Who runs the world?

CRISES CAN bring clarity. In the financial crisis of 2008-09, the G20 club of big economies came into its own, reflecting how economic power had spread beyond the rich world’s G7. One thing the covid-19 pandemic has laid bare is an absence of global leadership. This time the G20 has done little beyond a rhetorical pledge to “do whatever it takes” and supporting debt-repayment suspension for poor countries. America, which led global campaigns to defeat HIV/AIDS and Ebola, has been absorbed in its internal arguments. And the UN Security Council has confirmed its dysfunctionality.

The council’s five permanent members (P5) are split between the Western three and Russia and China; some suspect the authoritarian duo of having a formal pact. Russia wields its veto often, sometimes alongside China. Instead of leaping into action over covid-19, the council mustered its first discussion of the crisis only in April. France and Russia have both been keen for the leaders of the P5 to get together in the UN’s anniversary year, but have found this hard to arrange.

The pandemic hit when competition between America and China, the world’s dominant and emerging superpowers, was already intense, stretching from trade and technology to finance and regional dominance in Asia. In America there is a bipartisan perception of China as a rival...

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