Last January, my fellow Elders Mary Robinson and Ban Ki-moon participated in the unveiling of the Doomsday Clock, the annual indicator of global catastrophic risk published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In 2020, the clock’s hands moved closer to “midnight” than they have ever been – just 100 seconds away – and they will remain there in 2021.
In his inaugural address, United States (US) President Joe Biden declared that Americans “will be judged” for how they “resolve the cascading crises of our era.” He expressed confidence that the country would “rise to the occasion,” and pledged that the US would lead “not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.” The contrast with President Donald Trump’s divisive, isolationist rhetoric could not be sharper.
Seen from Europe, Asia, or even North America, Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, is as remote as can be.
Donald Trump has left the White House, but Trumpism has not left United States (US) politics. With Joe Biden as America’s president, the world hopes that the US will shift away from Trump’s disruptive confrontational approach toward China relations and embark on a path of pragmatic engagement. At stake is whether this crucial bilateral relationship serves to strengthen or shatter the global order.
America and China should cooperate in space. Although the United States (US) can no longer take its extra-terrestrial dominance for granted, it remains the leading player, while China’s space capabilities are growing fast. Most important, both countries, along with the rest of the world, would benefit from a set of clear rules governing the exploration and commercialisation of space.China made history in 2019 by becoming the first country to land a probe on the far side of the Moon.
With the reimposition of the movement control order (MCO 2.0) in Malaysia which impacts the economy – though less severe compared to MCO 1.0 – we may be witnessing the beginning of a housing loans crisis in the making. This near-apocalyptic scenario may not sound palatable for banking stocks and could well be just hypothetical.
This past year COVID-19 has placed Southeast Asia on the brink of a socio-economic crisis, with 218 million informal workers’ livelihoods at risk and as many as 38 million people pushed into poverty. The crisis, coupled with typhoons that devastated countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, risks rolling back a generation of progress in the fight against hunger. More than 64 million people in Southeast Asia were undernourished in 2019.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused prolonged socio-economic disruptions in the ASEAN region, exposing fundamental weaknesses and vulnerabilities in various sectors.
When the time comes to evaluate United States (US) President Joe Biden’s international legacy, one variable will be enormously significant: the relationship that his administration forges with China.
In celebrating the liberation from Donald Trump’s misrule, we must not forget that Trump’s presidency embodied the raw politics of United States (US) white supremacy. He often spoke like a segregationist Southern governor of the 1960s, and, after losing the 2020 election, like a secessionist senator on the eve of the Civil War.
On 6 January, when a mob of United States (US) President Donald Trump’s supporters breached the Capitol with shocking ease, the world’s already-low expectations of the US plummeted. And yet, when it comes to the global economy, there are immediate steps President-elect Joe Biden can take to boost the world’s – and especially developing economies’ – prospects. To be sure, the limits of US global leadership are significant.
The ongoing pandemic might have slowed down the advancement of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but not its coverage in the media. Pundits and scholars across the world have kept publishing opinion articles and analyses on a daily basis speculating about its demise, or its reboot.
