Новости за 25.03.2020

Lloyd Evans, Spectator

Double bubble at PMQs. With MPs leaving Westminster a week early, the Speaker ruled that two sessions of PMQs should rub up against each other. It was a full one-hour grilling. Boris adopted his ‘Britain in wartime’ pose. He heaped every questioner with praise and gave his answers with theatrical solemnity. Asked about testing-rates, he offered good news on their increasing frequency. ‘From 5,000 to 10,000 to...

Li-Chen Sim, Russia Matters

Two broad themes have dominated analyses about the failure of OPEC+ to arrive at a new consensus on oil production cuts on March 6, 2020. The first explores the sources of disagreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia that informed the split. The second examines the fallout, with consuming countries typically assumed to be the winners of the situation thanks to lower oil import bills. Much less explored is a third theme, namely, the paths toward a resolution of the oil price war. Читать дальше...

International Crisis Group

Deadly and disruptive as it already is, and terribly as it could yet worsen and spread, the 2020 coronavirus outbreak could also have political effects that last long after the contagion is contained. Crisis Group identifies seven points of particular concern.

M. Rooney, RCW

As COVID-19 spreads and stresses healthcare infrastructure around the world, governments and civil society are racing to slow the pandemic by distancing people from one another. Meanwhile, in the United States and in other developed countries, there is a rising chorus of voices who argue that we must deglobalize, dismantle international supply chains, reduce international trade and travel, and close our borders to the world.

Robert VerBruggen, National Review

That’s more or less the question posed by a new Oxford study making the rounds, especially thanks to a Financial Times write-up. The study posits a scenario in which only 1 percent or even 0.1 percent of people are susceptible to falling severely ill from the virus. If there are 99 or 999 mild cases for every serious one, of course, a bigger share of the...

Gilbert Sewall, The American Conservative

As an example of biomedical catastrophe, the Black Death of the 14th century stands unmatched. The coronavirus, whatever global havoc it might wreak, is not even remotely in its league.

Noah Feldman, Bloomberg View

Suhasini Raj et al, New York Times

NEW DELHI — In one state, police officers have staked out roads and highways, stopping any passing motorists and demanding to know why they were outside their homes. In another, doctors have been run out of their homes, shunned as carriers of the coronavirus.

Daniel McDowell, World Politics Review

In 1873, Walter Bagehot, a prominent businessman in British high society and a journalist who served for 16 years as editor-in-chief of The Economist, wrote a treatise on banking and finance in which he left his most enduring mark on the world. In “Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market,” he laid out a playbook for policymakers facing an unfolding economic and financial crisis. When up against such a challenge, Bagehot asserted, leaders must... Читать дальше...

Neri Zilber, Foreign Policy

Greg Baum, SMH

The International Olympic Committee’s second-favourite pastime, besides staging Olympic Games, is minting medals and handing them out. Or maybe third favourite, after nuzzling up to troughs.

African Arguments

African countries have so far seen relatively fewer COVID-19 cases than hotspots in western Europe, the US and East Asia. But with the likes of South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Burkina Faso and others reporting exponential growth in confirmed cases, it is only a question of time before this public health crisis arrives across the continent in full force.

Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review

Some similarities across the ages

Suzanne Sataline, The Atlantic

Matthew Lesh, CapX

Police will shortly have the power to fine those who leave home for non-essential purposes or congregate in groups of more than two. The authorities will also be able to detain and isolate anyone for any amount of time. They will be able to forcibly take biological samples. Large scale events, including political rallies and strikes, can be dispersed. Surveillance powers have been extended and protections under mental health laws weakened. The state will even be able to force cremations. Читать дальше...

Matthew Kroenig, National Interest

Fortunately for the United States, my research shows that democracies generally outperform their autocratic competitors in great power rivalries. Still, there is no time to lose. As U.S. leaders formulate their response to the Coronavirus, they must think not only in terms of the immediate public health crisis, but also about the very future of American global leadership.

Isis Almeida & Agnieszka de Sousa, Bloomberg

It’s not just grocery shoppers who are hoarding pantry staples. Some governments are moving to secure domestic food supplies during the conoravirus pandemic.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, War on the Rocks

As people around the world fall ill, global markets convulse, and supply chains collapse, COVID-19 may also reorder international politics as we know it. No analyst can know when this crisis will end, much less divine the world we will meet at its conclusion. But as scholars have begun to note, it is plausible that China will emerge from the wreckage as more of a global leader than it began. International orders — the...

James Walker, New Statesman

The landlocked European country has more coronavirus cases per capita than Italy and one of the highest infection rates in the world.

P. Tamma & J. Hanka Vela, Pol/

Governments balance soaring death tolls against potential economic collapse.