By M.R. Josse
KATHMANDU: Mulling over the multi-faceted implications of the devastating COVID-19 public health pandemic, it is impossible not to be struck by its potential long-term geopolitical implications as well – consequences that are arguably bound to be as seminal as those in the public health domain.
In fact, as matters stand today, it would seemingly possess the potential to reshape the geopolitical regional and global order, as we know it.
At the outset it may be useful to recall, as Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi do in their Foreign Affairs article (18 March 2020), that “global orders have a tendency to change gradually at first, and then all at once.”
America’s Suez Moment?
They refer, in particular, to Britain’s botched intervention in the 1956 Suez crisis which they, quite credibly, argue “laid bare the decay in British power and marked the end of the U.K.’s reign as a global power.” Against that historical backdrop, they posit that “if the U.S. does not rise to meet the moment, COVID-19 could mark another “Suez moment.” They go on to claim that “internationally, the pandemic has amplified (American president Donald) Trump’s instincts to go it alone and exposed just how unprepared Washington is to lead the global response.”
Anne Applebaum, in a brilliant piece in The Atlantic (15 March 2020) entitled ‘The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff’ avers much the same, though in an equally devastating but differently argued rhetorical assault on Trump’s America.
In Applebaum’s own words: “The United States, long accustomed to thinking of itself as the best, most efficient and most technologically advanced society in the world, is about to be proven an unclothed emperor. When human life is in peril, we are not as good as Singapore, as South Korea and Germany. And the problem is not that we are behind technologically. The problem is that American bureaucracies, and the antiquated, hidebound, unloved federal government of which they are a part are no longer up to the job of coping with the kind of challenges that face us in the 21st Century.”
European Unity Faltering
Meanwhile, what are some of the cardinal lessons emanating from Europe, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? Put succinctly, Europe, too, has been found wanting, caught on the wrong foot, as it were.
Thus, Bernard Zand of Speigel International (TRN, 23 March 2020), draws attention to the fact that “as European countries and the U.S. seal off their borders and turn inward in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus, China is sending aid around the world, in a forceful reminder of the verity of the well-known physical law: when there is a vacuum, someone or something rushes in to fill it!
In Zand’s write-up entitled, ‘A global challenge needs a global response’, he not recalls Serbian President Aleksander Vudic’s recent telling emotional outburst: “European solidarity does not exist…that was a fairy tale on paper.” What, after all, was the trigger for that verbal explosion? The E.U. did not accept Serbian money for urgently needed goods, though it had in the past sought to force Serbia to reduce its reliance on China and import from Europe instead! Not surprisingly, Vudic appealed to Chinese President Xi Jinping for help – and it was forthcoming!
No wonder, then, that China is being increasingly perceived as a friend in need. After all, as Zand reminds: “Just a year ago, Brussels declared China to be a “systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance. Yet now, Europe is exposing a flank to that rival – not just in the Balkans and Eastern Europe where China has been trying to ramp up its influence for years, but within the E.U.”
British academic, Prof. John Keiger offers some further acute insights into the current status of the E.U. in a write-up in The Spectator entitled ‘E.U. will never be the same again’ (TRN, 24 March 2020). Among them are these gems:
“In the space of a couple of weeks, fundamental tenets of the European project have received a body blow and may not recover from the corona epidemic…Ironically, freedom of movement, that totem of European principles, has also ceased. A further example of the damage to the European project wrought by the epidemic is the break-down of European solidarity. Never a perfect concept in the first place, that solidarity under crisis is patently ceding to nation state reflexes. Italy, the first into the crisis and woefully lacking in surgical masks and ventilators, was pained by France and Germany’s refusal to release some of their stocks.”
China Steps In
Without doubt, as the United States and Europe hesitate or fumble, China is moving swiftly and adroitly to position herself not merely as the global leader in the pandemic response but also to shore up her international image as a caring and responsible member of the global community.
As much is evident from the fact – as reported by Chinese news agency Xinhua recently – that China participated in a video conference with more than 10 European countries, including France, Portugal and Denmark. Subsequently, a similar conference was held between China and 17 central and east European countries.
The same is perhaps even more sharply underlined in the public gratitude expressed by European leaders for China’s assistance at a time of grave public health peril. For instance, acknowledged Italian Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio, shortly after the arrival in Rome on 12 March of a team of specialized Chinese medical professionals who faced the coronavirus emergency in China: “This is what we call solidarity.”
Chinese assistance has also been forthcoming for Belgium, Slovenia, Spain and France. Remarked French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves le Drian, on receiving China’s assistance: “This is a gesture that must be appreciated.”
To be noted, too, is that China’s Jack Ma Foundation has donated testing kits and medical supplies to all 54 African countries!
So, too, is that Xi, amid the pandemic, made phone calls with a long list of European leaders to show mutual support and coordinate their efforts. Equally worthy of notice is Xi’s statesman-like gesture in urging the world to build a community with a shared future. As he pointed out, “viruses recognize no borders and epidemics do not discriminate between races.”
In doing so, Xi also emphasized that in the battle against the current global public health crisis, the urgency and significance of building a community with a shared future of mankind has become even greater than ever before. On a hopeful note, he affirmed that while the epidemic is temporary, cooperation is everlasting; while posing challenges to bilateral cooperation, the disease also creates new opportunities.
Though it was disconcerting to note, for some time in the recent past, the unseemly dispute between the United States and China on the genesis of COVID-19, happily, in the collective global interest, that distraction has been now been put aside as the reported friendly telephonic conversation between presidents Trump and Xi on 27 March would seem to signal.
A Nepalese perspective
From the perspective of Kathmandu, a few relevant observations would appear to be in order.
Perhaps the most salient of them is that China has shown the world, by example, how a truly Great Power should act. It has also demonstrated its amazing ability to not merely imaginatively and courageously tackle a horrendous public health challenge but also simultaneously to extend all the help she could to nations across the world in their hour of dire need.
That Beijing’s actions were/are in sharp contrast to the stance adopted by many other countries, including in the developed world, cannot simply be wished away. They will be remembered and will influence how the global order gradually changes; and how the world will view and respond to China, in the post-COVID-19 era.
In our own neighborhood, the geopolitical China-India equation or balance is bound to further tilt towards China, the new Super Power, and away from India, her distant, wanna-be rival.
As much can perhaps be extrapolated from write-ups such as that of C. Raja Mohan in The Indian Express (24 March 2020) who, focusing on the West’s, India’s and China’s role in the U.N., concludes:
“Neither the West nor India have been prepared to deal with the impact of China’s rise in the U.N.. system…China wants to replace America as the dominant force in the U.N. The U.S. is fighting back. Delhi discovered that Chinese global hegemony could be a lot more problematic than American primacy.”
It will take a great deal more than such sour fulminations to alter the significant and inexorable, on-the-horizon geopolitical regional and global changes that the COVID-19 will clearly bring in its train.
(The writer is the Consultant Editor Emeritus of the People’s Review weekly. He can be reached at: <manajosse@gmail.com)
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