Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
There is never a good time for a pandemic but Covid-19 may have hit at the worst possible moment. In the decade before the virus, China had grown more dictatorial and assertive; populist nationalists held power in the United States, India, and Brazil; geopolitical tensions heightened—not just between China and the United States but also within the west; and the very notion of an objective truth was increasingly called into question. In Aftershocks, Colin Kahl and Tom Wright draw on interviews with officials from around the world to document how the world responded, or failed to respond, to a global crisis in an age of rivalry and nationalism. They shed new light on China’s lack of cooperation with the international community, how the Trump administration failed to rally an international coalition to deal with the pandemic, how Covid-19 brought the EU close to collapse, the role of central banks in averting a financial crisis, and the impact on the developing world. They also provide a pathway for how the world can prepare for the next pandemic.
There is never a good time for a pandemic but Covid-19 may have hit at the worst possible moment. In the decade before the virus, China had grown more dictatorial and assertive; populist nationalists held power in the United States, India, and Brazil; geopolitical tensions heightened—not just between China and the United States but also within the west; and the very notion of an objective truth was increasingly called into question. In Aftershocks, Colin Kahl and Tom Wright draw on interviews with officials from around the world to document how the world responded, or failed to respond, to a global crisis in an age of rivalry and nationalism. They shed new light on China’s lack of cooperation with the international community, how the Trump administration failed to rally an international coalition to deal with the pandemic, how Covid-19 brought the EU close to collapse, the role of central banks in averting a financial crisis, and the impact on the developing world. They also provide a pathway for how the world can prepare for the next pandemic.
