This will change everything. When in early 2020 the coronavirus spread around the world, and one state after the other succumbed and ordered society and the economy into lockdown, this was understandably the first reaction of many. For the middle classes in the affluent countries of the world, COVID-19 was the greatest disruption of their existence since the Second World War. Confined to my Brussels apartment with my husband, without visitors, and resolved to avoid online meetings as much as possible, I suddenly had a lot of writing time – indeed, almost nothing but writing time. But I too wondered for a moment whether the book project about grand strategy and the great powers that had been gestating in my mind for a few years still made sense. Soon enough, though, I concluded that in the realm of international politics, the relations between states, COVID-19 might not actually change all that much, precisely because it was a worldwide disaster. And so I sat down to write.

Had the coronavirus struck some great powers but not the others, it could have been a gamechanger, creating an opportunity for the powers that escaped to increase their wealth and influence at the expense of the others. But there was no escape. The coronavirus caused a symmetric crisis: it hit everybody. How hard depended in the first instance on the power of each and every state: the resilience of its health infrastructure, the speed and resolve of its crisis response, the scale of its economic recovery package. National leaders who delayed, putting up a show of insouciance or omnipotence, put their countries at risk. The later they acted, the more people died, the greater the economic and societal disruption, and the deeper the depths from which to recover. Many weak states anyhow have but limited capacity to protect their citizens, even in normal times. The longer-term consequences of the corona crisis obviously are asymmetrical, therefore – but only because the poor (people and states) end up even poorer while the rich hold their own.

The great powers of the early 21st century – the United States, China, Russia and the European Union – can mobilise more resources than anyone else. The coronavirus could not bring down a great power that responded adequately; only their own domestic mistakes could. All four initially mismanaged the crisis.