Added by PressForward
The economic consequences of the lockdowns put in place to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus will stretch well into this century and the way money is created, distributed and spent will, for better or worse, never be the same.
Authoritarian regimes can use the COVID-19 crisis to improve their international standing, taking advantage of others’ distraction.
Lockdown is a form of quarantine, a practise used to try to stem the spread of disease for hundreds of years by controlling humans.
This much is certain: Just as this disease has shattered lives, disrupted markets and exposed the competence (or lack thereof) of governments, it will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in ways that will become apparent only later.
Beijing’s information strategy appears to have changed in recent weeks — one of many facets of geopolitics the coronavirus has upended in its wake. How that strategy unfolds — including whether these changes stick or constitute a one-time departure — and how the United States engages will have implications for the contest between democrats and autocrats.
The world following the pandemic is unlikely to be radically different from the one that preceded it. COVID-19 will not so much change the basic direction of world history as accelerate it.
Indeed, politics and world events were like quicksand beneath our feet. Abroad, the Syrian civil war raged, Iraq teetered, and the emergence of ISIS—the successor to the al-Qaeda affiliate that took root in Iraq after our invasion—drew the United States back into a new counterterrorism campaign
