Seven lessons from Coronavius. Ivan Krastev analysis

By Ivan Krastev

How strange a time we're living”, a Spanish friend of mine wrote to me yesterday. And strange really are. We don't know when the David-19 pandemic will end; we don't know how it ends; and, at the moment, we can only speculate about its long-term, political and economic impact. In a time of crisis, we are infected with uncertainty. But there are at least seven things that do this crisis, very different from previous ones.

Lesson One It is that, unlike the 2008-09 financial crisis, the coronary will impose the return of the Big Government (strong government). After Lehman Brothers' fall, many observers believed that distrust of the market that caused the crisis would lead to greater confidence in the government. This concept was nothing new: In 1929, after the beginning of the Great Depression, people sought strong government intervention to compensate for market failures. In the 1970 ' s, the opposite happened: people were disappointed by government intervention, so they began to believe in the market again. The 2008-2009 paradox is that market distrust did not lead to the government's demand for greater interference. Now, the Coronervirus will return the government strongly. People rely on the government to organise collective protection against pandemic, and they rely on the government to save a sinking economy. Government efficiency is now measured by their ability to change people's daily behavior.

Lesson Two It is that the Coronervirus offers another demonstration of border mystics, and will help resurface the role of state-national within the European Union. One can already see this, in closing down many of the borders between states and the fact that every government in Europe is focusing on its own people. Under normal circumstances, member states would make no distinction between the nationality of patients in their health system, but, in this crisis, they would likely give priority to their citizens over others (I don't talk here about immigrants from other regions, but Europeans with EU passports). Coronervirus, therefore, will strengthen nationalism, though not ethnic nationalism. To survive, the government will ask citizens to build walls not only among states but among individuals, since the risk of infection comes from people who meet more frequently. He is not a stranger, but those closest to you, who pose the greatest danger.

Lesson Three Coronervirus is linked to belief in expertise. The financial crisis and the refugee crisis in 2015 created a huge dissatisfaction with experts. This tendency, which has been one of the main successes of populist politicians in the last ten years, will be undone by the Coronobrus. Most people are too open to trust experts and others pay attention to science when their lives are in danger. One can note the increasing legitimacy that this has given to professionals who lead the fight against the virus. Professionalism has become fashionable.

Lesson Four It is open to interpretation, but still very important. Unfortunately, the coronary can increase the appeal of Big Data's authoritarianism, which has been so used in this crisis by the Chinese government. Someone may blame the Chinese leaders for their lack of transparency that led them to react slowly to the spread of the virus, but the efficiency of their response and the ability of the Chinese state to control people's movement and behavior have been impressive. In the current crisis, citizens constantly compare the response and effectiveness of their governments to those of other governments. And we shouldn't be surprised if, one day after the crisis, China looks like a winner and the United States looks like losers.

Lesson Five It's about crisis management. What governments learned in dealing with economic crises, refugee crises, and terrorist attacks was that panic was their worst enemy. If, for months after a terrorist attack, people changed their daily behavior and did not leave their homes, this would help terrorists achieve their goals. The same was true in 2008-2009: a change in behavior often increased the costs of the crisis. Thus, leaders and citizens responded by texting to “save peace”, “Scrolled with life”, “ignored the risk” and “Now governments must tell citizens to change their behavior by staying at home. The success of governments in this regard depends greatly on their ability to scare people into doing what they are directed. “Do not be afraid” is the wrong message for the Devi-19 crisis. To contain pandemic, people have to panic and they have to drastically change their way of life.

Lesson Six is that the Coddy-19 crisis will have a strong impact on the dynamics of generations. In the context of climate change debates and the danger it poses, new generations have been highly critical of the elderly, accusing them of being selfish and not thinking seriously about the future. Coronavirus cancels these dynamics: Now, the elderly members of society are far more vulnerable and feel threatened by the apparent unwillingness of those born at the beginning of the millennium to change their way of life. This interethnic conflict can intensify if the crisis lasts for a long time.

Lesson Seven It is that, at a certain point, governments will be forced to choose between curbing the spread of pandemic at the cost of destroying the economy, or tolerating a higher human cost, to save the economy.

We're still too early to speculate on the political influence of David-19. The crisis has justified the fears of anti-globalists -- closed airports and isolated individuals appear to be “rounder zero” of globalisation. But paradoxically, this new anti-globalistic moment can weaken populist political actors, who, even when right, have no choice. The Twitter-19 crisis will also dramatically reform the EU's response to all other crises it has faced in the last decade. Fiscal discipline is not even in Berlin anymore, and there is no European government that, at this point, wants to protect the opening of borders for refugees.

It remains to be seen how exactly the crisis will affect the future of the European project. But it is clear that, in the end, the coronary will question some of the basic assumptions on which the EU was founded. / The European Council for External Relations.al