Pandemic and Globalization: Some Thoughts

I have been promising to jot down a few thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic and globalization.  A few days ago I read an essay by John Gray, arguing that the pandemic marks a turning  point, one that will prompt a move away from liberalism, free trade, and globalization.  Gray is a thoughtful and interesting writer, and you can find his essay here -- although I don't think it is particularly compelling.

Gray's analysis fits into a broader political narrative that has already been gaining traction over the past few years: that we are seeing a retreat from liberal politics and from the globalized world order as countries move increasingly in nationalist, populist, and even authoritarian directions.

National populism (which can but need not be authoritarian) is a real phenomenon, in the USA, across the West, and to some extent even globally.  We see it in the election of Donald Trump, in Brexit, and in the rise of various national populist parties in the democracies of Europe.  I am part of the way into a book with that phrase as its title, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy, by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, and it offers a good analysis of this trend, critical of but not unsympathetic to the concerns of the voters who are driving it.

I nevertheless think it is a mistake to assume that the current pandemic plays into this trend or will give it added momentum.  It is true that the pandemic promotes a certain inward turn on the part of nation-states.  And we will probably see some re-assertions of national self-interest in its wake: increased stockpiles of emergency medical supplies, for instance, or perhaps added levels of screening in order to cross national borders.

But the pandemic is not a reason to turn one's back on globalization and free trade, as Gray argues, or on liberalism.  To the contrary.  It appears that way only if one assumes a purely defensive perspective, imagining that the pandemic is "out there," and that our goal must be to keep it at all costs from getting "in here."

But even if that were a realistic goal--I'm not sure that it is--we must also prepare for those times like the present, when the pandemic is indeed "in here."  And then we surely do not want to be cut off from the rest of the world, or from international markets, or from the exchange of information and ideas.  We--and by extension other countries--will want access to medical supplies from elsewhere if our own run short, or to imports of food and other goods if our own supply chains are temporarily threatened.  We will want a free, rapid, open, and transparent exchange of scientific information to understand the disease, and of medical insights to fight it.  We will want a vaccine developed in one country to made available in others.

And of course, perhaps most of all, we will want a vibrant and thriving economic system.  As the present crisis is reminding us in all too poignant ways, it is always the poor and vulnerable who are most threatened by catastrophe.  A wealthy and dynamic economy is far better equipped to survive the short- and long-term shocks of a crisis like the COVID pandemic than is one that has cut itself off from the productive forces of competition, trade, and innovation.

The interconnected and globalized world, with its networks of movement in goods, people, and ideas, creates certain vulnerabilities.  But it also creates new strengths.  When the present crisis passes, and the time has come for rebuilding shattered national economies, we are going to need those strengths.