On Reflection | After the coronavirus: could the US collapse within the next year or two?

Three disaster scenarios beckon if Trump, Xi and Putin can’t work together in the post-Covid-19 world

Even war cannot be ruled out in the event of an existential political threat to any one of these leaders

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People in Michigan take part in a protest against what they dubbed “excessive quarantine” during the Covid-19 outbreak in the United States. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:00am, 27 Apr 2020Updated: 5:07am, 27 Apr 2020

Despite my sincerest hopes, it is more likely than not that the world’s three major powers – the United States, China and Russia – will fail to cooperate coming out of the current international coronavirus crisis. This is a function of deep mutual distrust and what I call the consolidation of ideological belief within the leaderships of Washington, Beijing and, to a lesser extent, Moscow.

Perhaps leaders in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, India or Japan will step in to save the day, but this can only be a partial save in the best case, given the huge disparities in size and capabilities between these secondary powers and the “big three”.

So what are the worst-case scenarios that may arise if Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – or their successors – do not come to a meeting of minds by the end of this year?

Answer: There are three. They are all bad taken on their own, and horrific in any combination. Let us all pray that we do not get there.

The most probable and nearest-term consequence of trilateral discord will be an acceleration and deepening of parasitic regulatory competition between US-led commercial and trading spaces and Chinese-led spaces, with Russia, by far the weakest economic player, tilting ever more intensely towards the Chinese spaces and attempting to exert, with growing ferocity, regulatory control over at least 12 of the 15 post-Soviet states.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin shake hands during a 2018 award ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photo: AP

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On Reflection | After the coronavirus: could the US collapse within the next year or two?

Three disaster scenarios beckon if Trump, Xi and Putin can’t work together in the post-Covid-19 world Even war cannot be ruled out in the event of an existential political threat to any one of these leaders

Three disaster scenarios beckon if Trump, Xi and Putin can’t work together in the post-Covid-19 world

Even war cannot be ruled out in the event of an existential political threat to any one of these leaders