Communities of origin;                                   •   No community of common
        • Identitarian politics;                                       destiny.
        • Nativism.                            Society & Culture
Narrative 3: Relearning multilateralism and the case for a global reset

Narratives 1 and 2 – complacent on the one hand, apocalyptic on the other – need to be tempered

by a positive and reform-minded approach if the new normal is not to be continued de-coupling,

continued de-globalisation, and growing geopolitical and civilisational competition. Thus narrative 3

asks questions rather than provides answers.

              Q1: Can we reset the global order in such a way that privileges
              humanity’s cooperative instincts at the expense of its selfish
              instincts?

3.1 Community and moral solidarity matters

Moral narratives underwrite community behaviour. Most states are “imagined communities”

(Anderson, 1983) or “communities of origin” (Judt, 2008). What humanity lacks is a meta-narrative

that extends our social and political boundaries to encompass a trans-sovereign global community;

that is, a ‘community of destiny’ (again Judt, not Xi Jinping) beyond the level of the state that can

address problems that cannot be resolved by communities of origin. Of course, humanity has not

been totally bereft of an ability to engage in practical cooperation beyond the level of the local and

the national community. Indeed, 75 years ago, an international architecture of sorts was created to

rebuild the post-WWII world: the UN system, the Bretton Woods System, etc.

In theory, crises or existential shocks should enhance the prospect of cooperation. Sadly, the

evidence is that COVID-19 is enhancing a trend away from cooperation and towards nationalism,

nativism, and anti-globalisation. As a consequence, moral solidarity is to be found principally at the

level of the state and below. Communities of origin are consolidating. A set of questions follow:

              Q2: To what extent can change be steered in the direction of a
              moral narrative for trans-sovereign cooperation post COVID-19?

              Q3: Is the idea of solidarity beyond the level of the state a
              chimera?
Q4: Can we use COVID-19 to build a narrative for an extra-national
               community of destiny?

               Q5: If COVID-19 cannot generate a new transformation in how
               humanity cooperates, can it, at the very least, enable us to set the
               terms for the forthcoming debate?

               Q6: Can COVID-19 highlight for us, in theory at least, the case for
               a new eco-social political economy providing universal basic
               services to protect us in the future?

If a global pandemic, with no ready-made treatment or cure, does not confirm the interconnectedness

of humanity, then what will?!

While a more fragmented world is coming into being, a global population of over 7.5 billion is too big

to exist via self-sufficient communities of origin alone. Moreover, most of humanity does not wish to

return to small, closed communities. But de-coupling is not simply a US obsession. As other states

become increasingly self-focussed, their instincts will also be to look inward. So, the question of the

moment for nationalist political forces, is as follows:

               Q7: How does a state reinforce its sovereignty? If it cannot supply
               itself in an emergency –such as a pandemic – can it really claim
               to be sovereign?

But this is the wrong question. It is built on a 19th-century absolutist understanding of sovereignty

that is located in a 21st-century setting.
The golden age of sovereignty that modern-day populist leaders appeal to is at best political

posturing and at worst a political fiction. The idea of states as unitary, rational, and self-contained

policy actors has always been a fiction. The correct question here is this:

               Q8: What is the appropriate role for the 21st-century state to play
               in the state-market relationship?

Such a question has been off the agenda during the Hayekian era of hyper-globalisation. It has

regained a new legitimacy in the context of pandemic. For the first time since the end of the Cold

War, we are seeing competing narratives of how the relationship between society and the market,

both domestically and internationally, should be governed.

For COVID-19 not to be a permanent threat, it has to be addressed globally. An eventual vaccine

must be seen as a global public good. In the absence of strengthened global cooperation, our ability

to prevent future outbreaks will always be limited. The positive narrative will need to recognise not

only the renewed importance of governance but also public trust and civic input. At the extreme,

COVID-19 is killing both truth and trust. But the message from COVID-19 is not all bad. Combatting

the pandemic has, in many instances, seen altruism challenge self-interest. Most obviously here,

front-line workers have taken and continue to take great risk in support of a wider community good.

While neoliberal globalisation may have imploded, liberal globalisation is unlikely to unravel. Much

international activity, especially in the trade domain, is too deep-rooted and its economic,

commercial, and digital logics are too powerful. Globalisation, let us recall, has lifted more than a

billion people out of poverty. The rest of the world – and notably China – shows fewer signs of

inwardness than the US. Moreover, moves towards greater national resilience will not eradicate the

need for global problem-solving for those issues that cannot be controlled within national

policymaking communities – especially pandemics and climate issues. Reinvestment in global

institutions and hard-headed internationalism will come later if not sooner. Solidarity must be global

if we are to avoid a permanent healthcare crisis and the prospect of attendant economic collapse

and human immiseration, especially in the Global South.
3.2 Multilateral institutions matter

Future solutions will require a re-build of the international institutional architecture to reverse the

policy fragmentation that has beset multilateral organisations in recent years. The challenge is to

understand how the coronavirus, as the newest global hazard, has exposed flaws in our models of

international decision-making. At the very least it has told us that we will need to exhibit more hybrid,

participatory, and multi-faceted approaches to governance with due consideration for those requiring

social protection in the post-COVID-19 era.

For this to happen, both the destructive and predatory practices of the great powers towards the

international institutions need to be resisted. The great powers need to be multilateral facilitators,

not spoilers. This is especially the case in institutions such as the WTO and the UN and its ancillary

organisations, for example, the WHO, UNCTAD, and the FAO, and the Bretton Woods institutions,

the IMF and World Bank, all of which have been increasingly challenged by the destructive

tendencies of the current US administration and the predatory, expansionist tendencies of China,

with its desires to gain greater control of the UN and other agencies. Liberal internationalists still

committed to multilateralism must be prepared to struggle for a new and pragmatic international

institutional cooperation, rather than bemoan multilateralism’s passing.

Most of the world’s governments have no appetite for building new institutions. Thus, we need to

learn de novo the lessons we have unlearned in recent years. The institutional architecture was

mostly established in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. This was not an era of

globalisation; this was not an era of increasing environmental damage; this was not an era when the

Global South was capable of exercising political voice; and this was most definitely not an era of

digitalisation. As a consequence, much 20th-century international architecture is not fit for dealing

with the problems of the 21st century. Even prior to COVID-19, the prospects of international

institutional reform were drifting in the face of both active undermining and passive neglect.

Moreover, so-called ‘strongman’ leaders have a preference for expanding authoritarian power at

home rather than enhancing international cooperation abroad.
We would perhaps be well served by going back to first principles if we are not to forget why

multilateral institutions proliferated in the second half of the 20th century and what they do when they

are working well. In point form and without elaboration, multilateral institutions:

    •   Create and broker norms, ideas, and expectations;
    •   Lower transaction costs through the provision and sharing of information;
    •   Reduce uncertainty;
    •   Help make promises credible;
    •   Facilitate deal-making;
    •   Enhance enforcement and compliance of agreed norms and rules;
    •   Set limits and define choices of and for members;
    •   Provide venues for dispute-resolution.

This is a powerful list of benefits. For sure, multilateral institutions do not always work optimally and

from time to time, as now, they need major reform, or in some instances even mothballing. But,

notwithstanding the current critique of many international organisations, if they did not exist, we

would need to invent them. To take the obvious example, by any other name we are going to need

a World Health Organization in the post-COVID-19 era. Reform and specifically the re-establishment

of its scientific impartiality and credibility, not its abolition, is what is required. Its credibility may be

damaged, but no other organisation exists to coordinate health policies across borders. The flow of

shared, credible, scientifically sound, and neutrally arbitrated medical information will remain vital in

the future.

The tribulations of the WHO reflect a deeper malaise for multilateral institutions. COVID-19 may have

crystallised what we intuitively know: that the politicisation and absence of independent leadership

has, over time, weakened the legitimacy of some international organisations. To be credible long

term, they must be neutral and impartial, not pawns in the political games of their major members.

This argument applies across the board; from the UN and its ancillary organisation through the

Bretton Woods institutions to the newer institutions such as the China-led Asian Infrastructure

Investment Bank.
Some argue this malaise can only be addressed by a new Bretton Woods-style initiative. The original

Bretton Woods and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were geared to providing an

international architecture with a sense of regularity to international finance, trade in agriculture, raw

materials, manufactures, and later services; all of these were then amenable, to a greater of lesser

extent, to control at border. By contrast, the new architecture – especially for digital technologies and

global pandemics – must reflect new priorities in an era of an under-managed, globalised world in

which neither digital technologies, e-commerce, nor pandemics respect borders.

COVID-19 has demonstrated why new digital industry self-regulation and health industry national

regulation would be totally inadequate. COVID-19 has become a driver of digitalisation; both

pandemics and digitalisation are global. In addition to its role in pandemic monitoring, the growth of

digitalised supply chains is likely to make e-commerce the norm. The pandemic, and subsequent

recovery from it, will continue the acceleration of digitalisation.

But demand for a new international institutional architecture exceeds supply and a new Bretton

Woods would also need to assist the Global South’s participation in this process if it is not simply to

be a US-China bipolar contest that transcends any of the existing global governance institutions. A

few dominant firms in just two countries – be it Apple, Facebook, Google, or Amazon in the US or

Huawei, Tencent, Baidoo, or Weibo in China – are unlikely to protect the global public good.

Collective institutional governance is required.

3.3: Networks and organised hybridity matter

The restoration of traditional multilateralism alone is insufficient for the organisation of global

cooperation after COVID-19. Other actors are important in a world of networked organisational

interaction. Nowadays, much global policymaking, research innovation, and capacity-building

transpires through the interaction of modern networks. Networks, increasingly facilitated by

digitalisation, change the nature of state power, international relations, and diplomatic practice.

Digital, networked communication changes approaches to international bargaining and strategy from
the pre-digital age. While networks can, and do, exhibit the characteristics of the international

organisations identified above, they also move us beyond the traditional state-centric multilateral

governance structures in the direction of issue-specific or sector-specific governance, with the

additional engagement of hybrid multi-sector stakeholders in the policy process. We need more

precisely defined minimal conditions for multilateral cooperation that recognise that digitalised

network activity, and corporate power, change the nature of global decision-making. Networks do

not require government sanction, rather they encourage self-organisation.

In an age of pandemic, policy specialisation and policy compartmentalisation typical of 20th-century

policymaking become less important and the need to resolve the question of open governance

versus closed governance and open versus closed digital spaces in competing, centralised-versus-

decentralised systems becomes more important. Maintaining the openness of networks requires

cooperation amongst a wider, hybrid range of actors, including not only states and international

organisations – the traditional stuff of multilateralism – but also non-state participants from the worlds

of corporations and civil society. In a digital context, these actors include not only the major providers

identified above. They also include users and digital rights-defenders, all of whom are, or should be,

stakeholders in global governance decision-making.

3.4: Internationalism matters: Three proposals to underwrite a reset

We must aspire to re-create a re-booted multilateralism, underwritten by a spirited-but-pragmatic

internationalism suitable to the times. Contemporary internationalism must be hard-headed. Its core

principles must reflect:

   (i)     A recommitment to the international institutions – in both principle and practice.

Global cooperation is going nowhere without it. Of course, institutions at times get captured

or compromised, as with the WHO or UNESCO. That an institution might be functioning sub-

optimally is in the first instance a reason to reform it, not to get rid of it.
(ii)    A recommitment to saving a reformed globalisation from itself if it is to continue
           as the world’s principal generator of growth and wealth.

De-globalisation is in train. Trade as a share of GDP peaked in 2008 and has declined since then.

For sure, COVID-19 has made states keen to be less reliant on other states. But these arguments

are not new – they are frequently applied to food supply – and this is not the end of globalisation. It

is not unreasonable for a state to wish to secure essential medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and

antibiotics, without reliance on another single country. Production in these, and other sensitive areas,

will be brought back on shore by states that can do so. But resilience is different to self-

sufficiency/autarky, which is impossible in a globally inter-connected world. Resilience is not simply

a matter of ‘domestic sourcing – good, global sourcing – bad’. Diversification of production and

supply is not only about efficiency; it has been, and must continue to be, a core principle of risk

management.

To survive, globalisation must become more ethical and fairer if it is not to unravel in a catastrophic

way for the global economy. Globalisation’s unequal distributive consequences need to be

addressed. At the risk of cliché, what the world needs is more Keynes and Piketty and less Hayek

in its policy diet. The post-COVID-19 era needs a new balance between national resilience, market

efficiency, and social justice.

   (iii)   Most importantly, hard-headed internationalism requires that great power
           competition between the US and China be compartmentalised and contained.

Both states, of course, have the right to protect their interests; but not at the expense of the

functioning of the wider world. Distrust and scepticism of each other’s motives

notwithstanding, it should be possible to identify where their wider interests and those of the

global community align. The danger we face is that their mutual animosities reach a level

that inhibits rational decision-making for the collective good. Both states should learn to

practice ambiguous tolerance towards one another if we are to minimise the polarisation

and geo-strategic disruption implicit in a new bipolarity. But while the US and China might
be the principal parties to the major global contests, they are not the only ones with an

interest in them. Other states will have to work within the constraints emanating from a new

Cold War.

                                    A post-Covid-19 order: The optimistic scenario

                                                    Economics
         •    End of neoliberalsim;                                  •     Reformed globalisation;
         •    Liberal welfarism;                                     •     Open international economy;
         •    Mitigation of inequality;                              •     Reformed international
         •    Containment of digital                                       economic institutions;
              oligopolists.                                          •     Restored cooperation;
                                                                     •     Managed polycentricity.

             Politics                              Digitalisation                      International Relations

         • Digitalisation in support of a                                • Towards a global ‘Community
           New Democracy;                                                  of Destiny’;
         • Open imagined communities;                                    • Salvaged, reformed liberal
         • Mitigation of cultural wars;                                    order;
         • Rollback of populism.                                         • Human rights shape a managed
                                                 Society & Culture         migration regime.

Conclusion: Nature hates a (power) vacuum

The preceding proposals are predicated on large assumptions. Firstly, that the US will

behave responsibly and ethically and with a modicum of commitment to the wider global

public good. Secondly, the same proviso applies to the other major players, especially

China, but also India and Russia. Thirdly, that the EU and influential middle powers, such

as Australia, Canada, South Korea, and the Nordics, can think and act multilaterally in the

absence of the leadership, or even the support, of the US. While a renewed collective action

is not impossible, a second-term Trump administration in 2021 will clearly not assist attempts

to re-boot multilateral collective action problem solving.
Yet, multilateral action, absent the US, is already on view in some responses to COVID-19.

In May 2020, twenty global leaders, minus the US, pledged to support an US$8 billion

multilateral action package through the WHO to accelerate cooperation in the shared

development and globally equitable distribution of any coronavirus vaccine. Similarly,

multilateralism still lives at the embattled WTO. Absent the presence of the US, the EU,

Australia, Canada, Singapore, and twelve other members have established a Multiparty

Interim Appeal Arrangement (MPIA) to substitute for the Arbitration Dispute Mechanism

rendered inquorate and non-functioning by the refusal of the US to ratify the appointment of

judges to the Appellate Body. The flowering of such non-hegemonic leadership is to be

welcomed.

Yet even if the EU and the principal middle powers were to continue to lift their game as

cooperative international actors, longer term international cooperation is not going to occur

without the positive input of both the United States and China. But the credibility of US

leadership has been progressively diminished. This has come about, inter alia, by overreach

in the Middle East, a US-generated global financial crisis, its increasingly combative

transactional international relations, and now the dysfunctional manner in which it has

tackled COVID-19. Similarly, China, notwithstanding its endeavours to paint itself in the

most favourable light, has not covered itself in glory in its response to COVID-19. We live in

a world of poor great power leadership. We are not going to see a recovery of the global

economy from its most severe crisis since the depression of the 1930s if it becomes less

open, less free, more nationalist, and more protectionist and if we must wait for leadership

from either of the world’s two major powers. A Pax Sinica will not replace a Pax Americana.

A key question is therefore,
Q9: How long can the world wait for the US to regain its
                 equilibrium and China to develop an ethical, as opposed to
                 a purely instrumental, sense of global responsibility?

For too long, misperception and cognitive dissonance have been more significant drivers of great

power foreign policy than is good for us. We should not expect a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment as

politicians recover a belief in multilateralism. A realisation among global leaders that events like a

global pandemic can fundamentally influence the future of international relations – in both the agency

of the principal policy actors and structures of the international system – does not appear likely. An

oligarchic state-centric vision of the world in which major powers exhibit a political culture of habit-

driven, increasingly nationalist, and realist geopolitics predominates.

At the most basic of levels, in contrast to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, in which the G20 played

the role of crisis-buster, neither the G20, nor the G7, have yet made anything other than minor

contributions to the containment of, or provision for, the management of the post-COVID-19 era.

Indeed, no effective G+ formula for a collective response to COVID-19 appears imminent. Similarly,

responses to economic stabilisation and assistance have been, at best, ad hoc: a debt moratorium

(not cancellation) for 77 of the poorest developing countries and IMF debt relief to its 25 poorest

members. But these actions only put off the day of reckoning. There has been little action worthy of

note from the UN and, of course the US has directly cut funding to the WHO in an attempt to

emasculate it.

As we head deeper into a global recession, and the US fails to show leadership in the management

of the international recovery, COVID-19 is shaping up to be the page-break between the old post-

World War Two US-led order and a new bipolar order. This will certainly be the case if we do not

take the opportunity presented by such a profound crisis to rethink where we are going. The progress

of humanity requires it. But both the US and China seem keener on the blame game than dialogue.

Hegemonic posturing, by both rising and declining great powers, takes insufficient account of three

factors. Firstly, global economic interdependence is not dead. We still have a global market in goods

and finance, increasingly underwritten by digital technology. Secondly, the US and China are not the
only global actors. We have a diversity of actors; not just states but also major corporations, civil

society actors, and networks in play. Thirdly, challenges in contemporary international relations

require different modes of thinking for the pandemic era.

Nothing is written in stone. Hard-headed analysis accompanied by innovative normative thinking

should force us to think beyond traditional positioning in international relations. For example:

               Q10: Can we ask whether, and if so how, the need for a joined-up
               global health policy might kick-start a new multilateralism?

After all, global pandemics logically require global policy responses. An exit strategy for COVID-19

without global cooperation makes no sense. If the pandemic can shock the major global leaders into

recognising what is lost by the pursuit of competition and a failure to cooperate in multilateral

decision-making on global policy issues, then COVID-19 would have served at least one useful

purpose.

If we are to arrest current trends towards a further de-coupled, closed, nationalist world order, states

will need a new – hard-headed and pragmatic – internationalism. Manageable, medium-term reform

of the institutions and mechanisms of international cooperation will be a minimum necessary defence

against future global pandemic threats. What happens to the WHO over the short-to-near-term future

will be a fundamental test of the ability of the international order to function for the greater collective

good.

               Q.11: Is the international community capable of (re)-creating an
               independent institution (or at least a set of practices) for
               monitoring and coordinating a joined-up global health system?

If future pandemics are to be contained, the development of appropriate health policy responses has

to be international, not local. For this to happen, the WHO needs to be strengthened both financially

and in terms of personnel.

               Q. 12: How can frail institutions be pulled back from a slide into
               permanent decay?

This is both a generic and a practical question. Generically, the question is,
Q. 13: To what degree can the principles of multilateralism be re-
               booted?

And practically,

               Q.14: Which institutions are deemed important enough to save
               and at the same time lend themselves to potential reform rather
               than redundancy?

That we were not ready for a very predictable pandemic should be a wake-up call. A return to

business as usual invites the next disaster. Now is the time to recognise that it can happen again

and to start developing necessary frameworks for global co-ordination to address further tragedies.

Only by jettisoning nationalist rhetoric and practice and embracing stronger international cooperation

can governments protect their citizens. A start will be to fix those existing international institutions

that remain relevant. Our global future must be a shared future. Global problems, such as pandemics

and the effects of climate deterioration, will only be addressed by enhanced global cooperation.

The Westphalian system of states has a monocultural essence that does not fit 21st-century reality.

Its ‘nationalist universalism’ minimised cultural diversity. This makes no sense in today’s digitalised,

networked world. A future post-pandemic world order will need to accommodate to a ‘civilisational’

diversity. International order is not coterminous with American hegemony and any future order

cannot be underwritten by the US alone – even if the US were so minded. International order in the

21st century is more complex and hybrid than in the previous century. Other actors – not only states

and not only China among states – count. China, and revisionist powers such as Russia, India, and

others, need to learn the habit of real cooperation, as opposed to symbolic and rhetorical gestures.

At the same time, the US needs to rediscover the habit of cooperation. Even Henry Kissinger, the

quintessential superpower realist, recognises this. No country, he says,

   "… not even the US, can in a purely national effort overcome the virus. The necessities of
   the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program" (Wall
   Street Journal, 3 April 2020).
The endeavour proposed in this concept paper is at the core of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research

Institute’s (DOC) mission; that is to develop a way of thinking about multilateral, international

cooperation that accounts for the nature of global diversity. The DOC’s agenda is to ensure that

lessons learned from COVID-19 lead to a positive narrative, suggesting multilateral collective action

problem solving should prevail over nationalist narratives exhorting nativism, the scapegoating of

foreigners, and a closed global economy. This is an inflection point for the world of politics as well

as an economic moment. It should present an opportunity to re-boot the collective endeavour. Virtual

communication presents an opportunity to the DOC, and other like-minded actors, to advance

dialogue. It is the purpose of this paper to kick-start a conversation as to how we might do this.

Professor Richard Higgott,

Budapest, 1 June 2020

6,900 words: comments welcome: richardhiggott0@gmail.com
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