Coronavirus crisis shows cracks in the US governing system, analysts say
- The coronavirus outbreak has intensified the rivalry and magnified the structural differences between the US and China, Harvard professor Graham Allison says
China’s autocratic system has performed better in some aspects than America’s democracy so far in responding to the coronavirus pandemic, but it is too early to write off the United States despite its many early missteps, analysts at a China Institute event said.
“In general, democracies do not do very well in the first innings,” said Graham Allison, a government professor at Harvard University and author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
“I subscribe to the proposition that the world’s most successful investor Warren Buffett frequently repeats,” he added. “He says nobody ever made money in the long run selling the US short.”
Allison’s book has gained widespread attention with its argument that historically when a rising power like China tries to displace an established power like the US, it almost always results in war.
The coronavirus crisis has intensified that uneasy rivalry, Allison said, and magnified the structural differences. Even as China has bolstered its government talent and capabilities in recent decades as it has become more wealthy, the US has actively reduced the scope and size of federal agencies.