Eight weeks and counting, at the time of writing - and the world seems no less complex, no less fractured and infinitely less certain than it did when we went into lockdown in late March. Commenting in this column at intervals of a month means that events and circumstances conflate to generate broader-brush outcomes: commenting on individual daily events, incremental statistics or ephemeral political posturing is neither possible for this magazine. nor germane to its raison d'etre. But that very reason for being -the fundamental objectives of why this magazine exists to serve the defence and security communities - may be changing. That will not necessarily come as a surprise to readers. It may, however, have an effect on them as well as on this organ's parent company. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed fracture lines in the body politic, weaknesses in social structures, immaturity in public expectations and fundamentally flawed thinking. Certainties of just two months ago have been swept away by the attitudes, aspirations and actions of individuals of whom we have the right to expect better. Established norms and expectations of predictable behaviour have disappeared beneath tidal waves of personal insecurity, arrogance or self-denial. Who could have expected the governments of nations as diverse as the United States and Belarus, for example, to demonstrate the degree of similarity they have in their respective leaders' apparent treatment of the pandemic as a relatively unimportant passing event that would have little lasting effect - at least in the early days?
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