Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was much discussion about a ‘return of great power politics’ and in particular the increasing strategic competition between China and the US as the new dynamic of international politics.
The pandemic created a demand for greater cooperation, which is also urgently needed to respond to the global challenge of climate change. But COVID-19 seems to have intensified what Joe Biden has called ‘extreme competition’ between China and the US.
The pandemic has also created particular challenges for democracies, which increasingly see themselves in a struggle with authoritarianism.
This webinar brings together three leading thinkers, each of whom has written a book exploring the consequences of the pandemic for the global system. They discuss if COVID-19 has transformed international politics – and if so, how.
- How will the consequences of the pandemic shape the mixture of cooperation and competition in the international system?
- Will they strengthen or undermine the ‘liberal international order’?
- Will it intensify, or complicate, the fault lines between democracies and authoritarian states?
Participants
Chair: Leslie Vinjamuri, Director, US and Americas programme, Chatham House
Bruno Maçães, Senior Adviser, Flint Global
Professor Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy, University of Cambridge
Thomas Wright, Director, Center on the United States and Europe, Brookings Institution
