Arif Rashid Malik
Covid-19 is considered one of the dangerous viruses in the world, by health experts. It has completely taken control of the world, leaving no option for countries other than a Lockdown. Every single sector has fallen prey to this virus, now being declared as a Global Pandemic by WHO. Education, Economy, Trade and Business, Industrial sector, Healthcare of almost all the countries are in the pickle. The forced lockdown has left no option for them to tolerate the damage that can further mushroom as it looks right now, proving deadly to the sectors like education, health, economies, endangering the survival of the human lives. It will not only plummet their growth rate but the GDP will fall down too. To explain it in simpler terms, one could say that Global economic recession is no longer impossible now. The Covid -19 has badly damaged the economy of the developed world. In such countries like USA, France, Britain, the number of positive cases are skyrocketing. Italy, Spain, France, USA are witnessing deaths at an alarming rate, which has dragged them on the Back foot. Secondly, the countries ,which have trade relations with these badly affected countries countries, in trillions will be affected naturally and therefore they will prefer trade with them (very less) and give priority to Russia, China. China, the seedbed of this deadly virus has almost recovered and is back on it’s track. The factories have been reopened and are now supplying the necessary items to the rest of the countries, again making huge profits. Russia seems to be less affected. Once the world will overcome from this ruthless virus, then the detrimental results aftermath will be apparent. It give this impression too that the USA is no longer going to remain as the superpower in the world, due to it’s debilitating condition right now. Undoubtedly, Afghan war has also given USA a major setback, while at that same time, this Virus continues to haunt them and is proving a snatcher of it’s hegemony. It looks obvious to the world that China has overtaken them right now from every angle and probably world would be made to witness China as the new superpower of the world, Post covid-19. China will make best use of it’s potential to attract more and more countries towards it and also will attract foreign investors to invest in the newly overtaken giant. It looks best time for Russia too, to develop close relations with China, in order to counter USA and it’s allies. Three important conclusions can be drawn when it comes to the “South Asian rivalry.” Firstly it will boost Pakistan, which is very clear from the close proximity, it shares with China. Most likely, it will improve more if china overtakes USA and on the other hand will prove a big jolt to India’s hegemony( to a good extent) in South Asia because of the fact that they have lost their big strategic partner right now. However it’s important to mention that the trade will not end between India and the US but will get reduced to a large extent because of the crisis which USA is facing.
The whole game, will take a new turn with Covid 19 pandemic, and it will be interesting to watch, how it will challenge the Neo-liberal world and their economic model, which seems staggering right now and how they will respond to the challenge thrown by this deadly pandemic . A different world will be in picture post pandemic.
India is also going to suffer very much. Secondly, Pakistan needs to sustain as well as strengthen it’s ties with China, to counter India. Pakistan would never want India’s growing influence in the world affairs as India, in various attempts have tried to isolate Pakistan from global affairs. They have been successful to large extent; despite the fact China have used its veto against any dark act against Pakistan. The third conclusion is a resultant of the virus being detrimental for the world economy. As a consequence, the post -pandemic period will witness a new dawn in the history of Asia. There is another side of the story as well. Conspiracy theories, that are revolving around in the form of ‘Blame Games’ from each side and it’s key two players are China and America who are in the state of cold war as a part of Geo-politics rivalry. The USA administration has continuously been arguing that the Chinese virus, as they call it has been discovered in Wuhan city with the purpose of destroying the economy of USA. The US President Trump even stated that while the Chinese were badly struck by this virus “It is a good time for America to accelerate it’s economic development and would want to invite all those countries too to trade with USA who have trade relations with China, which surely didn’t worked for them. On the other hand china blames USA for all the mayhem. There is already a trade war, that has been going on between China and the USA. The US wants to impose too many tariffs on Chinese products in order not to let them flourish in the international market. Because of this Geo Politics rivalry, the whole world has been made to engage in this war. A war, which is not being fought through nuclear weapons but it is more destructive than the lethal weapons and bombs. Such kind of war is going to be waged in global politics. The Battle of powers as who will overtake who and who will be the new mighty super giant. For this, the countries can go to any extent to secure its national interest even if puts the entire human population under a serious threat. The whole game, will take a new turn with Covid 19 pandemic, and it will be interesting to watch, how it will challenge the Neo-liberal world and their economic model, which seems staggering right now and how they will respond to the challenge thrown by this deadly pandemic . A different world, will be in picture post pandemic.
( The author is a freelancer and writes frequently for “ Kashmir Horizon”. Views are his own) [email protected]
