Коронавірус і безпекове середовище: спроба неупередженого аналізу

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, humanity was faced with an unprecedented threat – the massive spread of extremely virulent coronavirus disease with the international designation “COVID-19”. The World Health Organization quickly recognized the epidemiological situation as a pandemic. Although a pandemic was contemplated by almost every country, not one of them was ready for it. Almost the only means of counteraction was to reduce the transit movements of people and goods, which immediately led to an economic decline. Therefore, there is a question of anticipating the possible consequences of the impact of a pandemic on changing key conditions of security environment. Such a prediction can be tried to be formed on the basis of a comparative analysis of the current situation with a hypothetical situation, which was analyzed by the Rockefeller Foundation back in 2010. The Fund considered four scenarios obtained by combining two critical uncertainties: the level of political and economic integration and the ability of society for adaptation. As a result of a comparative analysis, it was established that the current situation has the greatest number of similar elements with the scenario of total blocking, which involves strengthening the powers of governments, increasing restrictions on people, controlling them, and increasing attention to security issues. The projection of this scenario on the security environment allows us to conclude that in the future we can expect the US, China, the Russian Federation and the EU to retain their ability to influence international relations, to build their own zones of influence, to increase the powers' attention to economic growth, and also to slightly reduce the number and intensity of military conflicts.