T oward a new world order and ideas of mass destruction

Preparation to draw the roadmap for the post‐pandemic world has already begun. Different power centers, leading research institutes, universities, and media houses have been organizing seminars and conferences and sponsoring research studies on the power and resourcefulness of the new world order to meet the challenges of the arriving future. In this context, the traditional approach focuses on the future of US‐China relations after COVID‐19 and its impact on the world at large. However, the world has undergone a sea change. Everything has been unsettled by COVID‐19. The credibility of the great powers has suffered enormously from their inability to save the world from capitulation. Worse still, for the global population of over 7 billion, the world virtually became a global prison. It is therefore likely that the post‐pandemic world order will be significantly different from the past world orders, and that a number of the settled rules of the game will be challenged. Perhaps the time has arrived to study and discuss the current and emerging threats, keeping in view the deadly consequences of ignoring the ideas of mass destruction any longer—and to devise strategies to diminish their role in the making and unmaking of world orders. It seems that the role of peace educators and scholars in the post‐pandemic period will be more significant than ever before, and the arriving world order will immensely benefit from new knowledge, new ideas, and new perspectives that they offer.