The world that we will see as a result of the coronavirus pandemic will be the same, and the scale of changes in the military-political field will be significantly less significant than it seems to many now, writes Andrey Sushentsov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club. The article is published as part of the Valdai Club’s Think Tank project in partnership with Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI).
Many commentators and experts have shared their observations on how the novel coronavirus pandemic will profoundly and radically change world politics and the international economy. However, there is growing evidence that the crisis will not change the foundations of the world order. Rather, it will have the effect of a new, superficial external shock that will be felt for a limited period of time. Even now, we can say that the most developed regions of the world turned out to be the most vulnerable to the crisis, while the less prosperous and more restive parts of the planet live at their usual pace and mode.
The closest analogue to the coronavirus pandemic was the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918. This was one of the deadliest mass diseases of recent centuries, which in a short period of time took the lives of several tens of millions of people. The total number of deaths from influenza was comparable to the number of deaths from all hostilities during the First World War. And although world literature has documented the “Spanish flu” pandemic — for example, in Thomas Wolfe’s autobiographical novel, Look Homeward, Angel, or in Veniamin Kaverin’s novel Two Captains, it remained a relatively small episode in the memories of contemporaries who viewed it in the shadow of the events of World War I.