Opinion: Neil Mackay: Welcome to Covid’s new world order

Thanks to coronavirus there will be no demonstrations in Belfast, no rioting or rabble-rousing. Politicians are too busy tackling the outbreak to squabble over the constitution and ramp up division. Beneath the fog of pandemic, a very significant shift has occurred in the geopolitical order, and no-one is taking that much notice.

The British Government confirmed on Wednesday that there will now be checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK as part of Brexit. That effectively puts the border by the Irish Sea, at ports like Belfast – and therefore between Ulster and mainland Britain, not Ulster and Ireland. The whole of the UK will leave the customs union, but Northern Ireland will continue to enforce EU regulations at ports – just as the Republic does. Border posts will be built at Ulster ports.

The republican dream of a united Ireland has come one step nearer. At any other time than during pandemic, such moves would have caused a constitutional crisis. There would be fears of violence. Security would increase. Ulster politicians would have been on their soapboxes. But within a day of the announcement, it was all but forgotten.

This shift in Irish affairs is just one of myriad ways coronavirus is changing the world order. It is reshaping geopolitics as it changes societies, governments, and people around the globe. You could say we’re entering the age of Covid’s New World Order.

From one perspective, the virus has brutally undermined Brexit, its nostalgic appeal to supporters, and its harking back to some form of 19th-century Splendid Isolation – when the Victorian empire stood alone on the world’s stage.

Whether a Leaver or Remainer, it’s hard not to see Britain’s move away from the EU as anything other than a lonely prospect in light of Covid. The UK has the highest total deaths in Europe. Britain’s capabilities to deal with the infection – from testing and tracing to care homes and PPE – have been found wanting, while nations like Germany handled the crisis much more effectively. Can a tiny island really go it alone at a time of global crisis? Don’t we need our neighbours more than ever?

Or could coronavirus confirm for some that the drawbridge should remain pulled up? The pandemic is already stirring a toxic stew of racism, immigration, and border controls. In a world of closed borders, reduced travel and fear of infection, might the hard-right vision of Brexit broaden its appeal? There are already fears in a number of countries that coronavirus is a gift to extremists, and nationalism is on the rise across the world.

Here in Scotland, coronavirus has inserted itself into the DNA of the debate about the union. How will the pandemic play out when it comes to Scottish independence? In the wake of the virus, will Scotland going it alone be seen as absurd as Brexit? Or will the growing – yet in truth still quite insignificant – divergence between the UK and Scottish governments on the handling of coronavirus make the fires of independence burn stronger? Beyond the presentational skills of the First Minister and the Prime Minister, however, there’s not really that great a difference in the way Holyrood and Westminster have dealt with the outbreak.

Unlike Brexit, though, Scottish independence isn’t a done deal. So, will people have the stomach for more constitutional chaos once normality returns? Amid the coming global economic meltdown – set to rival the Great Crash of 1929 – how many voters will want to risk more financial jeopardy with separation from the UK? Public mood matters.

The Yes movement tilts strongly towards Europe. However, even the most staunch European is starting to feel uneasy about the EU’s behaviour amid coronavirus. There’s a real risk the European project could unravel if member states emerge from the outbreak unevenly – if the rich north prospers and the poor south suffers. There are east-west tensions too. Restricting aid to weak states could lead to the EU tearing itself apart.

Former Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni is now the EU’s economy commissioner. He has warned about the pandemic causing economic division and threatening stability and unity. Greece, Italy, Spain and Croatia are facing falls in GDP of above 9%, while Germany looks to be facing a squeeze of about 6.5 and Austria 5.5. Memories of Germany’s treatment of Greece after the 2008 financial crash remain raw.

“What is clear is the uneven level of the recovery and the risks this creates to our single market,” Gentiloni said, adding: “This is something that I could even define as an existential threat to the building of the Union.”

However, the reverse is also true. If the EU can manage recovery fairly and pull together it will emerge stronger, and that could be the making of Europe – cementing its place as a world superpower. More integration in Europe, not less, would pave the way to an equal playing field for all member states.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said: “The relationship between the biggest powers has never been as dysfunctional. Covid-19 is showing dramatically, either we join [together] ... or we can be defeated.”

The big issue haunting European recovery is how it is paid for – loans or grants? France, Spain and Italy favour grants, Germany and the Netherlands back loans. Gentiloni has said grants represent “the principle of solidarity”. Loans will make poorer countries poorer. If that happens, Brexit – which most Europeans see as madness – may look less crazy. The Dutch have already been told by Spain that “a first-class cabin would not protect you when the ship sinks”.

Self-evidently, both emotionally and psychologically, the pandemic undermines the European ideal. Nations are coping with the outbreak as they see fit, not how Brussels deems. Borders have been strengthened. All this plays into the populist agenda of politicians like Italy’s Matteo Salvini, whose anti-EU rhetoric is gathering traction – one recent poll showed 49% of Italians want to quit the EU.

The EU has also failed to rein in the authoritarian Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has used coronavirus to undermine democracy, silence opposition and smother the press. If the EU, which was built to extend democracy across the continent, cannot control a man like Orban, then what does it stand for?

Europe is the standard-bearer of globalisation, but globalisation’s reputation has been shredded in recent years, thanks to the financial crash and the rise of right-wing nationalism around the world from America First Trumpism to Brazil, India and the Philippines. Covid has put globalism in intensive care.

For a quick example of Covid’s contraction of global commerce, trade and movement look to Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest airports. Passenger numbers have dropped by 97%. World trade in goods could shrink by up to 30% this year.

The global supply chain has been fractured – goods made on one side of the planet are taking longer to reach the other side. Will autarky – national self-sufficiency – be the next big buzzword when it comes to the direction the planet takes? People across the world – especially here at home – are asking why their governments didn’t have stockpiles of protective gear, why there weren’t enough ventilators, why it took so long to get testing supplies? Covid could create a groundswell of opinion which sees electorates favouring nation states looking after themselves, while turning their backs on international co-operation.

Trade and travel bring down borders – at least in the mind. But with trade and travel in deep freeze, the world’s mood music could change drastically. As economic pain bites through the recovery period, there’s likely to be a wholesale reappraisal of international aid in many countries. India’s populist leader Narendra Modi says a new era of economic self-reliance has already started. Japan will subsidise firms that bring their factories back home as part of its recovery package. The EU has talked of “strategic autonomy”.

Globalisation has as many curses as it does blessings – but one thing’s sure, coronavirus proves that the world must pull together at a time of crisis, not apart. A vaccine will one day be found by scientists from many countries working in unity. No country can stand alone against global threats.

Countries that have tried to go it alone during Covid have come out worse. Sweden, which took its own slack and eccentric approach to preventative measures, now has the highest per-capita death rate on the planet. This in itself shakes one of the old world order’s received wisdoms: the guarantee that Scandinavian countries will always get things right. On the flip side, other small nations seem to be proving that big is not necessarily best. The countries which have most prevailed are states like New Zealand and South Korea.

And then there’s America. It’s still the world’s superpower, but in name only. The Trump administration’s handling of coronavirus has been risible and dangerous – from the president suggesting people inject bleach and his rabble-rousing press conferences, to the country’s escalating death toll and paramilitary-style anti-lockdown demos. In general, populist administrations like Trump’s have done badly during the pandemic – particularly Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, who is ruling over chaos.

The idea that the US still provides global leadership was on the skids long before Covid arrived, but the pandemic has killed off any notion that America remains the world’s policeman. When Trump turned on the World Health Organisation over coronavirus, it illustrated not only American withdrawal from the world, but also the fragility of international organisations and the waning of globalisation as a political philosophy.

America also shows how, in this age of political polarisation, Covid can force even deeper wedges between a population. By and large, Trump’s nativist base wants protective measures to end, while Democrats take a more cautious European approach. These divisions have already turned ugly with armed protesters entering Michigan’s state capitol as legislators debated coronavirus emergency powers.

The US is a seething hotbed of tension at a time when most other nations have tried to put their divisions temporarily aside. It is not an exaggeration to say that some respected US commentators openly ponder the possibility that the nation could split in a way that hasn’t been seen since the American Civil War. Coronavirus is the crowbar prising American divisions further apart.

As America’s role as global leader evaporates, China waits in the wings to step forward as the dominant world power. When coronavirus emerged, there was speculation that Beijing’s handling of the outbreak was so bad the Communist Party might fall. Today, there’s no chance of that – the nation is recovering, and has been seen to handle the crisis relatively well. It is now aggressively fighting back against attacks by Trump and his supporters that China was to blame for the outbreak and the extent of global deaths.

China seemed to reflect all the competing tensions in the world relating to coronavirus – the role of America, the trouble in Europe, the future place of Beijing in the world – when it promised to send tonnes of medical equipment to Italy, at a time when Western states were failing to help. China also sent medical teams to Iran and supplies to Serbia whose president dismissed claims of European solidarity as a fairy tale, saying “the only country that can help us is China”.

That vignette should send a chill down the spine of anyone who believes in democracy. If nations like Italy need China to bail them out then democracy is in trouble – it has been eroded at home, and undermined abroad. While Beijing embarks on this PR campaign for dictatorship, it is using Covid as a cover to crush dissent in Hong Kong.

The poor performance by both the British and American administrations shows that the previous dominant dynamic in world affairs – US action backed by British support – is now a thing of the past.

Russia and its place in the world could also face great change thanks to Covid. Without doubt, the Kremlin is lying about the number of Russian dead. Putin’s regime is Soviet when it comes to truth – facts are what the government says they are. However, death changes a lot, and Putin’s ratings have now fallen to a historic low. Could coronavirus result in a post-Putin era? Or a reboot of glasnost – the spirit of openness which helped bring down Communism? Putin’s iron grip on power makes it unlikely, but even in Russia we see Covid warping the political landscape.

The Middle East is also starting to realign. After Saudi Arabia wounded the US fracking industry by flooding the world with cheap oil during this financially crippling pandemic, Trump, with his eyes fixed firmly on the stock market, took action. He withdrew air defence batteries, there to protect the kingdom from Iran, and pulled back troops, navy and fighter jets. The US-Saudi relationship was, until now, immutable. But that’s no longer true thanks to Covid – and the fact that oil prices are so low they don’t justify a US military presence to protect petroleum states like Saudi. US officials have even said that Iran no longer poses a threat to American strategic interests in the Gulf. Barely noticed, this is one of the greatest seismic shifts in geopolitics wrought by coronavirus.

Simultaneously, Iran is starting to withdraw some of its military from Syria where it has been backing the Assad regime. In turn, this reduces tensions with Israel in the region. The sands are shifting in the Middle East because of coronavirus, just as they are across the entire planet.

As France’s president Emmanuel Macron predicts of the outbreak: “This period will have taught us a lot. Many certainties and convictions will be swept away. Many things that we thought were impossible are happening. The day after when we have won, it will not be a return to the day before.”

Coronavirus has already warped the political world, and we’re still just a few months into the pandemic. Much change lies ahead – whether that change is good or bad lies in all our hands.