5 May 2020, NIICE Commentary 4485
Dr Ramakrushna Pradhan
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, when the disease had affected almost 110 countries around the world. As on 5 May, the virus had spread in over 215 countries, areas and territories worldwide, infecting more than 3.4 million people, with 239740 confirmed deaths. The disease is claimed to have originated from the largest wet market of sea foods in Wuhan city of China. In the absence of any vaccine, the only preventive medication announced by the WHO is social distancing and self-quarantine.
Besides the loss of human life, the virus has had serious economic and political ramifications for countries and the international order. The failure of WHO in dealing with the crisis on time, the lack of leadership from the United Nations (UN), and the lack of transparency in information sharing on the part of China have raised serious doubts over the existence of international systems and organizations, and have exposed their insolent style of functioning. This reminds us that nation-states are the primary actors in global politics, contrary to the claims of the hyper globalists who say that states are redundant and international cooperation comes through groupings and forums. The state has always assumed the sole responsibility, whether in matters of imposing lockdowns, providing relief packages, taking necessary actions for prevention of the disease, quarantining of the infected, or in dispensing medical and other facilities to its people. In the absence of international organisations, world bodies, non-governmental organisations and human rights agencies, the state has once again proved to be the saviour of the people. In this light, the article attempts to look into the role of nation-states in a post-pandemic world.
The World Order
Every major transformation has unpredictable consequences for the world order. To quote Parag Khanna and Karan Khemka, “in chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes a small change that can have massive, and unpredictable consequences. An insect flaps its wings and weeks later causes a tornado.” To them, the Coronavirus pandemic is more like an earthquake, with aftershocks that will permanently reshape the world. One can argue here that it is likely for China to emerge as a superpower in the post-pandemic world and alter the already-emerging status quo.
Trust Deficit
Trust is the hallmark of relations among the nation-states, irrespective of its nature. Whatever may be the assertions of the United States and China on each other, both the powers have largely lost trust among the global community, and the trust deficit against Beijing is at its highest. This trust deficit is Chinese-made, especially since Beijing deliberately hide the information regarding human-to-human transmission of the disease, despite have known it well in advance. This can be verified from the statement of Dr. Li Wen Liang, who acted as the whistle-blower in the situation and whose death is now a matter of inquiry. The deceit of China can be further corroborated from its official statement issued on 31 December 2019, emphatically stating that the virus doesn’t transmit from person to person. The suspicion has been further exacerbated by China linking any research, statement or activity related to the Coronavirus with its National Security Protocol, causing a complete blackout of any information on the Coronavirus from China. It is also a matter of speculation that the virus spread to faraway places in Europe, Asia, Africa and America while the bustling Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai remained largely unaffected. Further, while the world is struggling with the crisis, coupled with the economic downturn caused by lockdowns, the Chinese market is actively functioning and engaged in taking over stocks of companies all over the world. A more important question is, that when the only preventive medication of the disease is social distancing and quarantine, then how was China able to cure more than 70,000 infected people, with a death toll of only about three thousand? This is especially surprising when far more clinically and medically competent countries like the US, Italy, France, Germany and Spain were hardly able to do so. Could this mean that China already has a vaccine, and is not sharing the information about the same with others in fear of exposure? If not, then why doesn’t Beijing inform the world about its clinical process, the adoption of which has yielded unprecedented medical results for their population? It is only a matter of time before many label China as a ‘bio-terrorist country’ for having used a virus against its opponents – especially if Beijing fails to conquer the trust deficit.
But this war of the worlds: “Capitalist” versus “Communist”, won’t deflect the responsibility of WHO, which has suffered a momentous loss of credibility given its mishandling of the pandemic and ill-information sharing. The WHO would have to do a mountainous task to rebuild its credentials, and the accountability must be fixed by having an inquiry on the conflict of interests between the leaders of WHO, and China, per se. Even the grand United Nations, ever-ready for ‘discussing anything and everything’ ranging from national to regional and global issues, has failed to discuss the pandemic, primarily by succumbing to pressures from China.
National Interests
The emergency situation worldwide, the (mis)-behaviour of international organisations and the outright failures of regimes in handling the crisis undoubtedly confirm the emerging anarchic conditions of international politics, with self-help as the prime motto. If we agree with what Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, Hobbes, Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz and Mearsheimer, the advocates of the classical and structural realism preached, the core principle of international relations is conflict shaped by a power struggle, with an objective to achieve the universal truth called national interest. That is why the states behave as they behave in international geopolitics. Although many have disagreed to the power-centric and state-centric conceptions of realism claiming certain deficiencies in the theory, yet the realism came true once again by putting the state right at the apex, when all other organisations, whether global or regional largely failed to deliver. Effective handling of the countries by strict self-imposed measures, and the altruistic strategies they have adopted to ease the economic and financial burden of their citizenry is not just praiseworthy but also a point of confirmation that the nation-state will always be the principal actor in any international construct, whatever may be the new world order in a Post-COVID-19 world.
