Liberalism and the Covid-۱۹ pandemic in international relations: In praise of a fear

Fear has been a long-standing preoccupation with liberal thinking in international relations. The fear of ‘others’ has led liberalism to provide plans in reducing fear among human beings and, therefore, a reduction in wars among them. In this sense, the threats to international peace frighten one group of people over another. Accordingly, when a source of fear threatens all the people, it can bring different human societies together in order to come up against the common source of fear. Liberalism thinkers consider the state of anarchy as the leading cause of fear in which human life is controlled by ‘supreme evil,’ i.e., being destroyed by others. Therefore, the essential goal of a state is to save its citizens from such evil. In this regard, by applying the principles of liberalism as the theoretical framework of the research, it is discussed that the Covid-۱۹ pandemic can be considered a common source of threat to all human societies, in which the states will be forced to cooperate together to counter it. In the present study, borrowing from liberalism’s concept of fear, we take benefit of the Covid-۱۹ pandemic as a lens to conceptualize fear as a factor of international cooperation. Concerning this, the main question is how the fear of the Covid-۱۹ pandemic can motivate different societies to make contracts in the face of this worldwide fear. In the research hypothesis, by using the descriptive-analytical method, the similarities between the liberal assumptions of fear and the fear of the Covid-۱۹ pandemic are highlighted. In this respect, it is argued that as, according to Judith Shklar, some degree of fear is inevitable in societies, and each system requires minimum levels of fear in order to motivate compliance; it seems a degree of common fear at the international level is also a matter of necessity for more cooperation between the international actors in the current era.

Keywords:

cooperation , Covid-۱۹ Pandemic , fear , international relations , liberalism