From a historical perspective, the curbing of epidemics was the collateral effect of emerging European Modern states. The current COVID-19 pandemic reminds that. It supports the broad international tendency to strengthen state sovereignty, nationalism, and economic protectionism. Meanwhile, in recent decades health care systems around the world have been evolving toward deregulation, use of market mechanisms, and decrease of state interventions, and it was one of the most salient evidence that Modern state is being deconstructed. The current crisis puts forward the prospect that Modern comes back with the following social conflicts, interstate rivalry, and growing power inequality between the international system actors.

The global spread of coronavirus infection has given States the task of taking decisive measures to respond quickly and on a large scale to the challenge of existing management systems. China has demonstrated successful mobilization mechanisms to combat the negative effects of the pandemic: the necessary measures have been taken to inform the population and stop panic, control and prevent coronavirus, and mitigate the impact on the economy. However, the weak side was the inability to take priority measures in the face of uncertainty, which did not prevent the development of the epidemic at its initial stage. This provoked a search for those responsible among the Chinese leadership, becoming another source of tension in relations between China and the West. Despite the relative success of the measures taken, the situation in China itself remains tense: it faces challenges to prevent a re-outbreak of infection and to restore the economy in the face of information and economic pressure from the United States. In this context, the authors analyze the features of information support for measures taken in China to combat the spread of coronavirus infection and their impact on the domestic and foreign policy situation.

The United States of America was disproportionally severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The current crisis exposed significant flaws in the national health care system and provoked a serious socio-economic crisis. The health care scare overlaps with the ongoing presidential electoral campaign and the extreme political polarization of the country, leading to the politicization of discussions regarding the ways and means of resolving the health care crisis and complicating the process of decision making. The pandemic is also enhancing the autarchic tendencies in the US foreign policy and it’s the increasingly anti-Chinese orientation that became visible during Donald Trump’s White House tenure. Even under these circumstances, the American elites were able to negotiate several stabilization measures designed to deal with the medical and socio-economic aspects of the current crisis. Their willingness and ability to continue such collaboration in the future will have a direct bearing on the US socio-economic and political stability.

In early 2020, humanity has confronted with a pandemic challenge. The new coronavirus as an international threat has forced states to recognize that they cannot fulfill their principal constitutional obligation - to ensure the safety of their citizens. Coronavirus, as a global threat, despite its pre-industrial nature, is, in all respects, a distinctive challenge of postmodern society. The danger of coronavirus manifests itself non-linearly in time and space – first appeared in China, the virus flared up in other parts of the world, including the Apennines. In Europe, Italy has become an anti-leader in terms of the number of infected and victims. With scientists arguing about the causes of the outbreak of the virus on the Apennines, the null patient is yet to be found. However, the same reason gives rise to different consequences. For Italy, the pandemic had an impact on both national and foreign policies, including relations with the EU, Russia and China. The purpose of this article is to analyze the implications of the coronavirus pandemic for the Italian Republic at different levels – national, pan-European, and global.

This paper aims to illustrate the nature in which the global COVID-19 pandemic has affected the dynamics of the Syrian conflict and the strategies of external powers engaged in it. By emphasizing separate levels of analysis, at both the domestic level where COVID-19 affects the capabilities of involved actors and the international level where regional and global powers compete for their positions in Syria, it seeks to provide a holistic view of the immediate impact the pandemic has had within this particular geographic focus. The paper finds that COVID-19 and its various global consequences have facilitated efforts by Damascus to extend its influence into regions of Syria beyond its immediate control, as well as granting opportunities for Russia to further consolidate its reach within Syria relative to others. The humanitarian context generated by the COVID-19 crisis has also given new impetus to diplomatic efforts to normalize Damascus within the international community, and for external actors to normalize relations with them.

Saudi Arabia is one of the key countries in the Middle East and the Arab-Muslim world. The processes developing in this country, determined by both internal and external factors, are directly related to the development of the surrounding geopolitical space. In this regard, there arises the need to study the essence of such processes, their circumstances as well as the driving forces behind them. One of these factors is the epidemic of such diseases as A/ H1N1, MERS, and the coronavirus COVID-19. The author views this factor as an accelerator of socio-political transformations taking place in Saudi Arabia after 2009. These transformations were based on the experience of previous years already accumulated by the Saudi authorities. They took the form of implementing “national projects” aimed at restructuring the national education and health system. The results of the implementation of these projects were manifested in the country’s ever-wider opening to the outside world, consistent reduction of the influential religious establishment, and increasing role of the new “educated class,” which has been turned into a supporting pillar to the authorities. The government took on new forms of legitimation and won in the struggle for the minds of people, pushing the ulema away from influencing their political decision. The post-traditional Saudi society, as it was in the early 2000s, acquired features of modernity under the influence of the “educated class,” while Saudi Arabia itself began to be considered as an integral and a full-fledged element of the international community.

The coronavirus pandemic has become a test of States ‘ ability to respond to external challenges. The article assesses how quarantine measures are introduced and observed in different countries of the South Caucasus-from recommendations to the introduction of a state of emergency. It also examines the consequences these measures entail for the legitimacy of power, the structure of elites, and the quality of public administration in the region. From the analytical viewpoint, the South Caucasus represents an ideal model: different measures to combat the pandemic in these countries lead to different results. In general, the ideology of fighting coronavirus is based on isolationism and alarmism. Isolationism in the South Caucasus is part of a global trend, and in some cases, manifests itself as the result of Western normative influence. Alarmism is also a necessary factor in the fight against the virus: it was panic that became the basis for the rare consolidation of society around authorities in transit countries and mass approval of strict restrictions imposed by the national governments. Unlike previous crises of the twenty-first century, the pandemic creates a demand for the competence of the authorities and the willingness to implement political decisions at the expense of the comfort and economic interests of citizens. The peculiarity of the South Caucasus is that the demands for competence caused by the pandemic followed the desire of citizens to pressure governments to fight corruption, which was the main driver of the revolutions in Armenia and Georgia. Amidst the spread of the disease, the demand for sufficient work of state institutions has come to the fore. If Georgia’s relative success in fighting the pandemic goes on, this will be another indication for the rest of the region of how important it is for the state to be “institutionally sound”.

The coronavirus pandemic has a significant impact on socio-economic and political processes in Central Asia. The political specifics of the countries in the region affected the methods and approaches taken by the authorities of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan to prevent the spread of infection. The article compares these approaches: from declaring a state of emergency and ordering a curfew to suppressing information about the spread of the epidemic. The impact of the pandemic on the relations of the Central Asian countries with Russia and the prospects for the development of Eurasian integration projects is also considered.