The Biopolitics of COVID-19: Repercussions for International Relations

This chapter seeks to look at the most important trends in international relations and global affairs spurred by the coronavirus crisis, and its long-term repercussions. In this analysis the author adapts the current biopolitical scholarship to such disciplines as security studies, foreign policy analysis, international relations and regional studies, and world politics and globalization. The chapter starts with discussing the biopolitics of the coronavirus crisis from a security perspective that requires a juxtaposition of COVID-19 emergency with some other securitized biopolitical events and experiences such as the war on terror and the refugee crisis. When it comes to the global level, the analysis includes the new roles of global organizations and their contribution to the fight against COVID-19. Another perspective is grounded in the discussions on the idea of “the international” and the reverberations of COVID-19 for the entire system of inter-state/inter-governmental/trans-national relations, including its regional dimensions. From the viewpoint of national foreign policies, the pandemic can be viewed as a global calamity producing new forms of diplomatic activity that significantly re-actualize and expand the concepts of biodiplomacy and health diplomacy.