BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

POST COVID-19 WORLD ORDER: ARE WE WITNESSING A CHANGE IN HEGEMONIC LEADERSHIP?

Author: Md. Jahan Shoieb

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/10.56888/BIISSj2020v41n3a4

ABSTRACT

Current global pandemic, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the most severe challenge to the global community since the Great Depression in 1929. Spread of this disease revealed the fragile health care system of all countries including the most powerful one. The US, the only superpower who has remained top of the table since the Potsdam, is intensely self-centered as the virus rips through its population and economy. China, on the contrary, has been playing a big role to combat and control this highly infectious disease. The ongoing pandemic is reshaping the geo-politics. And more importantly, escalating tension between the US and China is the immediate outcome of the COVID-19. Undoubtedly, the US-led liberal international order has been passing a testing time. But is the US-led global order coming to an end? The paper analyses the hegemonic stability theory and power transition theory to assess whether the world is heading towards a new order in near future.