The Big Picture

Although the arrest and hasty imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny triggered Russia’s biggest wave of protests in years, President Vladimir Putin’s regime appears to be in little danger for now. But a stagnant economy, mounting anger at high-level corruption, and restless political elites could sooner or later threaten Putin’s seemingly well-entrenched regime.

Calls by US President Joe Biden and others to “build back better” after the COVID-19 catastrophe have attracted widespread support, raising hopes of far-reaching changes in policymaking and business. But which new norms and concrete measures lie beyond leaders’ hortatory appeals, and who should implement them?

Global inequality has unexpectedly declined during the pandemic – not because poorer countries became richer, but because richer countries became poorer. Many emerging and developing economies remain as fragile as ever, and the nature of the current convergence potentially threatens their future growth prospects.

Rich-country governments, desperate to revive their economies, are pursuing vaccine nationalism and turning their backs on the developing world. But a healthy, peaceful, and prosperous Africa is in their interests, too, and can be achieved by implementing the vision and policies needed to boost the continent’s global standing and economic prospects.

Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic and engineering an economic recovery are only two of the challenges facing new US President Joe Biden. Amid deep social divisions and the continued threat of right-wing extremist violence, Biden must also try to re-establish democratic political norms and restore trust in American leadership at home and abroad.

US President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration may initially be too preoccupied with trying to calm America’s domestic turmoil to unite the world’s democracies in standing up to China. But, given European and Asian countries’ eagerness to strengthen their trade and investment ties with China, adhering to the Trump administration’s confrontational approach may be the right strategy.

US President Donald Trump’s single term in office is ending, as many suspected it would, in infamy. The storming and occupation of the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, just hours after the Democrats won control of the Senate, distilled the essence of Trump’s presidency: a cult of personality that has confirmed the Republican Party as an anti-democratic force.

Although there will be a temptation to forget this pandemic-ridden year as quickly as we can, the COVID-19 crisis holds useful lessons that must not be neglected. A major question for 2021 is which of the significant changes wrought in 2020 will prove to be temporary, and which deeper and longer-lasting.

The world received the blessings of cutting-edge science this holiday season with the record-fast development of effective COVID-19 vaccines that promise to end a pandemic that has so far killed more than 1.7 million people and caused the worst economic crisis in generations. But the rush by rich-country governments to secure enough doses for their own citizens threatens to prolong the agony for the developing world.

In the face of continued climate change, all countries need to join in efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and limit global warming. But which approach will best ensure effective collective action?

Few would dispute that US President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will face a daunting task in 2021 as it tries to engineer a sustainable post-pandemic recovery. And, as the months-long failure to enact a second COVID-19 relief package showed, a major factor underlying the challenge is the depth of disagreement about how much the federal government should spend and how. 

The steep economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will likely trigger a wave of defaults among highly indebted developing and emerging-market countries. An orderly international sovereign debt restructuring mechanism is arguably needed now more than ever – but will private creditors sign up?