Covid-19: Globalization—Will the Course Change?

The year 2020 will go down in world history as a time of great struggle. The Covid-19 pandemic has put a screeching halt to economic activities and movement of people across the globe. The difficulties associated with detecting and isolating asymptotic carriers, who are otherwise unaware that they are infected, undoubtedly facilitate the spread of virus in manifold. This article focuses on the speculations the pandemic caused on the future of globalization. The current movements, which were triggered by Covid-19, have given legitimate reasons to mistrust globalization. Many countries around the globe began to realize their over-dependence on other countries and struggle to meet their local customer needs now. Many are emphasizing the grave dangers associated with over-dependence on global value chains especially those controlled by China, leading to criticizing globalization. And the national leaders too followed suit to propagate protectionism and self-reliance. Globalization has given way to recent frustrations and concerns which cannot be quietened by reminding the benefits it brought. And crying for de-globalization is also not going to solve the issues the humanity faces. Isolation is a strategy that works only to stop the spread of a pandemic, but collectivism can help in counter and emerge from it stronger. The 2001 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan had rightly said once that ‘arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity’. Collective actions of the countries only can meet global challenges such as climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation and cyber-attacks. No single nation on its own can make itself secure and self-reliant. Nobody can predict the next crisis. But the most reliable and efficient insurance by far is to build strong international exchange cooperation to safeguard the humanity.