Ian Bremmer: COVID-19 Is A Global Crisis

Ian Bremmer: COVID-19 Is A Global Crisis | Analysis: no global leader; longer crisis | GZERO Media

The lack of international political response, the politicization of the crisis, leads to less efficiency, to longer shutdowns, and extensive economic impact.

In the US: governors and mayors are doing different things. If decisions on what is or is not an essential good differ from state to state, it's hard to put together a supply chain for goods produced across states. The implications are larger. You can shut down all of California, but if you don't have control over the state borders (and you don't), people can move. What happens when you try to restart, & there are outbreaks in other states?

This is not a national crisis. It affects the entire world. We've not seen a crisis to this extent in our lifetimes. The 2008 financial crisis was a piece of the economy that racked global markets, but didn't impact every sector in the global economy. This is affecting the supply chain and global consumption. It's stopping people from traveling, from engaging in livelihoods.

If you want to respond to a global crisis, you need a global response. If you have cancer and you see an ophthalmologist who says, "I know how I can fix your eyes," - the cancer is still spreading. You've got to focus holistically, and we don't have a holistic response globally.

We have a lot of finger-pointing between the United States and China. President Trump sees that if we blame the Chinese, we can be on a war footing. Fighting an invisible war against the "Chinese virus". That's a way to improve Trump's approval ratings. Being on a war footing domestically usually leads to an improvement in popularity. We see that in South Korea, where they've been pretty effective, but also in France and Italy, where they're experiencing disaster economically. But the popularity of the governments has been going up - patriotic response, "we're at war." You can't win a war against terror, but you can win a war against coronavirus. You can find a vaccine. You can get rid of it, even at vast personal costs. That's why Trump is doing it. But - it needs to be a global war because it is a global pandemic and there is no global leader. We don't have global soldiers. There's no global arsenal to fight a global pandemic. The likelihood that this continues to spread gets higher.

This conversation about extending the curve, makes sense, because you want to ensure that health care systems are not overwhelmed, you need time to build them up so that the people racing to ICUs because they desperately need it, aren't turned away - that would lead to people with critical care needs untreated. But if they're not globally connected, then the likelihood that one country is successful, but cases pop up; we're now seeing that South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are seeing larger numbers of cases again. I have no doubt they will respond effectively, but secondary outbreaks are coming in large part because the rest of the world isn't coordinated.

As the weather gets warmer in our part of the world, New York, the northern hemisphere, in sub-Saharan Africa, and South America, it's much more likely that you're going to have new breakouts. Those breakouts will be larger without international coordination. We are a year minimum away from functional vaccines. We're much closer to that to the ability to, at scale, treat people that have coronavirus. But reducing some of the effects of coronavirus is not healing it. If we had something that responded well to flu, we'd be giving it to people with flu. We don't.

And so, the early stage, medicines being talked about, including at press briefings by President Trump, may have some success for people that have already already gotten the virus. But that's very different from saying that this is somehow going to change. So, I do think that we're now looking at a shut down in the United States, not just for a matter of weeks, but for months. You're going to see that in Europe and the potential that hitting the southern hemisphere is growing.

The human spirit is indomitable. I have no doubt we will eventually get a vaccine. But this is going to be a very trying time, made much more trying by the fact that the politics are so inefficient & so misaligned. I wish I could say it was just about the US election. It's not. It's a global and structural issue.

More from GZERO Media

Listen: On the GZERO World Podcast, we’re taking a look at some of the top geopolitical risks of 2025. This looks to be the year that the G-Zero wins. We’ve been living with this lack of international leadership for nearly a decade now. But in 2025, the problem will get a lot worse. We are heading back to the law of the jungle. A world where the strongest do what they can while the weakest are condemned to suffer what they must. Joining Ian Bremmer to peer into this cloudy crystal ball is renowned Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama.

President-elect Donald Trump appears remotely for a sentencing hearing in front of New York State Judge Juan Merchan in his hush money case at New York Criminal Court in New York City, on Jan. 10, 2025.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Pool

President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced in his New York hush money case on Friday but received no punishment from Judge Juan M. Merchan, who issued an unconditional discharge with no jail time, probation, or fines

Paige Fusco

In a way, Donald Trump’s return means Putin has finally won. Not because of the silly notion that Trump is a “Russian agent” – but because it closes the door finally and fully on the era of post-Cold War triumphalist globalism that Putin encountered when he first came to power.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters at a protest ahead of the Friday inauguration of President Nicolas Maduro for his third term, in Caracas, Venezuela January 9, 2025.
REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria

Regime forces violently detained Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as she left a rally in Caracas on Thursday, one day before strongman President Nicolás Maduro was set to begin his third term.

Paige Fusco

Justin Trudeau is leaving you, Donald Trump is coming for you. The timing couldn’t be worse. The threat couldn’t be bigger. The solutions couldn’t be more elusive, writes GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon.

- YouTube

Is international order on the precipice of collapse? 2025 is poised to be a turbulent year for the geopolitical landscape. From Canada and South Korea to Japan and Germany, the world faces a “deepening and rare absence of global leadership with more chaos than any time since the 1930s,” says Eurasia Group chairman Cliff Kupchan during a GZERO livestream to discuss the 2025 Top Risks report.

During the Munich Security Conference 2025, the BMW Foundation will again host the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt Pavilion. From February 13th to 15th, we will organize panels, keynotes, and discussions focusing on achieving energy security and economic prosperity through innovation, policy, and global cooperation. The BMW Foundation emphasizes the importance of science-based approaches and believes that the energy transition can serve as a catalyst for economic opportunity, sustainability, and democratic resilience. Our aim is to facilitate solution-oriented dialogues between business, policy, science, and civil society to enhance Europe’s competitiveness in the energy and technology sectors, build a strong economy, and support a future-proof society. Read more about the BMW Foundation and our Pavilion at the Munich Security Conference here.