Our lives after the coronavirus pandemic

Description

Less international cooperation; chaos and anarchy in fragile states
Andreas Krieg is an assistant professor at School of Security Studies at King's College London, UK.

COVID-19 will fast-forward the fourth industrial revolution and digitalization of all services, including public services. The relationship between the community and the state will become ever more remote, whereby states are now expanding their remote control over civil society and private life. Amid COVID-19, the individual will be sufficiently pressed to surrender basic civil liberties in return for security, which alters the social contract in the liberal world.

By promising security, especially authoritarians will exploit COVID-19 as a pretext to further contract the public space and consume more powers to intervene into private lives. Digital technology makes it possible to create subtle police states whereby state control is not as obvious as it might have been as citizens might voluntarily offer private data in hope the state can provide security.

On the international level, there will be less cooperation. The trend of nationalism and self-reliance will continue, especially as the fear of the "external" and "foreign" can be exploited by populists. Most states are challenged in their resilience economically, socially and in terms of public health.

The public health crisis compounds existing domestic economic crises amid a global economic depression following the end of the COVID-19 crisis. Fragile states will be pushed into chaos and anarchy, and there is a realistic chance that some regimes will not survive COVID-19 as mass dissidence towards the end of mass mortality will bring 100,000s to the street to overthrow regimes whose legitimacy will be undermined by their inability to manage the crisis.

Period	26 Mar 2020
Held at	Al Jazeera, Qatar