Italy's coronavirus outbreak. Italy is the European country hardest hit by COVID-19. Giovanna De Maio explains why the situation will be a major stress test for Europe and Federica Saini Fasanotti outlines several lessons learned so far.
The effect on China-Japan relations. "The coronavirus has done what few observers thought possible: quell generations of China-Japan antagonism. And for the immediate future, both countries are now bound together in the same public health crisis," write Cheng Li and Ryan McElveen.
COVID-19 may rewrite the Shinzo Abe era in Japan. The coronavirus crisis stands to deal a severe blow to the Japanese economy and has raised significant questions about the government's ability to deal with a pandemic, Mireya Solís argues.
The virus is exposing populism's limits. "Over the past decade, the world has grown more authoritarian, nationalistic, xenophobic, unilateralist, anti-establishment, and anti-expertise. The current state of politics and geopolitics has exacerbated, not stabilized, the crisis," Thomas Wright and Kurt Campbell write.
What the crisis means for international relations. While the pandemic could strengthen nationalism and isolationism, it also has the potential to spur a new wave of international cooperation, Kemal Derviş and Sebastian Strauss contend.
To learn more about what the coronavirus crisis means for key countries and sectors, see this roundup of commentary from Brookings Foreign Policy experts.