Announced to fanfare last December, the government’s sweeping review of security, defence and foreign policy was put on hold in April – for the obvious reason that Covid-19 changes everything. In the meantime, the People’s Republic of China has “changed everything” all over again, by ripping up Hong Kong’s legal freedoms.
The US has responded with a fundamental re-evaluation of its relationship with China, abandoning the assumption that there is mutual interest in its current development path and declaring itself to be “in a strategic competition” with Beijing. Meanwhile, numerous other wars and conflicts have flourished during the pandemic: the India-China border clash; the proxy war being waged between France and Turkey in Libya; and the step change in militia activity in the US, which is eroding the federal government’s monopoly on the use of armed force.
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