To be fair to those in leadership today, not since the Spanish flu or the second world war has the world had to contend with semi-synchronous public-health and economic crises, including the physical working arrangements of those having to manage it. This time, in America’s absence, nobody did. Despite the pandemic’s self-evident threat to international peace and security, the UN could not agree even to convene an emergency session of the Security Council until early April. Kevin Rudd said he recommended the IPI donate the money it received from Epstein to a charity. Let’s call these constructive powers, at least to start with, the Multilateral 7 or the “M7”. The uncomfortable truth about the current coronavirus crisis is that much of the complex web of national and global institutions established to deal with global pandemics and economic implosions has failed. However flawed the WHO may be, under international treaty it is the only global entity empowered to build immediate public-health capacity in poor countries in the event of a pandemic. And the result will be a continued slow but steady drift toward international anarchy across everything from international security to trade to pandemic management. Welcome to Ian Bremmer’s brave new world of G-Zero. Recent Posts. Rather, both powers will be weakened, at home and abroad. A victory would further entrench his nativist, screw-the-rest-of-the-world approach where it’s everyone for themselves—a new international law of the jungle. Given that Sino-American relations are beyond the control of any of us, what can the rest of the world do? Indeed, they could become the thin blue line that, for the interim at least, protects us against an increasingly anarchic world. What some observers had long seen as this era’s giant geopolitical bubble had finally begun to deflate. Normally, however imperfectly, America would also have mobilised the world. They could start by issuing an immediate joint statement that together they will now fill the funding gap left by the lunatic decision by Mr Trump to axe America’s financial contributions to the WHO. And that’s where the virus is headed next. For America, if President Trump is re-elected it is difficult to see any improvement. Beijing’s hardheads know the coronavirus has compounded the damage to China’s economy from earlier domestic policy settings hostile to the private sector, and from the trade war with America. Others have tried to keep open the lines of global collaboration. The commentariat greeted with outrage any possibility that the pandemic might in fact help China emerge triumphant in the ongoing geopolitical contest with the United States. The key machinery to handle global public-health and economic responses was already in place. Global output could actually continue to shrink. Nor did they impose a moratorium on protectionist measures despite the fact that a tariff explosion to “protect” critical national supply lines is likely to prolong and deepen the recession. Read the rest of this article at Foreign Affairs. A core group of constructive powers among the G20 should act to reform, fund, and politically defend the central institutions of global governance for the post-covid era. Then, as China began to recover and the virus migrated to the West in March and April, irrational jubilation turned to irrational despair. ABC RN: Murdoch Royal Commission October 12, 2020. This concern was a product of China’s seemingly cunning remolding of the narrative on the origins of the virus, the brutal efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model in containing it, and Beijing’s global COVID-aid campaign. China, too, is divided between nationalists and globalists. (The Killing Season) ... Posted 46 m minutes ago Thu Thursday 29 Oct October 2020 at 12:34am. In January and February of this year, there was audible popping of champagne corks in certain quarters of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. These include the WHO, the World Food Programme and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (given uncertainty around the global food supply), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (given the as-yet unknown impact on population movements) and the WTO. National borders would become tighter. If the Democrats win, they would need to marshal the domestic political will to sustain a new, pragmatic, Rooseveltian internationalism. Normally, America would have teamed up with China to manage the crisis through a joint task-force established under the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. It cannot simply be a return to the failed practices of the past with the continued triumph of process over outcome. It took France, not America, to convene a G7 summit. Published in Foreign Affairs on May 6, 2020. Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) We just broke the record for biggest e-petition in the history of our national parliament. The chaotic nature of national and global responses to the pandemic thus stands as a warning of what could come on an even broader scale. More broadly, nationalist movements worldwide have found it convenient to bludgeon the legitimacy of multilateral institutions. Some Chinese officials have crudely sought to blame the American military for the outbreak in Wuhan. Neither a new Pax Sinica nor a renewed Pax Americana will rise from the ruins. Moreover, America would increasingly withdraw from the multilateral institutions that it created in the 1940s at Bretton Woods and San Francisco, or else render them impotent. The virus will result in China’s worst economic performance since the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. And that leaves to one side the likely reactions from the rest of the world, both developed and developing, against any direct assertion of Chinese global leadership. China’s Communist Party leadership, the thinking went, was at last coming apart, a result of its obsession with official secrecy, its initial missteps in responding to the novel coronavirus outbreak, and the unfolding economic carnage across the country. They hoped the people wouldn’t be interested. The Economist: Kevin Rudd on America, China and saving the WHO. Governments have scrambled to limit mass unemployment, but the same attention has not been paid to the global dimensions of the crisis. Yet despite the best efforts of ideological warriors in Beijing and Washington, the uncomfortable truth is that China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished. But for various reasons, it was not mobilised—or not mobilised early enough to remain ahead of the curve. China’s global standing has also taken a big hit. China will continue exploiting tactically any political vacuum left by the Americans. Protectionism would become the global norm rather than the exception, oblivious to the lessons of the 1930s. Statement on the International Peace Institute October 28, 2020. China’s own nationalist commentariat happily piled on, delighting in the United States’ distress and noting the supposed contrast between Chinese largesse and American indifference: the “people’s war” against COVID-19 had been won, and the virtues of China’s political model had been vindicated. But that machinery has also fallen into disuse. Published in Foreign Affairs on May 6, 2020. They should become the collective intellectual, policy and political secretariat of this multilateral rescue mission—if you like, its combined planning and operations staff. It took Saudi Arabia, not America, to summon the G20. In part, this is because China’s authoritarian political model, however effective in eventually locking the country down, discouraged the early and transparent recognition of the threat, despite the “failsafe” reporting systems put in place after the SARS pandemic. Sat 10 Oct 2020 20.22 EDT 4 The former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched a petition calling for a royal commission into NewsCorp’s dominance of … What some observers had long seen as this era’s giant geopolitical bubble had finally begun to deflate. They should also stipulate that this funding is contingent on the implementation of a post-crisis reform programme to enhance the WHO’s regulatory powers and statutory independence. Now, under Donald Trump, America has turned the WHO into a convenient scapegoat for its own domestic failings. Instead, the administration began kicking China when it was down. They should pool the diplomatic and financial resources necessary to advance unapologetically an agenda of keeping as much of the current multilateral system as functional as possible for as long as possible, until global geopolitics achieves a new equilibrium. With nobody directing traffic, various forms of rampant nationalism are taking the place of order and cooperation. So what will change once this crisis is finally over? This would need to be accompanied by major, substantive reform and re-investment to create a more effective multilateral system. Foreign Affairs: The Coming Post-Covid Anarchy. ABC TV: Murdoch Royal Commission October 12, 2020. You proved them wrong. First published by The Economist on April 15. The tragedy is that much of the current crisis was avoidable. They could be joined by others, such as Singapore, committed to maintaining an effective multilateral order as a global public good in its own right, rather than as a vehicle for the realisation of narrow national interests. The thing about a crisis—a real one, rather than a confected one—is that it exposes realities for what they are, as opposed to how the political class would wish to present them, either to their own people or the world at large. Neither produced a co-ordinated, global economic-stimulus strategy. They would need to re-convince the American public of the enduring lessons of Versailles and Pearl Harbour: that national interests are enhanced, not undermined, by leading an effective multilateral system. The idea that China could step into the breach left by Mr Trump by comprehensively providing the global public goods now needed (such as global economic and financial leadership, reform of the WTO, enhanced WHO independence or radical climate-change action) remains fanciful. Mr Trump, with his “America First” battle-cry, in effect abandoned America’s global leadership role for the first time since 1945. Also, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been underfunded for decades as America and others put their resources elsewhere and ignored repeated warnings to strengthen its powers. Even so, national and global economic responses have been late, often tepid and disjointed. That would turn the UN, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Bank (although probably not the International Monetary Fund) into Potemkin villages—a bit like the League of Nations’ curious decision to continue meeting after the German invasion of Poland, then France and then Russia. Where logjams occur, President Biden should fully harness the G20 (which came into its own in 2008, under George W. Bush, a Republican) to smash through on pandemic management, climate change, trade reform and global macroeconomic management. In January and February of this year, there was audible popping of champagne corks in certain quarters of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. But it is simply inconsistent with Beijing’s political playbook, as well as China’s perception of its still-limited national capabilities, for it to assume sweeping global leadership or drive an effective multilateral order that was not simply a direct expression of China’s own national interests and hierarchical values. In 2007, Kevin Rudd became only the third Labor prime minister since the Second World War… Order Here. This effort should be led by Germany, France, the European Union, Japan, Canada and possibly Britain (assuming Boris Johnson genuinely believes in a “global Britain”). 2020 represents the “Last Chance Saloon” for American global leadership. By Kevin Rudd The thing about a crisis—a real one, rather than a confected one—is that it exposes realities for what they are, as opposed to how the political class would wish to present them, either to their own people or the world at large.