‘Coronavirus has weakened globalisation’

Islamabad: The coronavirus pandemic has weakened globalisation and multilateralism and nationalistic approaches are on the rise instead of alliances and cooperation. It, however, is affecting every race and all the nations on the planet indiscriminately and thus, the situation demands a greater global cooperation.

These views were highlighted by the experts during an online policy dialogue titled ‘Coronavirus and Global Political Order’ organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here on Thursday.

Dr Jochen Hippler, Country Director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) Pakistan, said that the world is changing with or without coronavirus but the pandemic would have adverse effects on the economies of the world. He said that the dominant powers in the world politics such as United States have been showing selfish endeavours and if China is to emerge as a dominating power, this unfortunate fact would remain the same.

He said the major eventuality of the crisis is that the incompetent governments that have failed to or have been less prepared to save the lives of their people are now rendered fully exposed before them. Such incompetent governments would have to go into the post-coronavirus scenario.

Dr Nazir Hussain, International Relations Expert and Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences at Quaid-i-Azam University, the pandemic has portrayed a leadership crisis in a number of states around the world and that has been emerged as a major challenge to then in fighting coronavirus.

He said that the ‘America first’ policy of the President Trump and other states trying to confront the challenge within their borders has put the globalization under stress. He said that China at present is helping out and assisting around 80 nations of the world in responding to the situation resulted from the spread of coronavirus. Therefore, it would have more influence in the post-crisis world.

He said that the U.S global influence has already started to decline whereas the pandemic would only make the process faster. The world in the aftermath of coronavirus will have to strengthen the global cooperation leading towards inclusive development, he said.

Dr Imran Khalid, Research Fellow at SDPI, covered various socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and said that it’s high time for the world to think of collective human security now. He said that the climate change still remains a huge threat to humanity across the globe and thus we need holistic policies to respond the current crisis.

Earlier, Dr Fatemeh Kamali Chirani, SDPI’s visiting fellow, presented an overview of the global crisis resulted by coronavirus and said that it would have some certain impacts on the existing global political order.