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Quick Take | Will the US, China and Russia come together to shape a new world order post-coronavirus?
- Washington, Beijing and Moscow will play a leading role in solving post-Covid-19 pandemic problems and rebuilding the international order
- Deteriorating trust and ideological beliefs may frustrate this but leadership and the threat of total global economic collapse may unite them
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Why you can trust SCMP
If we know anything about the post-pandemic world, it is that it will be “different”, and that three countries – the United States, China and Russia – will be decisive in shaping it, for better or worse.
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These three countries are not only the most powerful strategic, military and, in two of the three cases, economic players of our time but they are also countries whose governments think and operate in “rule-setting” ways. Each of them will carry an effective veto on the world-building plans of the other two.
What would frustrate any collaboration between Washington, Beijing and Moscow to rebuild the world after Covid-19? Answer: ever-deteriorating trust and the consolidation of ideological “belief” within the strategic elites and commentariats of the three countries.
What may nudge these same three capitals into a common post-Covid mega-agenda? Leadership or the spectre of common, total economic or systems collapse.
If the US today has, by far, the most capricious leadership, China’s is the least transparent and Russia’s the most unstable – a function of President Vladimir Putin’s still-unresolved succession challenge.
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