Pandemic projections from Moscow: The status quo reinvisioned (but not quite enough)

Abstract

Written in the shadow of the COVID crisis that began late in 2019 and has transformed international politics in 2020, the IMEMO’s 2020 Forecast furnishes valuable insight into global affairs and into the strategic agenda as it is being set in Moscow. It does an admirable job of integrating a global pandemic, which is wreaking havoc in real time, into longer term projections about global order. Where it concerns issues of public health and political upheaval, the Forecast is persuasive: it alleges a widening gap between political elites (in many countries) and the populations they are trying to govern. The Forecast misses a few important political trends, however. Of these, the most important is an accelerating consolidation of the post-Brexit European Union (EU). Should this continue, transatlantic relations could deepen, whereas Russia and China might find themselves confronting new challenges. If anything, the IMEMO Forecast does not stray far enough—intellectually—from the pre-COVID status quo. The Forecast assumes little change in Russia-EU relations, almost no change in US-Russian relations and closer linking together of Russia and China. It does not emphasize Russian agency in any of these three areas but instead roots the international situation in slow-moving structural processes: the alignment of interests between Russia and China, the possibility of an incipient ‘‘pragmatism’’ in the Kremlin’s relationship with Europe (broadly construed), and an intractable parting of the ways between the United States and Russia. The COVID crisis is understood, in this Forecast, as an impetus to trends that were apparent in 2019 and before. Some speculation is offered about ‘‘black swans’’—in particular those that might arise from global warming—and the stress these would put on the political order around the globe. In many different regions, the Forecast envisions elites struggling to hang on and a restless, younger generation eager to make its claim on political power.