SO preoccupied are we with the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic, that it’s all too easy to overlook the fact that the world is undergoing profound change in other ways too.

“I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded, autocracy or democracy, because that is what is at stake,” was how US President Joe Biden recently summed up what is rapidly becoming the other pressing issue of our times.

The rarefied world of geopolitics might seem far removed from our everyday lives, but as history has repeatedly shown, be it through trade, mass unemployment, a global pandemic, climate change or war, every so often its enormous impact touches all of us.

The US president certainly sees it unfolding that way and if remarks by his counterparts in Beijing, Moscow, and elsewhere lately are anything to go by then the “battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” as Mr Biden described it, is well and truly underway.

Critics of Mr Biden, of course, point out that America is in no position for crowing or lecturing about democracy right now. “Heal thyself first,” a headline in The New York Times echoed sceptics as saying the other day.

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Few too would deny that American has been in bad shape of late with racism, a widening wealth gap and minor insurrection on its streets all signs of a nation’s exalted democracy on the back foot.

Supporters of Mr Biden would argue back that the worst manifestations of these were only exacerbated by the presence of the previous Trump administration and that the checks and balances of the US democratic process won through in the end.

The current president is only trying to put things right Mr Biden’s supporters counter, even if it’s generally recognised that such problems have blighted America long before he, Mr Trump or indeed Mr Obama stepped into the Oval Office.

On a foreign policy level too Mr Biden’s critics insist that his latest warnings of a growing struggle between democracies and their opponents is framed in an outdated Cold War language and perspective that bears little relevance to current power relations between the likes of the US, China, and Russia.

But growing evidence would suggest that Mr Biden has a point, for only the most blinkered could fail to see that the world is increasingly dividing into distinct if not purely ideological camps, and a race is already underway on both sides of this emerging divide to recruit allies and supporters.

Over the past few weeks alone a series of high-level meetings and the telling remarks made at them by US, Chinese and Russian leaders have all highlighted the emerging battle lines and parameters of a new world order.

First, there was that confrontational encounter in Alaska in which both Chinese and US representatives publicly rebuked each other. Then we had the meeting between the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers, where both pulled no punches over Western meddling and sanctions, and in the wake of which Russian President Vladimir Putin then denounced America in a national broadcast as racist and genocidal.

Adding further to the mood of global division China and Iran got together, promising economic cooperation to enable Iran to survive the economic sanctions currently in place over its nuclear ambitions.

Beijing’s man too, dropped off among some of Washington’s traditional allies in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Meanwhile team Moscow’s chiefs and the new military dictators of Myanmar, sat down cosily around the same time that General Min Aung Hlaing’s Tatmadaw forces were shooting dead hundreds of pro-democracy protesters on the country’s streets.

Not to be outdone, somewhere amid all this we had Boris Johnson of course reiterating his claim for ‘Global Britain’s’ place and deepening an alliance with the UK’s friends in the Indo-Pacific to keep tabs on growing Chinese assertiveness.

Anyone in doubt as to Beijing’s intention to challenge a US led international order ostensibly guided by principles of democracy, respect for human rights and adherence to rule of law, need only have listened to the words of China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi.

Alongside his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, he made clear that such a system, “does not represent the will of the international community.”

That senior Russian and Chinese diplomats were standing shoulder to shoulder when this unequivocal announcement was made has only left Mr Biden’s administration twitching even more nervously.

It’s also made the US president even more determined to build a counter consensus and political bloc of democratic nations that Mr Biden and others now see as locked in an ideological competition with China, Russia, and other totalitarian states for global influence.

So, in a world already reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic how worried should we be about all of this?

Writing recently in the influential magazine Foreign Affairs, Richard N Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations and Charles A Kaplan, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, warned how “history makes clear that such periods of tumultuous change come with great peril... indeed, great-power contests over hierarchy and ideology regularly lead to major wars.”

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Averting this say the two veteran foreign affairs analysts, “requires acknowledging that the Western-led liberal order that emerged after World War II cannot anchor global stability in the twenty-first century,” and therefore there is a pressing need to find a viable and effective way forward before the situation worsens.

Preventing catastrophe, they say could be brought about by the creation of a “new concert of global powers,” that would have six members: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States.

The authors also suggest that democracies and non-democracies would have equal standing and perform as a consultative, rather that decision-making body, addressing emerging crises.

In short, it would act as a steering group – not a new UN – to shape new rules and build support for collective initiatives, in the process hopefully helping halt any drift towards a diplomatic silo mentality on either side of the current widening and increasingly acrimonious divide.

It’s a bold thought and there’s no doubt that new thinking is badly needed. For right now there is something distinctly old school about the global squaring off between democracy and autocracy, and history tells us where that can so easily and dangerously lead.

David Pratt is contributing foreign editor

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