The world tomorrow

Geopolitics for the End Time: From the Pandemic to the Climate Crisis

Author: Bruno Macaes

Publisher: Hurst and Company

Pages: 222

Price: Rs 1,892

As the world stumbles into the third year of the pandemic, Bruno Macaes, the former Portuguese politician and now consultant on geopolitics and technology, has provided a commentary on the implications of this scourge in diverse areas of human activity. His discussion ranges from global geopolitical competitions to the challenges of technology and climate change, and then meditates on the human condition — a huge and ambitious canvass presented in just 200 pages.

As in his earlier works on the emergence of “Eurasia” and the implications of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, this book reflects Mr Macaes’ wide scholarship, extensive travel and deep reflections on issues that resonate in our times when the world is experiencing “the ravages of a hostile environment”.

Mr Macaes contrasts the early responses to the pandemic in Southeast Asia and Europe. The former was proactive, and responded as a disciplined community, but most European countries were dismissive of the threat, suggesting to the author that travel from, say, Singapore to a European capital was like “moving not between different civilisations but between different planets”.

This divide was most apparent in actions taken by China and the Western democracies. While Europe became the epicentre of the pandemic, China vigorously enforced mass-quarantine, widespread lockdowns, mass-testing, and setting up of residential committees to monitor the health of residents, enforcing home isolation and arranging home deliveries of food and other necessities. As Mr Macaes points out, “it was Chinese society as a whole responding to the pandemic, not an authoritarian government”.

Europe saw the pandemic as a disaster and the US, he writes, viewed it as a “disaster movie” — moving from denial to scapegoating to escapism, the last phase culminating in the arrival of the vaccine at the end of 2020. Thus, the West combated the scourge by using its technological and financial prowess.

The pandemic has also sharpened the geopolitical competition between the US and China. From the outset, China saw the pandemic as a war that impinged on its global stature, a conflict that it had to win. President Xi Jinping said in January 2021, amid deteriorating ties with the West: “This is where we show our conviction and resilience.”

China’s economy shone through most of the crisis: In 2020, its share of global gross domestic product increased by 1.1 per cent, the largest in several decades. Its economy grew by 2.3 per cent in 2020, the only country with positive growth that year. Its trade surplus reached $535 billion, the highest since 2015. The trade surplus with the US was $316 billion, a record. The pandemic has also thrown up larger challenges that call attention to its “integrated” character. Mr Macaes refers to three issues — the nature of the world economy, globalisation and technology.

The pandemic highlighted deep inequalities within and between nations — US employment was about 57 per cent in November 2020, the lowest since 1983, while its 100 richest people added $600 billion to their wealth. Again, first responses to the pandemic were shrill demands to go national and end globalisation and there were also calls to reject technological progress and go back to simple, pristine lives.

At this stage, it is doubtful whether policy-makers can come up with major policy changes. In the US, despite Joe Biden’s wishes, its political order has ensured no radical changes in economic policies would be acceptable; the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been side-lined.

Globalisation remains robust though fragile, with most production and supply value chains intact and trade flows flourishing. Technological development is accelerating. Possibly pushed by the pandemic, not only are new vaccines emerging to combat Covid-19 mutations, but biotechnological advances are being pursued in other areas, such as cancer treatment and even malaria immunisation. However, both trade and technology are central to Sino-US geopolitical competitions.

The one area that requires global cooperation is climate change: A rise in world temperature of just four degrees will halve crop production. It is already apparent that climate change concerns have provided fresh spaces for geopolitical competition. The pursuit of non-fossil fuel energy sources has created demand for minerals — copper, nickel, cobalt, chromium and platinum —that are largely found in Africa, possibly making the latter the centre of new global exploitation.

The pandemic has encouraged Mr Macaes to reflect on two issues: One, the human being’s relationship with nature, and, two, the essential nature of the human person and the central purpose of his/ her existence on this earth, both questions emerging from the fact that we engage with nature in diverse ways and are also an integral part of nature. Human beings have always attempted to control nature to serve their purpose, but, as the pandemic has shown, nature frequently lashes back. The pandemic, he reminds us, has alerted us to “the limitations of human power [and is] turning states towards the urgent task of survival in increasingly adverse conditions”.

Mr Macaes has set out the implications of the pandemic cogently —but he does not offer quick-fix solutions. As storms, droughts, wildfires, locusts, epidemics and rising temperatures blight our lives — the survival of our species is at stake. Whether this is End Time or a fresh beginning is up to us.

The reviewer, a former diplomat, holds the Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis International University, Pune