IntroductionIn January, we wrote that this year was a tipping point, with a historic shift in globalization; a weakened US leadership; the rise of populism within the world's democracies; the rise of an alternative Chinese economic, political and technological model; and the decline of an aggrieved and interventionist Russia pushing the world into a geopolitical recession. We now face the first global crisis of our geopolitical recession … a coronavirus pandemic. The timing isn't good.



We warned in January that globalization was under siege; we were more right about that than we would like to be. Travel to the US from Europe and China, and travel to Europe from just about anywhere, has now been halted. The coronavirus outbreak has dealt a body blow to the global flow of goods and services, accelerating the process we wrote about. The public health emergency has also deepened the geopolitical recession, as the US shows little interest in quarterbacking an international response, and China aims to take advantage of the vacuum. More broadly, the pandemic has forced all nations to look inward, speeding both this recession and the process of deglobalization.


 

conclusion

It's important to recognize the unprecedented nature of this environment in the context of our experience over recent decades. In the coming weeks the world will get a much better handle on the epidemiology of the coronavirus pandemic, but the fractiousness and weakness of the geopolitical order—in terms of the legitimacy of domestic politics, the weakness of existing international alliances, and the lack of alignment of institutional frameworks and today's global balance of power—reflect a radically different backdrop for a global crisis than any we've experienced in recent decades. Looking forward, it also implies a different trajectory for the world order as we know it, when we eventually come out the other side.

Yours through the looking glass,

—Ian & Cliff