Reinscribing global hierarchies: COVID-19, racial capitalism and the liberal international order

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our normal existence in many ways. Most of us were forced into drastic changes to our everyday behaviour; the nature of our social interactions changed; much of both global and local trade and commerce temporarily ground to a halt; supply chains were disrupted; for a time international travel trickled to a near standstill, and domestic political landscapes were reshaped by the responses (or lack of response) of governments to the outbreak. Among scholars of International Relations (IR), one debate around the effects of the pandemic centred on whether it was a possible point of rupture and to what extent it might alter the so-called liberal international order (LIO). For some, the pandemic has hastened an already apparent crumbling of the LIO by undermining international organizations, challenging the nation-state, supposedly causing normally liberal states to behave illiberally, and, not least, reorienting the global economy.1 Yet others think the pandemic has done little to alter the distribution of power in the international order,2 has merely illuminated pre-existing processes and dynamics linked to globalization,3 or has shed light on aspects of the LIO that are normally hidden from view, such as the sacrifices made in the sustenance of the LIO itself.