{"id":13531,"date":"2020-04-28T14:16:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T13:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/?p=13531"},"modified":"2020-04-28T14:16:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T13:16:27","slug":"carl-bildt-the-virus-is-attacking-an-incoherent-deglobalized-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/carl-bildt-the-virus-is-attacking-an-incoherent-deglobalized-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Carl Bildt: \u201cThe virus is attacking an incoherent, deglobalized world\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"qtranxs-available-languages-message qtranxs-available-languages-message-fr\">D\u00e9sol\u00e9, cet article est seulement disponible en <a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13531\" class=\"qtranxs-available-language-link qtranxs-available-language-link-en\" title=\"English\">English<\/a>.<\/p><p><\/p>\n<div class=\"css-1vkm6nb ehdk2mb0\">\n<p data-test-id=\"headline\">The New York Times,\u00a0April 24, 2020<\/p>\n<h1 id=\"link-723971e0\" class=\"css-1qskr30 e1h9rw200\" data-test-id=\"headline\">Despotism and Democracy in the Age of the Virus<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"article-summary\" class=\"css-ns7wfp e1wiw3jv0\">The battle for humanity and solidarity in the post-American world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1fv7b6t e1jsehar1\">By\u00a0<span class=\"css-1baulvz last-byline\"><a class=\"css-brehiz e1jsehar0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/roger-cohen\">Roger Cohen,<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">Opinion Columnist<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">The first major crisis of the post-American world is ugly and is going to get worse. A pandemic required a pan-planet reaction. Instead it found Pangloss in the White House blowing smoke and insisting, as disaster loomed, that it was still the best of all possible worlds in America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">\u201cThere\u2019s not been even a hint of an aspiration of American leadership,\u201d Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, told me. \u201cThat is fundamentally new.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">It is. The world\u2019s American reference point has vanished. The prize for greatest disappearing act of the coronavirus crisis goes to Mike Pompeo, the American secretary of state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">Into the global vacuum has stepped, well, nobody. No amount of flag-waving Chinese officials disembarking from planes onto European soil with offers of masks and ventilators can obscure the fact that all this began with a biological Chernobyl in Wuhan, covered up for weeks as a result of the terror that is the currency of dictatorships.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-190ncxp\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">The Asian powers that have emerged best from this disaster are the medium-size democracies of South Korea and Taiwan. The great competition of despots and democrats for the upper hand in the 21st century is still open.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"NYT_MID_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION\" class=\"css-9tf9ac dfp_1p2-1_bk DFP_1p-2_fp dfp_adslot4v2-1_external DFP_als_home-1_als DFP_als-1_als dfp_messaging_flexframe_ctr-0_control DFP_mt-0_control FREEX_Regi_Corona-3_brand HOME_timesExclusive-0_control INBOX_individualpage_redesign-0_control MAPS_fr_interests_block-1_from_your_interests MC_DFP_topbar_bar_anon_1019-0_control MC_DFP_topbar_bar_regi_1019-0_control MKT_dfp_hd_paywall_zip-0_control MKT_dfp_intl_pricing_low_conv-1_25cents MKT_dfp_intl_pricing_med_conv-0_control MKT_DFP_ods-1_test SA_Referral_DFP_April2020_Test-1_yellow_evergreen SEARCH_FACET_DROPDOWN-0_FACET_MULTI_SELECT STORY_intentional_links_v1-0_control STORY_topical_recirc-0_control STYLN_coronavirus_briefing_alerts-control STYLN_elections_notifications-1_elections_notifications STYLN_embedded_hub-0_control STYLN_fr_recirc_quantity_desktop-3_fr_recirc_quantity_desktop STYLN_latest_story-0_control_STYLN_latest_story STYLN_lb_newposts-1_lb_newposts STYLN_live_newupdates-variant STYLN_live_tabs-0_hidden STYLN_live_updates-1_live_updates STYLN_liveblog_email-0_control STYLN_menu_coronavirus_live-control STYLN_pharmacy_components-show STYLN_remove_relatedlinks-0_control_STYLN_remove_relatedlinks\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">The Great Depression that began in 1929 produced two distinct results on either side of the Atlantic. In the United States, it led, beginning in 1933, to Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal. In Europe, it led to Hitler\u2019s rise to power in the same year, the spread of fascism, and eventually devastation on an unimaginable scale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-16l7vy9\" data-testid=\"inline-message\" aria-live=\"polite\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-16858bh\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">This time, as the coronavirus stops production and leaves more than 26 million Americans newly unemployed while in Europe it causes salaries to be \u201cnationalized,\u201d in the words of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, the effects of an economic collapse not seen in almost a century may be flipped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">Donald Trump\u2019s United States, which the German magazine Der Spiegel now calls \u201c<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/world\/the-american-patient-how-trump-is-fueling-a-corona-disaster-a-024a5cc9-2c07-419a-a351-67837b47f6bb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the American patient<\/a>,\u201d is ripe for an authoritarian lurch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">Awash in Trump\u2019s lies, battered by the virus, buried in incompetence, lacerated by division and ruled by a lunatic unbound, the country approaches an election in November whose theft, subversion or postponement are credible scenarios. Nothing in Trump\u2019s psyche allows him to conceive of defeat, his family\u2019s prospects out of power are dim and crisis is the perfect pretext for a power grab. War \u2014 and this pandemic has similarities to one \u2014 fosters \u201cexecutive aggrandizement,\u201d as James Madison warned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">Trump embodies the personal and societal collapse he is so skilled in exploiting. Insult the press. Discredit independent judges. Remove the checks. Upend the balances. Abolish truth. Pocket the system step by step. Mainline Lysol. Dictatorship 101.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">Europe is a different story. Its division between the prosperous north and the poorer south sharpened by the pandemic, and its fracture line between the democracies of Western Europe and the illiberal or authoritarian systems of Poland and Hungary further exposed, the continent faces a severe test of its capacity for unity and solidarity. It has underperformed, but I would not write it off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">The initial European reaction to the pandemic was weak \u2014 Lombardy will not soon forget its abandonment \u2014 and the European Union\u2019s response to the March 30 assertion of near-total autocratic power\u00a0<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2020\/03\/30\/hungarys-viktor-orban-wins-vote-to-rule-by-decree-155476\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">by the Hungarian leader, Viktor Orban<\/a>, was pathetic, equivalent to appeasement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">For the Union to commit to providing billions of dollars in aid to Hungary through the Corona Response Investment Initiative on the very day Orban began ruling by decree for an indefinite period was \u201cmad, bad and dangerous,\u201d as Jacques Rupnik, a French political scientist, told me. Orban is a politician Trump admires.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">But in Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, Europe has again discovered a leader inspiring in her candor and sanity and steadiness. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">European societies, with their buffering welfare states that are covering the wages of laid-off workers and providing universal health care, are better prepared than the United States for a disaster on this scale. Governments and the European Central Bank have now mobilized massive resources.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">Macron,\u00a0<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/3ea8d790-7fd1-11ea-8fdb-7ec06edeef84\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in an interview with The Financial Times<\/a>, has made the argument that the virus should ultimately reinforce multilateralism and herald the return of the \u201chuman\u201d over the \u201ceconomic\u201d \u2014 or, roughly interpreted, European solidarity over American unfettered capitalism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"story-ad-3-wrapper\" class=\"css-1r07izm\">\n<div id=\"story-ad-3-slug\" class=\"css-l9onyx\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"after-story-ad-3\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">Certainly, the underpaid first responders, garbage collectors, farm workers, truckers, supermarket cashiers, delivery people and the rest who have kept people alive and fed while the affluent took to the hills or the beaches have delivered a powerful lesson in the need for greater equity and a different form of globalization. People suffocate from Covid-19. They may also suffocate one day, as Macron pointed out, from an overheated, overexploited planet. Whether the lesson will be heeded through a radical rebalancing, both personal and corporate, is another story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">What is clear is that if the European Union does not stand up for liberal democratic values, those values will be orphaned in the menacing world of Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">I said the great 21st century democracy-dictatorship battle is far from over. Emergencies serve autocrats but can also demonstrate the failings of their systems and provoke radical rethinking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">The pivotal date in the struggle is now Nov. 3. If Trump wins, assuming the election is held, and Pangloss continues his assault on truth, the Merkel-Macron democratic camp will struggle. If Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, wins, the United States will not recover an American-led world, because that world is gone forever, but the return of American decency and principle will make an enormous difference. To begin with, autocrats will no longer have an American carte blanche.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-exrw3m evys1bk0\">\u201cThe virus is attacking an incoherent, deglobalized world,\u201d Bildt said. \u201cAnd as long as that is the case, the virus wins.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/04\/24\/opinion\/coronavirus-democracy-europe.html\">Read the article on The New York Times.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>D\u00e9sol\u00e9, cet article est seulement disponible en English. The New York Times,\u00a0April 24, 2020 Despotism and Democracy in the Age of the Virus The battle for humanity and solidarity in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[62,40,49,61,35,60],"class_list":["post-13531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-room","tag-carl-bildt","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-democracy","tag-globalization","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}