Great power politics is back with a twist

This year made it clear that the US-China strategic competition is not merely the figment of Donald Trump's imagination

It has become a cliché to suggest that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a transformative impact on global politics. Indeed, for a health issue to be at the centre of international political cross-currents is a rare development, though pandemics in the past too have changed the global calculus to a considerable degree. For all the debate on the changing nature of security for the last several decades, it took the onslaught of Covid-19 to make the world realise that the so-called non-traditional security issues are actually rather traditional. And as the world continues to grapple with a health crisis that