The world is starkly divided – and it was long before the coronavirus pandemic. Over the past half-century, the global economic system has left developing countries in the doldrums, with high levels of debt, hyper-inequality, unequal access to resources and power. All of this has been compounded by the realities of dealing with climate breakdown and more regular health pandemics, which disproportionately impact the poorest and least prepared.

Populations in the Global South have been living with pandemics for decades. This meant that, when it came to the coronavirus, in many cases, their reactions were quicker, more forceful and more robust than those of states in the Global North. Many realise that they have far more to lose. As Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, recently wrote in the Financial Times, these countries are poised to bear the brunt of the impact of the spread of Covid-19.

The failure of policy-makers in the rich economies to recognise their complicity in the social and economic effects of this pandemic is exacerbating these pre-existing vulnerabilities. The lack of attention to the plight of these countries – in part due to the xenophobic nationalism so well expressed by Trump and Johnson – will only further destabilise, for good or ill, the multilateral system.

When countries do not have the funds to meet their debt obligations, they are often unable to meet the medical, education and food production needs of their populations. The economic system that works so well for major multinationals cannot hold in these circumstances without placing further pressure on the most vulnerable people. The generous response to the crisis undertaken by advanced economies, which are pulling out all the stops of fiscal and monetary policy, is a luxury developing countries cannot afford.

Recently, a group of 150 economists pointed out the impending economic catastrophe already being faced by those countries with high levels of indebtedness and limited fiscal and policy autonomy. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have responded by pleading with creditors to be merciful. Meanwhile, the Trump-appointed World Bank President has offered yet more austerity, structural adjustment and market deregulation in exchange for any lending.

Developing countries just can’t seem to catch a break. Even before the crisis, while advanced economies were seemingly experiencing secular stagnation – a euphemism for low growth – many developing countries were already in freefall due to successive natural disasters, low commodity prices and rising debt. Add to this the oil price war that is being waged by Saudi Arabia, and the world’s poorest countries are faced with the perfect cocktail for disaster.

It is unlikely that the current circumstances will lead to a major systemic change in the nature of the capitalist system. Unsustainable increases in debt are what drive the economy – with rich countries and their transnational minions being the major beneficiaries – but its exponential growth is an insufficient condition for the system to collapse. Instead, we are likely to see a few debt write-offs by multilateral lenders, as evidence of their supposed altruism, only for the debt clock to be restarted afterwards.

Calls for internationalism – or perhaps what commentators mean is multilateralism – in an already broken system have often served established economic interests. Many within the international financial institutions simply want to return  to a point in history when we did not have Trump or Brexit, and multilateralism ‘worked.’ The foundations of this system, however, have always been based on a refusal to acknowledge the aspirations of developing countries to be treated as equal.

On a political level, there are two possible paths that the present crisis may take in the developing world. The first, and more likely, is that people will continue to rally around their leaders, no matter how bad the situation becomes, and praise them for taking swift action. One of the consequences of neoliberalism in many developing countries has, ironically, been a growing reliance on the state, in the context of the fragmentation of community and other pre-existing networks of solidarity.

While many leaders in the past – like Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Michael Manley, Maurice Bishop, and Eric Williams and Leopold Senghor – improved lives after the massive social fallout of colonialism, post-colonial health systems in the Global South were abysmal and became progressively worse. The state of healthcare in these countries will become a huge impediment to fighting the disease as more bodies pile up, which is why countries in the South took such stringent pre-emptive steps by closing borders and instating travel bans. Even so, authoritarian leaders will likely be seen as saviours for meeting the challenge of Covid-19.

The second, more promising but somewhat idealistic, scenario would be the emergence of new networks of solidarity amongst working people in the Global South in the wake of this crisis. One factor explaining the successes of more progressive leaders like Manley and Bishop is that social movements were behind many of their popular decisions. They were not insulated from criticism as are current leaders, even during a pandemic. The solidarities that emerged among working class people after independence today seem like a far-off dream. New social movements are needed more than ever – both to allow developing countries to survive this crisis, and to create new systems that can meet future challenges on the other side.