As Winston Churchill once observed, too many people who ‘stumble over the truth’ will ‘pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened’. But in the case of Covid-19, the world has been confronted with uncomfortable facts that are impossible to ignore. Like the 2008 financial crash and the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, the pandemic has fully exposed a deep vulnerability to systemic threats.

The ultimate role of the state—the very meaning of sovereignty—is to provide its citizens with adequate protection from existential risk. Yet globalisation appears to have undermined the modern state’s ability to cope with low-probability, high impact scenarios. Just as September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States forced people to rethink security, the Covid-19 crisis compels us to take a fresh look at how we manage interdependence.

It is tempting to ask whether this crisis will be resolved more effectively by nationalism or through international coordination. But that is the wrong question. The real issue is whether interdependence can be compatible with and complement the continued existence of nation-states. In today’s political environment, lectures about the need to maintain open markets and borders simply will not cut it. As soon as the coronavirus was recognised as a global threat, most national leaders’ first instinct was to close their borders. Calls for international coordination through the G20 were an afterthought.

And yet, while the initial spread of the virus owes much to interdependence, the health crisis it has created within individual countries will not admit of nationalist or autarkic solutions. Once Covid-19 is being transmitted within communities, closing borders will do nothing. In the world wrought by the disease, Jean-Paul Sartre is absolutely correct: ‘Hell is other people’.

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has struck an international order that was already in crisis. It has been obvious since at least 2008 that, contrary to what was long claimed, not everyone wins from globalisation. A more open and interconnected world is conducive to strong economic growth and prosperity, but also to rising inequality and ecological destruction. The freer movement of people has provided new opportunities for millions, but it also has increased the upward pressure on public services and downward pressure on wages in host countries, while fueling a brain drain from the places left behind.

Long before the pandemic, these trends had provoked a backlash, particularly in developed countries, where populist parties and leaders have seized the political agenda from the mainstream parties that defended the post-war liberal international order. Most dramatically, under President Donald Trump, the United States has gone from leading the international order to dismantling it, on the claim that US allies and rivals such as China have been exploiting America for their own gain.

Against this background, it is inevitable that the current crisis will remake globalisation one way or another. But how?

The pandemic represents an opportunity for a number of different political movements, from environmentalists who have long demanded more sustainable development to those who are worried about inequality or the fragility of global supply chains.

For their part, Europeans should use the occasion to rethink their notion of sovereignty. The challenge is to figure out how European integration itself could serve as a backstop for national sovereignty, rather than posing a threat to it. As this and recent previous crises have shown, European governments must be allowed to protect their citizens from the threats introduced by interdependence, be they environmental, cyber, contagious, migratory, or financial in nature.

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