Article - Covid-19 and the post-pandemic economy as a bet for Europe to win in a sign of a global cooperation

1. Andrea Mennillo
Covid-19 and the post-pandemic economy as a bet for Europe to win in a
sign of a global cooperation
Article
28th
January, 2021
www.andreamennillo.org

2. The Covid-19 emergency has revealed, as never before, the vulnerability of all health,
economic, political and social systems, which found themselves unable to produce an
effective global response, in order to limit as much as possible the damage caused by the
pandemic.
I was reflecting recently on a statement by Ambassador Giampiero Massolo, President of
Fincantieri and President of the Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), on how
power today is no longer just military; there’s also power which involves health care, logistics,
food and technology.
The lack of true global leadership, capable of commanding the world in a common direction
is perhaps what we suffer from the most in a multidimensional and worldwide crisis like the
one we’re experiencing.
I think it’s quite natural that, in the context of such an emergency, each national government
has taken decisions guided by its own culture, its own traditions and its own capacity for
resilience.
But it is not to be ignored how, on the whole, the responses to the health, economic and
social emergency have been fragmented, sometimes even chaotic, and often characterized by
opposition rather than cooperation. Global competition has intensified, as well as the
intransigence of public opinion, troubled and stressed by the persistent uncertainty.
The prospect of a vaccine obviously reveals the light at the end of the tunnel, but once the
emergency ends, what innovations and skills will be put in place? What will the world’s new
balances be? Will the competition for global leadership intensify the contrasts between the
West and the East?
We know that China and the United States have been in opposition for a long time. Today
the game is being played on the technology frontier, where 5G and Artificial Intelligence
could guarantee a dominant position in the global economy. A match in which the United
States are still ahead.
Russia, on the other hand, is always ready to quickly fill the gaps that other world powers
leave uncovered. Unfortunately, the role of Europe remains marginal, penalized by an identity
and political path that is still in progress.
In such an unstable situation, I see as a unique possible solution, the promotion of renewed
global cooperation, which would strengthen the ability to find shared answers to great
economic and social issues, allowing a start to great projects of change, which are so
important today for the progress of the world. The implementation of such a scenario,
based on cooperation, will mostly depend on the willingness of the main actors of global
power to engage in dialogue.

3. New international balances will not be long in being created. For Europe, however, it will
be essential to strengthen its own role within the Western world – to which it naturally
belongs- in order then to be able to propose itself as a bridge to build new alliances and
cooperation with the Eastern world, and China in particular.