Introduction
2019/2020 Coronavirus outbreak
may become the most insightful event in the last 150 years. While it is an
invisible entity with limited ability on its own to act and operate, its vectors
and agents in humanity have played significant roles in its thriving
enterprise. The result will take time to fully emerge considering that
coronavirus is not fully understood by the so-called advanced and developed countries.
Our concern is to highlight state expressions leading from history and the emerging
patterns of geopolitical power distribution.
Appetiser
Coronavirus has garnered much
attention for a single reason, which is the concentration of infections and
mortality in the Global North. This geographical space have 3 distinct parts
with a single continental isolation of North America and the contiguous
continental mass stretching from Europe to Asia. These techno-economic hotspots
include New York – Toronto area, European Union radiating from Berlin and the Asian
conurbation nucleated from Shanghai. These
areas are all north of the Equator, apparently the container of all the great
powers and emerging powers. Coronavirus is running riot in these areas and seem
unstoppable in specific areas under various governments.
Uncommon Cold
The first cases of coronavirus
were mistakenly reported as a type of flu or pneumonia. Only when peer-reviewed
empirical analyses confirmed its specifics did it become apparent that a new
kid has arrived the infection block. It has been highlighted that common cold
is lethal with high mortality per annum i.e. over a spread of time, coronavirus
seem different. Based on infection rate alone, the speed is almost like a rapid-fire
offensive. Of course infection rate/mortality rate relationship is complex,
preparedness and response initiatives play an important part towards
containment and reversal.
Triumphs
As the world gets more
interconnected events in a single location have higher tendency of wider impact
and reaction. However the events of the past seem to have prepared the ground
the current diverse reaction of countries in advance. A trend has been on the
run in the last few decades and the results appear to have been misread or
misinterpreted especially by the western world.
In 1991 USSR collapsed which
opened the door wide for hubristic triumphalism in the West which refused to
close. In 2001 aeroplanes flew into New York causing much casualty and led to
United States pushing the envelope of military dominance through war on terrorism
among others. In 2008 the neoliberal economic model driven by Washington
Consensus collapsed and stood still. In 2020 coronavirus unleashed its
offensive with lethal revolutionary zeal simultaneously in many countries.
In this 30-year run reaction
aggregates presented binary behaviours in the West and East. Washington DC and
her remora allies in the West projected uncritical and triumphalist disposition
devoid of comprehensive awareness and far-reaching amendment. The
interpretation is reduced to apparent magnificence of democracy and uncontested
free market economy. In the East including Russia, representation in governance
is tighter with restricted market economies in place. In a sense the economies
are servants of the state rather than private interests. Overall, the East has
limited global military ambition considering the cost and resource intensity.
Boom
When the crowned poison i.e.
coronavirus in Latin, arrived new patterns of response emerged. Despite all the
decades of war against terrorism, shows of force in counter-terrorism, various
policies of alert and emergencies by various western/NATO states; only
confusion reigned and later blame game. If you add democracy and open market in
the mix, then effective leadership took a walk in the park. The only countries
with 5-digit mortality rates are United States, United Kingdom, Spain, France
and Italy. It took coronavirus to reveal the West as the bastion of failed
governments. Quite a strange performance! Something is wrong with politics in
these countries.
Apparently Asian countries rose
to the occasion not so much that they possess much of the wealth, democracy and
free market economies. Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea, Laos, Cambodia, India,
Japan and China took the outbreak serious to swiftly contain and decline its
threat. These governments acted with tact, effectiveness, reliability,
confidence and focus. They displayed acute awareness, rapid implementation,
effective monitoring and dynamic feedback mechanism. Apparently United Kingdom
and Spain retorted to hand clapping and pan hitting as viable solutions. Lack
of organisation, lack of protective equipment, lack of effective supply chain
and lack of critical medical tools abysmally trailed the so-called advanced
countries. It is a woeful performance. This is an important lesson for the
Global South.
Values
It is contestable that one of the
logical conclusions of western enlightenment is atheistic materialism enthroned
by communist Russia/USSR. There is a stark contrast between the West and the
East in terms of culture, spirituality as a viable interiority and sustainable
sociological foundations. There is a gruesome assumption that Europe and North
America are Christian or that they thrive based on Christian values. These
geographies are no more Christian than the moon has Igbo as its official religion/theology.
The socio-cultural foundation of
these geographies have not only evolved but strongly moved away from enduring
immaterial truth. Secular humanism with its offspring of materialism is the
religion without a permanent altar and priest driving virulent individualism
and de-communitisation. Living focused
on select tribes of elite and powerful interests who interlocked into the
state. Elite is the state and the state is the elite. It is poignant that as
coronavirus took its toll, organised religions in the West are silent in the
various states except the isolated voice of Pope Francis ringing from Rome. In
the United Kingdom, there are no calls for prayer, fasting, redemptive
sacrifice and fraternal solidarity.
In essence it became apparent
that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a subtle shift allowing for its
effects and programmes to seamlessly meander into Global North minus Japan
conscience as the preferred way of life as prophesied by Our Blessed Mother
Mary in Fatima Portugal 1917. The West has no place for the sacred, the
profound and the supernatural. Of course this is not suggesting that
coronavirus outbreak is a reward for de-christianisation.
Rather it is the case that
absence of solid moral or spiritual foundation allows certain weakness to
thrive because the justification for timely effective action disappeared into
the purse of private profit. There is an overwhelming lack of positive
interiority in Europe and North America. It would have been imagined that a
continent that bore the brunt of 2 global wars would have become a bastion of
population protection in emergency.
The lessons and policies
developed by the same advanced countries where modified and exemplified in Asia
to successfully combat coronavirus to the extent that South Korea held a
credible general election. In essence Asia has shown viable leadership and
unquestionable authority. By so doing, they have displayed the compass for
future confidence and positive outcomes. It must be testified that most
Asian countries have very enduring underlying social and cultural foundations upon which colonisation added with minimal removal.
Of course they are not
majority Christians and are not averse to it, the collective worldview is not
strictly materialistic. There is a dominant thread of immaterial consciousness
freely accessible and unthreatened in the public space. One would have expected
that post-war Japan would have shed her core traditions and cultural foundation
rather they accentuated a transformation and modification of accepted foreign
values to their dynamic taste over time.
Conclusion
The clear lesson is that
irreversible change has arrived on the back of coronavirus. To all intents and purposes the West’s decline is evident and factual. Apparently not so much from external
attack rather from the age-old internal weakness, poverty of leadership and
lack of nuanced authority. The next inevitable stage will be facing the consequences
which could be a cocktail of reappraisal, recovery and revolutions.
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