Global Leadership in the 21st Century

• Main Author: Alexander Likhotal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Risk Institute, Trieste- Geneva 2020-07-01
• Series: Cadmus
• Online Access: http://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-4/issue-2-part-2/global-leadership-21st-century

This generation has grown in the belief that history has ended before them, that now we live in an era of comfort and stability. Indeed, the post-Cold War context has given birth to beliefs that global solutions could be agreed upon and implemented to tackle global challenges. This proved to be an illusion. Awakening from a happy slumber to face reality was bitter. The COVID-19 crisis shock reminds us that we live in history, that the world is continuously morphing. The pandemic and its aftermath is not so much a turning point but a catalyst and activator that brutally reveals and intensifies tendencies in the transformation of the world that arrived long before the current crisis. Change and leadership are absolutely inseparable. However, it is exactly at this time of rapid change that there is an overall feeling of political leadership deficit. What shall we expect in the post-coronavirus world? Does leadership still matter? And if yes, what kind of leadership? If we want to cure the disease rather than its symptoms, it is time to start thinking in terms of synergies and opportunities, outside the usual multiple-choice box of threats and priorities. Only new “effective multilateralism” can re-establish trust, based not on traditional states’ balance of power and interests but on globally shared risks and concerns of communities. The real transformational leadership required today lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be!