The novel coronavirus pandemic presents severe stress to a world already torn by existing geopolitical tension and accustomed to multi-country production networks. The outbreak took place in the midst of simmering trade tensions between China and the United States (US) and the still unresolved dispute in the South China Sea. Countries, developed and developing alike, also enacted deficit spending to deal with the public health crisis and the economic aftereffects, catapulting their respective debt load. For its part, Indonesia relaxed its legal limit on annual fiscal deficit of 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by spending an extra IDR 405.1 trillion in the 2020 budget, increasing it to 5.07 percent of GDP. Will countries seize this opportunity to resolve longstanding disputes: territorial and trade alike? Will nations rise to the occasion to showcase solidarity, especially towards the least-developed ones? Will the world engineer globalization to be pandemic-proof the next time it strikes?