What Covid-19 is telling us about the paradoxes of the globalized world

From prescriptions on “barrier gestures” (regular hand washing, social distancing…) to partial confinement with a curfew, we live to the rhythm of the constraints of the “war” imposed by an invisible, devious, invasive enemy, who kills, massively, while insinuating itself into the lives of those who have been spared the game of Russian roulette in which it excels.

More than three months after its first appearance in the city of Wuhan, in the People’s Republic of China, this capricious virus has not yet revealed all its mysteries. And no one can say when and in what state the world will emerge from the multidimensional crisis it has caused.

For us Africans, the uncertainty is all the greater as the World Health Organisation (WHO)  has just warned that the worst is ahead of us, adding to the deleterious anxiety that nourishes a climate of imminent end of the world.

In this context conducive to the resurgence of eschatological predictions, what can we do better than pray and respect the instructions ordering not to expose ourselves and not to expose others to danger? Observing the prescriptions of the health authorities becomes for everyone the only way to compensate for their individual helplessness and to participate in the fight against the spread of the virus in a country where the war against Evil can only be won by prevention, the health system unable to cope with an explosion in the number of cases requiring hospital care. Minimal civism and realism go hand in hand here.

“Globalized risk ” proven

Like everywhere, elsewhere, we are at war and, like everywhere, we can only count on ourselves first because one of the paradoxical lessons of this crisis is that despite the global nature of Evil, the answers given have been and have remained, in particular in the health field, national responses, therefore dependent on the state of the health system in each country, the quality and commitment of its medical staff, the sense of responsibility and the civic spirit of its fellow citizens, the individual and collective resilience of its populations and the organisation and efficiency of its system of government.

In short, it is always, in the first place, the Nation-State which is summoned to find the appropriate response to a crisis, whatever its origin and extent, as soon as it strikes people found on its territory.

But where have globalisation and the myriad of organisations, institutions, actors and rules that have ensured its promotion and dissemination gone? Why, faced with a proven “Globalized Risk”, can we not yet conceive of a globalized, immediate response? Other questions arise in the wake of this first questioning. Why have health issues, so essential in so far as they directly affect people’s lives, not been sufficiently taken into account in peacetime, including in overdeveloped countries? How did we come to the situation where we are going to have to inject thousands of billions of dollars – the G20 has committed to injecting 5,000 billion dollars, the US has just adopted a 2000 billion dollar economic recovery plan – to hope to contain or quite simply alleviate a crisis that we could have prevented and that we could have dealt with better, if we had not cut in the appropriations allocated to health (scientific research, health industry, hospital staff, etc.)? Why in large countries, do we still have shortages of masks, respirators and even materials for testing? Is it because we followed rigidly and therefore stupidly the precepts of the dominant economic doctrine proscribing budget deficits and imposing on the State to stick to a role of guarantor of the great balances?  

Have we not delegated to the Market more than necessary, by letting it invade sectors of social activity which should not be subjected solely to the criteria of market rationality, notably education, health and the environment? But above all, how can we start on a new basis, drawing the right lessons from this pandemic?

How to put an end to the schizophrenia which consists in proclaiming, everywhere, the adhesion to the objectives of sustainable development – which supposes that the economic dimension is articulated with the social dimension and the environmental dimension, and that the satisfaction of the needs of the generations be compatible with the rights of future generations – while adopting, in fact, a development model in which the market economy and finance over determine the rest of social activities?

It is not certain that these questions are necessary in the background of the debates that will dominate the way out of the crisis, given the strong short-term pressure.

The child of globalization 

Covid-19 is the source of the first global health crisis, in every sense of the word. It is a child of globalization. It appeared for the first time in the country which embarked, in record time on the scale of history, the deepest and most comprehensive transformation that a country can do to ensure its economic take-off and become, in less than three decades, a major center of globalization. At the confluence of what is known today as value chains – an expression that designates the global fragmentation of the manufacturing process of a product, the various components of this product being manufactured by different entities- transnational group, scattered in separate countries – China is a central player in globalization which, hitting the Chinese economy is hitting the economy of most states, which explains why the first concerns of countries not yet affected by the virus were essentially economic and not health.

But to satisfy its global ambition, the Covid-19 had to go on to attack the rest of the world. It did so using one of the most common vectors of globalization: traveling at the supersonic speed of airplanes, it has spread to the rest of the world, starting with the great centers of globalization.

In early March, WHO announced that Europe has become the new epicenter of the pandemic. It still is in terms of the number of deaths recorded. But in terms of the number of people infected, it is now the United States that takes first place. In fact, no continent is spared. Infection today affects 180 countries. The Covid-19 thus wins the first round of its fight for universality, namely, the planetarization of the health crisis.

From another point of view, it now touches on all aspects of social life and, first, the engine of it in modern societies, namely, the economy. This is due less to the increase in health expenditure than to the consequences of restrictive measures which slow down, even paralyze, economic activity, potentially calling for cascading faults in almost all economic sectors.

The force of the “shock” is such that the main players in globalization are pushing States to intervene massively to help sectors, businesses and employees who are in danger and to avoid the economic and social chaos that is looming. The European Union authorizes a reduction in budgetary constraints and a relaxation of the rules on State aid, triggering the use of the clause of “exceptional circumstances”,  even ready to activate the “general crisis clause” which allows the suspension of the Stability Pact. The States are each putting themselves in working order to protect their economy and their population and organize at their level, the management of the health emergency which has become economic and social. In France, the government obtains an enabling law which allows it to adopt 25 ordinances in a single Council of Ministers. It is less the return to Colbert than to post-war economic law and in particular to the famous ordinances of 1945 which served as the legal basis for economic interventionism until their repeal in 1986. The United States adopted in turn, a gigantic economic recovery plan, some elements of which revive the spirit of Roosevelt’s New Deal. President Trump even went so far as to unearth the Defense Production Act, promulgated during the Korean War, to force General Motors to manufacture one hundred thousand respirators within a month. 

However, this is not enough to reinvigorate the financial markets that keep the economy going, because they know that as long as the response is not global, the crisis cannot be stopped.

Almost uniform media treatment

Admittedly, the intervention of the G20 was welcomed by the various stock exchanges. But blowing hot and cold, these were again scalded by the lack of agreement between the countries of the European Union during the mini-summit on March 27. In fact, given the interdependence between the health crisis and the economic crisis, the outcome of the economic recession will also depend on the ability of the world to contain the pandemic.

Finally, the Covid-19 crisis is also a global crisis, from the point of view of the related communication. It is the subject of an almost uniform media treatment which makes it the exclusive subject of a news which penetrates into the intimacy of each home. We all follow the irresistible geographic extension of confinement, the geometric progression of the infection, country by country, the vertiginous increase in the number of deaths, but also the controversies over chloroquine and the background, not always reassuring, polemics between scholars it reveals, or the crying deficit of solidarity between States, including within well integrated regional groups, such as the European Union, Italy finding help and assistance only on the side of China or Cuba!

We are informed instantly and simultaneously of the development of this crisis. And this globalization of information contrasting with the closing of state borders and the confinement of populations promotes the emergence of a global awareness of common dangers and global challenges.

We can reasonably hope that this will not be without consequences for the redefinition of the rules of the game after the crisis. For some, these are already written. The world order emerging from the current crisis would have nothing to do with its predecessor. It would seal the end of globalization, of which the Covid-19 pandemic would have revealed all the flaws. It is, it seems to me, to go quickly to work.

To know which rules will emerge from the post-crisis period, it is first necessary to determine which actors will write these rules. In this regard, the Covid-19 pandemic has been compared to a war, because of the violence of its human, economic and social consequences. And when a war ends, it is the victors who write the rules transcribing the new balance of power. To stick to the example of the Second World War, the international economic order that emerged from it was designed by the United States and its English allies, a few years before the end of the conflict. They had then planned to set up, once the conflict ended, an organization of international economic relations with a triple component, financial, monetary and commercial, inspired by their liberal conceptions.

The first two components of this organization were born, some July 22, 1944, in a village in New Hampshire, when, after three weeks of negotiations, the delegations of forty countries signed the famous agreements establishing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). As for the third, if it was not immediately there, an ersatz allowing to lay the foundations for a progressive liberalization of trade was found through the GATT 1948 before the WTO, an organization whose universality was strengthened by the accession of China and Russia, only to take over in 1995.

These three organizations, IMF, IBRD, WTO (successor to GATT), inspired by the ideas of the victors of the second world war and then of the cold war (for the WTO), which favored the development and the extension of economic globalization and the rise of interdependencies. But if, at the end of an interstate war, the victors as well as the vanquished are easily identifiable, in the “war against the coronavirus”, things are more complicated, hence the limits of the martial metaphor applied to this pandemic. All states are likely to come out weakened, if only because of the massive public debt that will result. Some believe that China will be better off because it would already have managed to stop the spread of the virus on its territory and to gradually resume its activities and add that this would encourage a challenge to globalization. However, this analysis is based on an error of assessment on the positioning of China in relation to globalization.

The Chinese “model ”

At the Davos Summit in 2018, China was the champion of globalization because it is the one that benefits most. It is for the WTO, of which it fully supports the Dispute Settlement Mechanism.

After having illustrated itself, for a certain period, “in counterfeiting”, it now has an objective interest in defending tooth and nail the Agreement on intellectual property since it has become the country whose companies deposit the most patent applications. It has also strengthened its presence in the main globalization governance bodies (IMF, G20, etc.) and has itself created or encouraged the creation of new bodies (the “BRICS”, grouping together the main emerging countries; the Bank Asian for infrastructure, created in 2014, in which China is the largest shareholder; the New Development Bank or BRICS Bank …) in order to influence the course of globalization.

The path taken by the People’s Republic of China since the policy of openness initiated by Deng Xiaoping, from 1978, has two tags: economic liberalism and democratic centralism, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, united in a baroque team of a formidable efficiency that sums up the slogan: “the socialist market economy”. This is an original route, the product of the meeting between the extraordinary adaptability of the capitalist system and the survival instinct of a Communist Party which, undoubtedly, knows how to negotiate the compromises necessary for its sustainability.

But China’s wisdom has so far been not to erect this unprecedented experience that has propelled it into the court of the leading countries of globalization as a model to export or a fortiori to “impose”.

China sticks to the classic conception of international law which bases this law solely on the principle of state sovereignty and its corollaries, the freedom for each state to choose its political, economic and social system and non-interference in the internal affairs of a state, emphasizing the values ​​of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and rejecting new concepts promoted by post-Cold War international law, such as that of the right to democracy, the duty of interference or even of the responsibility to protect.

In short, yes to economic globalization, no to legal-political globalization which it considers, like the Russian Federation, which is a mobilizable ally in this area, an instrument at the service of western hegemony. It is difficult to see how the coronavirus pandemic could affect this strategic position of China.

The other actor, still powerful and – for at least a decade, still dominant – is the United States. Contrary to what some statements by President Trump have suggested, this country does not dispute globalization, of which it has been the main economic, legal and political locomotive. It only intends to renegotiate the agreements concluded with certain trading partners – China, the European Union, Mexico and Canada as well as the WTO Agreement, in particular its provisions relating to the functioning of the Dispute Settlement Mechanism accused of exceeding its powers. We do not yet know what the future effects of the pandemic will be on American public opinion.

The third major player is the European Union. Until now, it has been one of the major supporters of globalization.

It defends the WTO even if she considers that China does not respect all the rules. It is concerned about mergers and acquisitions by Chinese companies in Europe but does not close its territory to Chinese foreign investment. It has just concluded a Comprehensive Trade Agreement with Canada which allows the opening of economic borders and the intensification of trade between the Parties.

A more human globalization

Its position on globalization could, however, turn around after the unprecedented health crisis that strikes it today, one of the foreseeable consequences of which is the increased rejection of liberal policies by European populations. This should in particular be reflected in a greater importance given to health and environmental considerations, not only at the national level but also at the international level where free trade will bend whenever necessary, before the protection of health or that of the biosphere.

In order for this development to take place in a lasting way, it will probably be necessary to renegotiate many international agreements, including those of the WTO. We can then give the words their true meaning and speak of global public goods and more humanized globalization, that is to say, also, more… equitable. It will be recalled in this connection that the round of WTO negotiations, launched in Doha, two months after the attacks that knocked down the twin towers of Manhattan, focused precisely on a work program designating “an ambitious agenda for globalization fair ”. To speak of equity is to evoke the glaring imbalances that fracture international society, including that linked to the disparity in levels of development.

In this area, too, the coronavirus pandemic risks having catastrophic effects. In a continent like ours which, despite the persistence of worrying factors, it has been able to return to hope, with a regular growth rate of around 5% and relative but real progress in terms of democracy, the Covid-19 is like a curse.

To ward off bad luck and prevent Africa from sinking into economic, social and political regression, it will take strong gestures from the international community towards it, the least of which must be, as proposed by the former Director General from the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an initiative comparable to the “Heavily indebted poor countries of 2005” program, leading to a massive cancellation of the debt of the poorest countries.

If there is a good lesson to be learned from this crisis that will have spared no one, it is that, to paraphrase Edgar Morin, interdependence without solidarity does not make sense.

Contrary to the many reflections which circulate on the Net, written under the blow of the anger, in addition perfectly legitimate, caused by the dysfunctions of globalization, we do not think however that this one will end with the current pandemic. The Covid-19 is not an anti-globalization activist and globalization cannot be reduced to the liberal trajectory it has taken so far.

The globalized world in which we live was born from the conjunction of economic factors (the free movement of capital, goods, services and the resulting interdependence between firms and States or groups of States), technological (by means of transport reducing distances have been added to the new information technologies which contract both space and time) and geopolitics (collapse of the Soviet bloc) which interact, creating a system of generalized interdependence which will survive the Tsunami caused by the coronavirus.

But this globalized world is not, far from it, a homogeneous world. It has few common compasses and it is worked by multiple and evolving contradictions. A general victory of the populist parties – of the right or of the left – in one of the great centers of globalization, like the European Union, would have certain consequences on the trajectory of globalization but would not do away with it.

We will end this brief reflection with a questioning on the possible impact of Covid-19 on one of these contradictions of the globalized world, popularized in recent decades by the formula of “conflict of civilizations”. Although it is difficult to make a distinction between what is pure ideology or even political manipulation and what is reality, although elementary observation shows that many recent conflicts, presented as an illustration of the “clash of civilization” are more banal classic territorial conflicts or economic conflicts, it cannot be denied that the end of the East-West confrontation favored the development and the multiplication of identity conflicts in which the factors religious, cultural and civilizational in the broad sense play an important role. Despite the truce it encourages (but this incentive applies to all types of conflicts), the coronavirus pandemic should not change much in this situation except in two extreme cases. The first is that of a victory for right-wing populism, which would then exacerbate the conflict. The second – it is not forbidden to dream – concerns the optimistic scenario of a conversion of minds at the end of this formidable test with the ideas of equality, justice and mutual respect between the peoples opening the way to a new order international at least temporarily overcoming the contradiction. The Covid-19 would thus and despite itself have a pacifying virtue. But wouldn’t it be irrational to place hopes for change in the consequences of the outbreak of a serial killer virus?

* The title was modified by the editorial staff for reasons related to the publishing rules of Apa news. The original title is: “Beyond the Covid-19: Or that the coronavirus tells us about the paradoxes of the globalized world”. This column was originally published on March 31, 2020 in the pages of the Mauritanian newspaper Le Calame. Apa news is republishing this text today due to the extreme relevance of its content.

** Associate in private law and criminal sciences (French aggregation competition, Paris, February 1989).

Professor at the University of Nouakchott (since 1989).

Associate professor at the University of Nice (1998 – 1999).

Visiting professor at several foreign universities (University of Paris I, University of Burgundy, University of Orléans, Gaston-Berger University of Saint-Louis Senegal) and at the Academy of International Law (The Hague).

Member of the board of directors of the International Association of Economic Law.

Founding member of the Euro-African Institute of Economic Law

Former member of the editorial board of the International Review of Administrative Sciences.

Lawyer of the Bar of Nouakchott.

Senior Legal Advisor to the Cameroon-Nigeria Joint Commission (UN) (November 2003 – November 2005) established by the Secretary General of the United Nations for the implementation of the ICJ judgment relating to the border between the two countries .

Numerous publications including: “The contradictions of globalized law” PUF, 2002, and “The irruption of human rights in the international economic order: myth or reality? »LGDJ-lextenso, 2012.