Coronavirus and the Return of History

(The following was published on July 27, 2020)

When one considers the past few months, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we are living through a momentous shift of whose character and breadth we are only beginning to understand. It is simplistic to pin the palpable sense of collective anxiety to the Coronavirus alone. It is merely a catalyst that has highlighted the dysfunction of global governance, the fallibility of economic dogma and the vapidity of our individualistic postmodern world. In doing so, it has upended the theoretical constructs that have dominated our discourse since the end of the Cold War and propelled us forward at an uncomfortable pace into an unpredictable future. Only if we reimagine our understanding of our present predicament and refocus our efforts at building resilient systems, can we emerge stronger and more capable of meeting the uncertainty ahead.

The Arsonists

The march of progress that we ascribe to our broader civilization has been viewed through a misguided prism of optimism for the lifetimes of almost everyone alive today. Ignoring the vast structural inequalities and horrendous acts of barbarism still with us, it is easy to think geopolitics has been relatively stable since the P5 took their seats at the Security Council. This structure was seemingly solidified by the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the victory of neoliberalism over all competing ideologies. Traditional risks were abated and, aside from 19 hijackers in 2001 and subprime borrowers a few years later, few events threatened to metastasis uncontrollably. We now, however, sit at the cusp of something different, albeit familiar. Ahead of us is an era defined by a more conventional understanding of risk and instability - in that they are constant.

For the vast majority of human history a sense of foreboding and fear was completely justified. Across any hill and wall could emerge the barbarians or worse. The cycle of regimes was characterized by the near inevitable replacement of a ruling class by a stronger rural force hardened on the periphery, which too would eventually become mollified by urban comforts and replaced by a subsequent wave. This was an expected and manageable part of organized society, one that did not stall the vehicle of progress. A systemic risk posed a danger to the entire system. That it would be able to leverage its host to break it, say a pathogen travelling business class from Shanghai to London or an upstart Macedonian using the Royal Road to march to the Persian capital, in retrospect is always a surprise.

How then to characterize this moment in the wider sweep of history? As of this writing, it is too soon to place Covid and it’s resulting economic deep-freeze alongside other historical arsonists. The list of forces that can be described as such is mercifully short. A Mongolian who, alongside his immediate successors, killed enough of humanity to literally change the climate as wildlife reclaimed fields left fallow. Our previously mentioned Macedonian, who razed through the known world not to take joy in its wonders, but to feed his own insatiable thirst for glory. Or the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that created such a labour shortage that it arguably forced European minds to build the machinery that enabled them to shape the world we live in today. I don’t think we live amongst an arsonist today, but climate scientists of the future may argue that point. Corona may not give us a clean slate to rebuild. It certainly, however, has renewed conviction in a simpler understanding of history that has been dormant for the last thirty years - progress is not the norm.

The last serious threat to our current unimaginative framework of global understanding was September 11, 2001. (The fact that wars in Africa since the Cold War had claimed tens of millions of lives could be ignored as affairs of the barbaricum - beyond the frontier of Pax Americana.) The shock of those events reawakened a sense of political realism. The core could be challenged by the periphery with their own tools, albeit only in symbolic gestures. Failed wars to quell these foes will be remembered in posterity as imperial overreach. All the while, the Washington Consensus’ sway over the world’s policymakers was being dramatically challenged by a competing node of authority and unsurprisingly it didn’t reside in Afghan caves. The Chinese thoughtfully characterized their rise as a revival of balance, keen to avoid a Thucydidian clash. The barbarians on the periphery had weakened the preeminent power, distracting them from more pressing internal and external issues, but they remained dominant. That is until games of power and brinkmanship gave way to a storm.

There are no Macedonians on the move just yet. The Doomsday Clock needn’t be adjusted. A virus with a low mortality rate shouldn't shake the foundations of a meticulously constructed and seemingly immovable international institutional order. But a concert of forces has exposed the weakness of a system worn away by decades of neglect and, at times, outright obstruction. The list of strongmen made vulnerable by a microbe - Xi, Trump, Putin and Bolsanaro - is likely incomplete. As nations and households turn inward, the light of public scrutiny misses strife from Libya to Hong Kong. All through this the UN sits silent and it’s 75th anniversary only a reminder of the fire burning atop dreams of a post-nationalist world. The end of wanton consumerism and the convenience of automation also spell serious trouble for both capital and labour. If shoppers do not buy and workers do not work, what is the basis for our rigid market system? Further, the stigma of social contact has ended an optimistic era of connectivity. We may not miss the flash mobs, but issues of loneliness and despondency are dramatic problems quietly festering in the background.

Inflexibility in response to novel crises has traditionally limited the ability of incumbent superstructures to withstand the effects of so-called historical arsonists, whether they were a flea carried on the back of a rat or a Mongol upon his sturdy steed. The bubonic plague of the Late Middle Ages had horrific mortality rates and subsequently redefined the existing class relations amongst those that remained - arguably ending feudalism. Genghis Khan’s descendants ended the myth of Arab military dominance, reduced Islamic centralized governance to ashes at the height of their power and delivered to one of the world’s major religions an originalist posture that still besets its progress nearly 800 years later. Arsonists needn’t only fundamentally reshape the systems that order our lives, they can also restrict their ability to ever recover from the blow.

The Present Disorder

We spent seventy years building the most interconnected global system that has ever been seen. Roads cross like arteries across deserts and through mountains. One could conceivably drive from Spain to Singapore. Diaspora’s connect across oceans as quickly as Amazon packages. We created the transmission pathways for a pathogen and neglected to design the means to respond once it arose.

The palpable anxiety and fear that afflicts every corner of the world today is not due to Covid alone, but considered altogether the reaction is certainly justified. It has even convinced the most traditional investors to indulge in techno-utopian fantasies of financial collapse and social disorder. The fears of March, however, seem to have quickly given way to complacency and bravado in certain corners. The masters of the universe are back on the trading floor in New York, but their Southern counterparts seem to only just be learning the basics of public health management in a pandemic. European cosmopolitans are considering their staycations and beach holidays as a warm summer beckons. The Brits have kept a stiff upper lip and reverted to business as usual disregarding the galling incompetence of their leadership. The Muslim world restrained itself over Ramadan, but has also allowed Eid to mark the begining of a new phase. (Strangely, the police states of the Arab Gulf have displayed remarkable prudence and creativity in their policy-making, with the UAE barring those over 60 years old from restaurants and malls for an extended period.) The Asian Tigers, barring isolated clusters, are cautiously returning to business as usual. The isolated corners of Australia and New Zealand seem to be relishing in the gifts of geography. The Chinese, where it all started either by the cruelty of animal husbandry or inconceivable gastronomic creativity, have the systems of control ideally suited to manage the storm surges of infection. The New Cold War shaping ahead of them, however, seems far more challenging.

There are few dramatic images or singular events that will haunt our memory from this time. The effects of the emergency were more insidious then could be captured on a screen. As experts had warned for years, it emerged out of the complex interactions between the ever expanding human world and the shrinking natural one. It’s warnings were heeded by East Asian bureaucrats tested by similar outbreaks over the last two decades. It’s remarkable infectiousness shutting societies attuned to taking collective action and a strong sense of civic responsibility. The virus would be stopped by giving it no further flesh to leap to. 

In Trumpland, where commercial and electoral imperatives are paramount, it seems that even shockingly high death tolls couldn’t hold back the fury of the populace that, sparked by yet another brutal episode of Americana, has burst into a global movement for racial justice. Anti-blackness is a disease endemic to how the world operates, from the ethnocracy of Sri Lanka to the homogeneity of Russia. Rooting it out will require more than merely electing Biden - as his old boss’ tenure should have made evident. The challenge of addressing implicit bias presents a historic opportunity to rethink how equitable policy solutions can guide modern societies to better outcomes. To squander said chance, as is most likely the case, is to push forward yet another ticking time bomb of resentment and alienation. 

Two systems of American power, federalism and finance, seem particularly incapable of dealing with this moment. It’s political culture, blighted by rifts that would make Byzantine eunuchs blush, is practically incapable of reform or action. The federal government has left a vacuum of leadership, leaving states to competitively vie for necessary supplies in a bidding war that would make the Founding Fathers turn in their graves. The fact that the initial sell-off of equity markets has been stymied by an endless supply of bailouts is a further cause for concern. Rather than adapting to a changing world and accepting reduced returns, the nation’s elite seems wedded to their surplus gains and forcing the Federal Reserve to print greenbacks to preserve the status quo. The United States has sat astride the world for the last hundred years. In that time we have gone from a global population of less than 2 billion to one of over 7.5. The prosperity of so many owes to their stewardship. In failing to meet this crucial moment, however, their claim to and appetite for leadership has effectively ended. 

As we see Coronavirus move its way into and through every polity, we wait to see what the other end of this crisis will look like. Most expected little of their government and will thus not be surprised with the first-order and subsequent effects on the health, wealth and viability of the state. Some, like the Chinese, perversely seem to have rebounded so quickly as to move from the originator to the only international actor capable of providing assistance. The vacuum of leadership on the multinational stage is the mandate that Americans voted for in 2016. However, as that isolationism now governs their private lives too, they will feel unquestionably burnt. America’s unrivalled ascendancy was meant to end history and stop pestilence at the water’s edge. Rather it seems a controllable pathogen has done the very opposite.

A Leaderless Age

Placated by consumerism and busied by the altar of success we have been blindsided by a preventable calamity. Like the forest fires of Australia only months ago, all the machinery of 21st century democratic capitalism can do is wait for it to burn itself out. Try move people out of the way, or rather out of each other’s way, and hope that the populace can be dulled back into tacit obedience to a superstructure based on Gilded Age inequities and dystopian ecological collapse. 

Counterintuitively, this emergency has provided us the means to make a peaceful revolution possible. At this early stage in the pandemic response, we can direct the forces at our disposal in a manner that leaders of the past could only have dreamed. There is no inevitability to this. The stark set of choices ahead are sobering. A painful second wave, disputes on vaccine distribution or another shock Trump win could all push this crisis from the sphere of the transformative into the truly frightening. 

It is frustrating to recall how quickly the policy response to the 2008 financial crisis was thought of as a catastrophic missed opportunity at structural reform. We returned to business as usual and enabled the further concentration of power and wealth amongst well-connected corporates and individuals. From the EU to the AU, the public domain was to remain in thrall with the forces of private capital. The institutions of governance - local, national and supranational - continued to be toothless by design. We must heed to the lesson from this response as its character has given us the insipid systems that failed to hold another crisis at bay. 

Is it wishful thinking to seek a renewal of our political and economic systems to address the growing risks of existential breadth ahead, from climate change to unparalleled inequality? If democracies miss this opportunity, may we deserve to live in a world where the CCP dictates right and wrong. The absence of order among nations is not tolerable in a world where the forces of history that lie over the next hill are unknown. A critical point to understand here is that we got here on purpose. Weak governments, placid regulation and an obsession with individualism pushed the DJIA over 20,000. It also made international cooperation and instilling a culture of sacrifice impossible.

When this virus is behind us, whether by herd immunity or inoculation, we will speak of healing. The ultimate underlying condition, laid bare by the disparities in death tolls the world over, seems to be the inequity of our lived experience. The rich can quarantine and the poor must work. The wretched are already sick, Corona only made that clear to us. History can be overwhelming when social solidarity is threatened. Americans speak of their original sin and continue to deal with its legacy. The global order too needs to list it’s foes and clarify the challenge ahead. Anti-intellectualism, nationalism and inequality are all forces that need to be overcome. Cults of personality cannot begin to consider the wider consequences of Siberian heat waves or the mountains of personal data for sale to the highest bidder. A culture of competency can enable innovative and collaborative responses like the Africa Medical Supplies Platform to take root. We got here on purpose. We can decide to go elsewhere.

Contemporary arguments around how the past is memorialized seems to be the most potent example of the return of history. The debate goes to the hard questions that peoples of the past asked themselves far more often. The Romans regularly tore down statues of former emperors in times of strife. Ancient metropolises around the world have waterways dotted with the remnants of idols old and disputed. If we allow these great men to stand without scrutiny, we inherently limit our ability to imagine replacing them and their ideas. The sight of vacant plinths should instill wonder and ambition, maybe even shape a leader to meet the challenge of this next age.