What is the most important relationship in global politics?
In my last posting, I wrote about a talk hosted online by the London School of Economics. The talk was delivered by Fareed Zakaria who is an Indian-American journalist, political scientist, and author. He was introducing ideas from his new book “Ten Lessons For a Post-Pandemic World”, The session was chaired by Andrés Velasco, formerly finance minister of Chile and currently the Dean of the School of Public Policy at the LSE, who led the discussion which followed.
Velasco asked Zakaria whether populism, which we have seen in Britain, the United States, Brazil, Hungary and elsewhere, would be a winner or loser from the coronavirus crisis. Zakarai believes that the pandemic will dramatically increase the already severe inequalities in income and wealth with smaller businesses and sectors like retail and hospitality being hit especially hard.
He expects that, as a result, there will be a push for an expanded role for the state which would favour centre-left political parties rather than right-wing populist parties. As a believer in the benefits of free markets, he would not wholly support this. He spoke in favour of the Danish model where there are both strong markets and strong government – what Velasco called “flexi-security”.
A key issue for both Zakaria and Velasco was trust. Populism has denigrated the expertise of scientists and elites but they expected the coronavirus crisis to correct some of this. At the international level, Zakaria wanted to see a better integration into the world order of the rising economies of of China, India and Brazil. He identified the relationship between the United States and China – currently so tense – as the most important in global politics.