In a conversation with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week, former New Zealand Prime Minister and former head of the United Nations Development Programme1 Helen Clark said that, at the multilateral level, the world has not risen to the challenge of Covid-19. She noted that, in 2014, the UN Security Council declared a public health emergency with respect to Ebola, but this time, the Security Council has done nothing. As to why, she says it relates to the toxic nature of international politics.
Which is true. But it seems to me the reason is more specific than that. While Donald Trump does not believe in multilateral organizations and is, in my opinion, a terrible president in terms of foreign relations,2 the biggest reason there has been no coordinated international action on Covid-19 is simple. It’s China. It appears China screwed up big time on Covid-19. The best information is that Covid-19 started in Wuhan, China. But for some reason China did not get on top of it right away (or at least didn’t do enough). There are a number of possible reasons (and there needs to be an investigation), but regardless of the reason(s), at this point it looks like China had a chance to stop or contain this virus before it spread. But it didn’t, and now it’s killing people all over the world.3 And the problem with a coordinated international response, from China’s part of view, is that part of such a response would be an investigation that would make China’s failings more difficult to hide.
Recent Comments