Geographical Patterns and Geo-Economic Reasoning of the Pandemic Consequences: Old Geopolitical “Games” in the Post-COVID Global Order

Abstract

The research provides a two-type analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global world order after 2020. The first dimension of analysis is oriented towards geopolitical parameters, while the second is based on the geo-economic consequences of the pandemic crisis. The authors identified and classified three types of geopolitical games in the international community: The game of non-movement and labeling;the game of vaccine racing and the game of securitization. Furthermore, the goal is to identify potential consequences for the economy of certain countries, but also the postulates of international political economy due to the contemporary geographical, political and economic patterns of behavior in a global pandemic crisis. The main thesis is aimed at confirming predictable and common patterns of behavior that are accompanied by tested mechanisms of attempts to exercise power in the international community (classical geopolitical power games in the new conditions). The aim of this paper is to develop scenarios of potential changes in power relations at the global level and to analyse the consequences with regard to the outcomes of the three mentioned games. Scenario analysis is a common geopolitical qualitative method most commonly used to assess risk in different spheres of society. Large corporations are using it most often in calculating financial fluctuations in business processes and decision-making, but it also appears in a number of projections in industrial-technological processes and in American institutes. The methodology is similar in the cases of financial scenario analysis, while in other social sciences (primarily geopolitics and security studies) it is about discovering potential and alternative worlds. In geopolitics, it serves to project potential developments in the global environment with regard to the creation of new world orders, and phenomena that can change the predicted outcomes of reality. While analyses of new world orders can also be attributed to methods of prediction in international relations;in contrast, scenario analyses are more than forecasts of developments based on past trends. They primarily include considerations of unpredictable factors or reversals in international relations, where a global pandemic is certainly one of them. © 2021 Institut za društvena istraživanja u Zagrebu – Institute for Social Research in Zagreb Sva prava pridržana – All rights reserved.