Original article
Richard Sakwa,
PhD, Professor, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, United Kingdom
Address: Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NX, United Kingdom
E-mail: r.sakwa@kent.ac.uk
Article ID: 010110339
Published online: 22 May 2021
HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/thebeacon.4.010110339
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.4.010110339
Quoting (Chicago style): Sakwa, Richard. 2021. “Pandemic and New Division of the World.” Beacon J Stud Ideol Ment Dimens 4, 010110339. https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.4.010110339
Language: Chinese
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COVID-19 pandemic is possibly the most serious challenge to the humanity since the end of World War II. Surprisingly, this threat did not unite countries of different ideological blocks. The ideological division of the world only exaggerated in the COVID-19 times. Not even common programmes of mutual healthcare assistance were elaborated. Instead, Russia, the East (mainly China) and the West deepened their discrepancies in international relations and strengthened their hostile rhetoric against each other (with exception of Russo-Chinese relations). The paper studies possibilities of overcoming ideological barriers that prevent the world now to create effectual administrative, political, social and legal techniques of counteracting such outstanding a threat as the Great Pandemic. Key words: COVID-19, Great Pandemic, ideology, geopolitics, China, West, Russia, NATO, European Union
The COVID-19 pandemic brought on the so-called “coronacrisis,” a global crisis event enormous in size and force. The crisis questioned the ability of states and instruments of international governance to respond quickly and effectively to the global threats. It is noteworthy that there was no strong correlation between crisis management efficacy and the type of political system of a country. However, the countries with elaborated and well-financed health systems, were able to struggle with the devastating consequences of the coronacrisis better than those with systemic, structural and financial problems of their healthcare sectors. It is obvious that the ability to manage the coronacrisis is not related to the type of political governance or ideology, but to the state administrative resources and competence of the cabinet / leaders.
That potentially gave an opportunity for countries with different ideological foundations to neglect their tensions and unite the efforts in the containment of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (e.g. create mutual programmes of vaccination and medicine distribution). The main forces are the Transatlantic alliance, Russia and China. Unfortunately, no visible COVID-19-related agreement between them ever happened so far.
Instead, the coronacrisis situation was used by the political rivals to intensify their aggressive rhetoric against each other (e.g., USA and Russia, USA and China) or profit from it in deepening international collaboration not connected with the pandemic itself (e.g., Russia and China).
We do not observe any real mutual efforts of liquidating the pandemic consequences even within an ideological block, to say nothing about different blocks. The US–EU relationships worsened during the pandemic, especially at the background of Trump’s cool attitude towards international organisations and his decision to leave the World Health Organization in the midst of the pandemic and his threatening words that US may also abandon the NATO. Likewise, John Bolton spoke of the EU as an entity hostile to USA. In a similar way, Russia could not reach managerial unity in SARS-CoV-2 containment even with its closest allies in the post-Soviet space such as Belarus and Kazakhstan. Despite all its efforts to organize an international cooperation within the Chinese diasporas, People’s Republic of China’s government did not manage to coordinate its actions even with Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia, the countries with exceptionally large communities of the ethnic Chinese.
Surprisingly, the pandemic was used to increase the ideological split between Russia and the West and China and the West. The story with Alexey Navalny’s alleged poisoning rapidly acquired all specific traits of ideological struggle, even war, of the Western liberalism with Russian authoritarianism, both in Europe and Russia. Ideological and political use of this event led to adopting another pack of Western sanctions against Russia and reviving the ostensible “ecological considerations” of the Nord Stream 2 project. This happened exactly at the time when the Russian help with anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination may have improved the European vaccine uncertainty and lower the level of the infected drastically. European political elites preferred to utilize the threadbare and unpopular instrument of quarantine and lockdown instead.
Further, Biden’s winning the US elections intensified the attempts of vetoing the Nord Stream 2 construction and NATO’s rattling the sabre near the European–Russian border in spring 2021. This acute deterioration of international relations happened during the peak of the pandemic’s “second wave when a sober discussion of mutual healthcare programmes with Russia and China seemed fruitful for all sides. Russia and China were ideologically labelled by the most Western politicians as the “revisionist” powers and evident threats, even enemies, to the liberal order. Therefore, no pandemic-related agreements might be made with the political forces marked as enemies. This is particularly strange, as we know that there was no clear relation of COVID-19 struggle effectiveness and ideological basis of the country. Both liberal and authoritarian powers made errors in managing the coronacrisis. On the other hand, both might achieve impressive results independently of the ideology they stick to.
The coronacrisis was used by Eurointegrationist forces to act more openly and insistently to convey more powers to the EU political structures. But once again, that was not connected anyhow with unified healthcare efforts. The only result was “European Union Reconstruction Programme” that allotted several dozen billion euro recovery package to those stricken worst by the pandemic, in summer 2020. Even within the EU, there is still no clear trends of making agreements for practical measures of overcoming the coronacrisis. More than three million deaths due to the COVID-19 disease worldwide were probably insufficient to bring different political blocks to the bargaining table. Thus far, we see that the pandemic was used as an ideological means of exacerbating the tensions in international relations and making the exit from this impasse even more difficult than before the coronacrisis.
The coronacrisis did not bring about a new political or social division of the world but radicalized the existing contradictions between Russia, China and the Atlantic power system very seriously.
© 2021 Richard Sakwa. Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
