COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE WORLD ORDER

This paper examines the origins, nature, and potential outcomes of the global crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors argue that the crisis has been animated by the two most important groups of factors that have been simmering in the world's economic and political system during the past six decades and have been accelerated by the pandemic. First, the dynamic of the Covid-19 crisis illuminated the existing challenges of the contemporary capitalist system, which is generally legitimated via the instruments of moral panic and media manipulation. Each consecutive crisis of capitalism ends with the redistribution of power resources to some groups of participants. Second, the Covid-19 crisis has been taking place within the conditions of a systemic and ideological struggle between two global elite factions that harbour drastically different approaches to the changing world order and have different politico-economic goals and intentions. The authors will argue that the crisis will not change the world drastically, yet it will amplify these ongoing tensions, illuminate them to many general observers, and deepen the already-existing systemic instability.