For political scientist and Harvard professor Stephen Walt, it was unfortunate to have "a lot of the wrong leaders in a lotta the wrong places at exactly the wrong time" which prevented for instance the US and China from coordinating a more effective global response to the pandemic.
COVID also ran counter to the expectation that crises make governments take control. They did, but Walt says there was very strong pushback from citizens on things like lockdowns and masks — and that undermines the state's ability to respond.
We've also learned, he adds, how hard it is for many people to make short-term individual sacrifices in order to fix long-term problems.
Watch the rest of Ian Bremmer's conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Stephen Walt on this episode of GZERO World: Hope as major crises intersect
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