Super-spreaders of political virus may snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

For all virtuous people, it is heart-wrenching to see the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus worldwide has surpassed 3 million and that more than 200,000 people have died. But for some, those sad statistics only serve as chips for their political gambles.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is one of them. While the virus is wreaking havoc in his country, which accounts for one-third of the world’s infections and one-fourth of the deaths, he has been unable to restrain himself from spreading political pathogens.

As the top diplomat of the country worst hit by the pandemic, Pompeo has not taken any concrete actions to promote international coordination and solidarity. Instead, he has left no stone unturned in his attempts to sow the seeds of division among countries, regardless of the disruption being caused to the global fight against the virus.

He brooks no space for science and facts, as in his view it is China — along with any parties which do not speak ill of it — that is threatening the world, not the virus; it is China that kills, not the virus; it is China that should be held accountable for the lost American lives, not his administration.

In doing so, Pompeo is doing nothing but trying to transform the State Department into an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency that he previously headed. It is a dangerous tendency. It risks transforming policymaking into populist witch hunting.

The performances he has staged around the pandemic are a continuation of his confessed approach while head of the CIA — “we lied, we cheated, we stole” — and even the current global public health crisis has not prompted him to change his ways.

Although he is a super-spreader of the political virus he is trying to infect the world with, he is not the only source of the infection. The leaked strategy document of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which urges Republicans to pass the buck to China, shows Pompeo, to some extent, represents a group of China-bashing US politicians who cannot find ways to release their strategic anxiety over China’s rise, except by stooping to new lows in their dirty games.

That the pandemic is likely to prey on the most vulnerable countries in Africa soon — the US suspending its payments to the World Health Organization will directly accelerate that process — should awaken them to the fact that we are all in the same boat. Without the bettering of the world situation, a turning point in one country may prove to be cause for false optimism. As such, time is fast running out for these China hawks to make the right choice between politics and humanity.

If they consider the situation well, they will realize that a behavior which they even deem right because of ingrained habit, if persisted with, will lead to ruin, while another that goes against the grain, if followed, will result in greater security and well-being.