View from Germany
The world will sooner or later cope with the pandemic. However, who knows at what cost, or what the world will be like then. The truth is that nothing will be the same as it used to be, everything will be different. Is the world able to draw any conclusions from this collective shock? The answer is: the hope for this is very weak if any at all.
What remains of the world order can quickly be destroyed, and after the pandemic a political crisis will show up on the historic horizon. The crisis caused by the pandemic will further exacerbate the centrifugal trends of world politics. Autocratic countries will become even more autocratic, anarchic ones — more anarchic, countries with weak governance will descend deeper into chaos.
Global transformations of the nearest future will affect all the countries without exception regardless of forms of their government. Countries with weak economies and general levels of development are the hardest hit. Countries with middle level of well being and countries-geopolitical objects (Ukraine included), are forced to make strategic choices about what to do next, choosing between alternatives, that is, between bad and worse.
After the pandemic, many states will have to change their leadership, governments, parliaments and choose a different vector of movement. It is likely that the configuration of economic alliances, military blocs, and inter-state alliances will change. Inefficient institutions such as the UN, OSCE, EU will cease to exist or will be re-established.
Right-wing radicalism emerging in EU countries in Eastern Europe will spread to some critical moment. The point of non-return of current relations in the geopolitical realities between the USA, Russia and China, as well as countries from their orbits of influence and dependencies, will be the collapse of Russia and Putin’s physical death.
Despite the economic, military, political and scientific achievements of countries such as China or Russia, real prospects of development and prosperity will have the countries with flexible governance systems that can move from centrist government system to free local community governance with knowledge, idea and successful experience of predecessors.
Will this be achieved quickly, by what forces, under whose leadership and at what cost — the questions remain open.
