Until recently, outbreaks of infectious disease were a recurring scourge of civilization. Great-power competition, authoritarian alternatives to democracy—these too, not long ago, were presumed to have been safely consigned to the ash heap of history. Yet in geopolitics, as in biology, it turns out that mankind remains susceptible to new strains of old maladies. If pandemic disease and geopolitical rivalry have been two of humanity’s recurring afflictions over the centuries, great-power war completes the trifecta. Yet just as the evidence suggested a pandemic would strike sooner or later, there are ominous signs of a great-power conflagration becoming more probable.

Source: Wall Street Journal August 31, 2020 23:15 UTC