3

Kevin Rudd, “The world after covid-19,” The Economist, April 15, 2020, www.economist.com/open-future/2020/04/15/by-invitationkevin-rudd-on-america-china-and-saving-the-who

is unlikely that overseas legal initiatives will ever succeed, they made many people in china nervous. to divert attention, the chinese government allowed its foreign ministry spokesperson to falsely claim that the us Army developed covid-19 and used it against china. It soon had to back away from this reprehensible claim.

these actions underscored the lack of confidence of a regime that saw itself as besieged, vulnerable and fragile. china’s propaganda offensive aimed to whitewash its initial missteps by depicting Beijing as a heroic leader in the global struggle against the pandemic.

China-us rivalry in the g-zero world

Although trump failed to assert us global leadership, America is still far from a “suez moment” — the British intervention in the 1956 suez canal crisis that marked the last gasp of an empire being

While the world is exposed to America as an incoherent and erratic global power, Beijing has not demonstrated any more leadership than Washington in harnessing multilateral institutions for pandemic management.

A new world has arrived that is marked by a global leadership vacuum — G-zero for short — in which neither the US nor China can take on a role that people can trust and count on.

replaced by the united states. the us at the time had surpassed the uk on every diplomatic, economic and military metric a generation before the suez crisis. china’s rise is impressive, but china is far from dislodging the us in terms of per capita GDP, military and technological power.4

In the good old days, America would have teamed up with its allies and global institutions to manage the pandemic. But the us under trump’s “America first” policy in effect abandoned its global leadership. While the us was short of medical supplies during the pandemic, the trump administration increased tariffs on chinese medical products before the pandemic. Higher prices on imported equipment resulted in lower purchases and depleted inventories, including medical supplies in advance of the crisis.

After the inaction allowed the virus to spread inside its borders, the trump administration pivoted from denying the crisis existed to blaming it on foreigners to shift blame from a negligent president and his own indifference and incompetence onto china and the WHO. In the meantime, the trump administration poisoned American relationships with almost every historical us ally, to the point where it is doubtful these relationships could still meaningfully be described as alliances at all and thus pushing many of them in china’s direction. the world was astonished to watch President trump’s bizarre suggestion that disinfectant and ultraviolet light could possibly be used to treat covid-19.

While the world is exposed to America as an incoherent and erratic global power, Beijing has not demonstrated any more leadership than Washington in harnessing multilateral institutions for pandemic management. A new world has arrived that is marked by a global leadership vacuum — G-zero for short — in which neither the us nor china can take on a role that people can trust and count on.

the rivalry between the us and china in the G-zero world not only eviscerated international co-operation to fight the pandemic but also led the complex web of national and global institutions established to deal with global pandemics to malfunction. despite the evident threat, the un security council failed to pass a resolution to declare covid-19 an international security issue. such a designation would carry immediate symbolic and practical weight, signaling that the un was determined to deploy the entire multilateral arsenal against the pandemic. It would also carry the binding force of international law.

the un security council has a track record in responding to pandemics under us leadership. It passed Resolution 1308 on HIV/AIDS in Africa in July 2000, transforming a public health concern into a matter of international security by recognizing the importance of a co-ordinated international response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Its actions helped establish the Global fund for Aids, tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002. the security council also passed Resolution 2177 in september 2014, designating the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a “threat to international peace and security.” the resolution empowered the un secretary General to create the un Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, the first un emergency mission directed at a public health crisis.

confronting a public health threat that dwarfs any pandemic since the Great Influenza of 1918, however, sino-us infighting prevented the security council from issuing a resolution or even a declaration. china held the rotating presidency of the security council in March and insisted that involvement in covid-19 was unwarranted mission creep and an intrusion into the sovereign affairs of un member states. china’s un envoy explained that this “public health” matter did not fall within the security council’s “geopolitical” ambit.