Abstract
The impact of Covid-19 on global politics will remain limited. While the pandemic will influence ways of living and ways of dealing with public health and global health security, it will underline the important role of government(s) in everyday life. On a global political level, the impact of the pandemic is subject to the great powers and, in particular, the United States’ response to how the virus outbreak will affect its economy. The US has already set the tone by spinning the pandemic from being invisible to a visible enemy, singling China out as its source to appropriate and mandate a response. Based on this approach, the main impact of the virus on global politics is that it will widen the rift between the US and China, especially if Trump wins a second term in office.
Introduction
The global impact of the coronavirus pandemic poses two interconnected questions: Is this a historic moment when the world will change permanently? Will there be a lasting impact on geopolitics globally? A definite answer to these questions is not yet in sight. However, the emerging political debate on the impact of the pandemic could help bring about clearer predictions about how the world will evolve in the post-Covid-19 period.
There are various views on the immediate and/or future impact of this pandemic outbreak. Some analysts contend that the crisis will help create a new world order wherein China leads in global governance.[1] Others predict that the sheer impact of this virus on humanity could create a new age of global cooperation and expand and deepen the interconnectedness between nations and peoples.[2] In contrast, some warn that cooperation between states and ultimately globalization itself will be the major victims of the pandemic.[3]
The various predictions indicate the uncertainty and insecurity generated by the crisis. Nevertheless, the political nature of the impact of this pandemic is still “the contested issue of its origin”.[4] The question about the origin of Covid-19 has gained momentum while current attention is still on the fight against the virus itself. At some stage, resolving this question will be the key to the contingency plans and methods needed to deal with a future pandemic.[5]
Any impact of the pandemic on global geo-strategic affairs depends on the response from the great powers and the US in particular. It is also important to mention that those same political factors that preceded the pandemic are likely to be the same factors that determine its future impact(s). The rationale behind this assumption is that the outbreak was not as sudden an event as the 9/11 attacks, nor as grave in terms of consequences as the outbreak of the Second World War.
Stephen Walt observes that “what won’t change is the fundamentally conflictive nature of world politics. Previous plagues – including the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 – did not end great-power rivalry nor usher in a new era of global cooperation. Neither will Covid-19.”[6] Consequently, the impact of Covid-19 on political efforts to manage the crisis does not mean that, once the pandemic is defeated, the crisis will not prevent previous political conflicts such as competition between the US and China from re-emerging.
Before the outbreak of the pandemic, global politics were rife with conflict, mistrust, political and economic tensions, and increasing populism. Tensions were evident over cyber-crime, “election interference”, terrorism, transnational organized crime, human security issues, and uncertainty in the European Union as a result of Brexit.
The waves of migrants seeking refuge in Europe put more pressure on the conduct of global politics in a tense and polarized environment. More recently, the major event in international politics prior to the pandemic was what was dubbed as the trade war, where the US engaged with several countries, chiefly China, in trade disputes, which created uncertainty and a degree of market instability as well as putting global trade regulations under agreements in question.
Given the existing state of global politics, the pandemic was therefore likely to add more uncertainty through an increasingly susceptible environment for conflict and the emergence of further dimensions of threats to humanity and the established global order.
However, this article argues that the pandemic will not result in major changes to global politics, and it will not change the nature of geo-strategic rivalries and the current balance of power. In the short term, the pandemic will not have as much of an impact as did 9/11, and it will not create a new international order.
Many national and regional economies will emerge from the current crisis seeking to recover and stabilize.[7] It is therefore questionable whether the world’s great powers and the sole-superpower are in a position or are willing to create or trigger major changes to the global order. The US is facing new elections and Trump would not jeopardize his re-election by escalating political crises, aside from maintaining the political rhetoric to which the world and the Chinese, in particular, are attuned.
The likely long-term impact of the pandemic could be characterized as domestic factors revolving around the role of government in national politics. Stephen Walt argues that “We will see a further retreat from hyper-globalization, as citizens look to national governments to protect them and as states and firms seek to reduce future vulnerabilities.”[8] Similarly, Robin Niblett maintains that Covid-19 is forcing governments, companies, and societies to strengthen their capacity to cope with extended periods of economic self-isolation.”[9]
For Niblett, this isolation could become a pattern of global politics and thus become “the straw that broke the camel’s back of economic globalization.” Given global technological connectedness, the pandemic will certainly create national and nationalistic structures for self-sufficiency, but it will not completely roll back globalization for the simple reason that no one country would be capable of doing so, including the United States.
The long-term impact of the pandemic will mainly concern national governance, including future preparedness for pandemics through increased funds for public and global health readiness is an essential part of states’ security preparedness. Closer global coordination and cooperation on issues related to health security could also be reinforced.
Another long-term concern is “pandemic terror”. Having seen the impact of such a virus on global economies and peoples’ movements, terrorist groups may seek to launch “virus-terror” attacks.[10] Consequently, this type of threat would necessitate national and global efforts together in similar ways to those adopted for combating other forms of terrorism. The pandemic could also force a global reconsideration of consumerism, which could have a lasting effect on spending habits with resultant effects on global economies.[11]
The major impact of the pandemic on the geo-strategic level is likely to be twofold. It will be in the form of increasingly intense competition for resources, and also there will be further strains on relations between the US and China.
The US response: Searching for a visible enemy
The current pandemic crisis has seen a marked deterioration in relations between the United States and China. While Trump has labeled the coronavirus the “invisible enemy,” he attempted to label it the “Chinese Virus” as an evident political ploy to direct blame to the Beijing government. There are some historical analogies in the framing of the “Chinese threat” with communism: before 9/11, the US lived for decades within the mentality of the Cold War, which inescapably shaped the national psyche about “otherness”.
With its echoes of the US response to the 9/11 attacks, Washington’s current response to the pandemic reflects the way the country responds to threats in general. In her article, Terror: A Speech After 9-11, Gayatri Spivak argues that “there is no response to war. War is a cruel caricature of what in us can respond. You cannot be answerable to war.” Spivak also maintains that “a response not only supposes and produces a constructed subject of response it also constructs its object. To what, then, do most of these responses respond?”[12] The current US administration’s effort is focused on displacing the virus from an invisible to the visible enemy; this is a traditional pattern of America’s engagement in warlike action, in that it is necessary to have an identified enemy that can be the object of a response.[13]
The shape of post-Covid-19 global politics will heavily depend on the great powers’ reactions to the pandemic. Yet, there are two different responses to the Covid-19. One is the reaction to the virus itself, within which over 180 countries are engaged in medically defending themselves without political rhetoric. The other response is to the overall “impact” of the Covid-19, in particular the economic impact. By determining that the virus is Chinese, Trump has unleashed a flood of critical voices from US administration, media personalities, academics, and lawmakers ready to criticize China for what they allege has been Beijing’s negligence and secrecy in allowing the virus to spread.[14]
Besides blaming the Chinese for the global spread of Covid-19, President Trump has also questioned the effectiveness of the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite the WHO warning about the coronavirus as early as January, Trump has accused the organization of “having called it wrong” and being “China-centric”.[15] Consequently, Trump first threatened to cut funds for the WHO,[16] and later ordered the suspension of those funds.[17]
Former US President Barack Obama’s administration has also been singled out by Trump, though in 2014 Obama warned: “there may and likely will come a time in which we have both a deadly airborne disease. And for us to deal with that effectively, we have to put in place an infrastructure, not just here at home, but globally that allows us to isolate it quickly, see it quickly, respond to it quickly.”[18]
However, while the United States is still escalating its war of words with China, questions remain over whether such a new mechanism as recommended by Obama is likely to function. In the US, China has already been deemed an aggressor, an example being a speech by Senator Lindsey Graham on April 9 that announced that the “Chinese government is responsible for 16,000 US deaths and 17 million US being unemployed.”[19]
Graham’s language was “beating war drums” primarily in economic and financial terms, such as through canceling some of the debts the US owed to China “because they should be paying us, not us paying China.” Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said the Chinese Communist Party has “blood is on the hands” for the coronavirus pandemic.[20] Given these sentiments, there is a likelihood that the upcoming US presidential elections could also serve as a referendum on US relations with China. Therefore, the virus itself may take a backseat and a “political” virus will begin to dominate the debate.
In its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, the centralized Chinese government managed to mobilize all national resources to fight the epidemic in the country. Army medical personnel were mobilized from all parts of the country to be deployed in Wuhan, and the entire country’s infrastructure and services worked within a unified system. In the United States, the case is entirely different, reflecting the different roles of the federal and local governments in dealing with health emergencies.[21] An example has been shortages of ventilators, where New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo decries the “eBay-style bidding war” for this equipment.[22]
Consequently, the forthcoming elections could indicate how US voters will evaluate their president’s response to the pandemic outbreak. The outcome will also determine much of the impact of the pandemic on global politics. Where Trump to be re-elected, he will feel more empowered and thus the long term impact of the pandemic would emphatically affect global politics by potentially reducing chances for cooperation.
The pandemic, by weakening the US economy, even temporarily, makes the United States feel that it has been violated. By treating the virus and those responsible as symbolic enemies, there is a risk that inflated rhetoric could create new, as was evident in the Cold War and the War on Terror. Therefore, US domestic politics could have a major impact on the global geo-strategic alignments. With Covid-19 having a severe impact in terms of US cases, the politicization of the pandemic is already influencing policy, as seen in the aforementioned US suspension of funds for the WHO citing the organization’s bias toward China.
To understand the political or geo-strategic post-Covid-19 environment, a closer look at the past few decades would illustrate and also help anticipate the US response, and thus the post-Covid-19 nature of the global political environment. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the Western “idea” of democracy and free-market became more prominent and the “New World Order” was viewed as a future of peace under the benevolent US hegemony.
When the attacks of September 11, 2001, took place, the US responded with a protracted military and intelligence operation. The country nevertheless retained an increasing sense of insecurity because “terrorists” are invisible forces that could unpredictably emerge. In order to personify terror, the United States aimed to create identifiable or “solid terrorists” as visible targets for its overall response.
While the 9/11 attacks did not defeat the United States in the military or any other related terms, they punctured what Noam Chomsky called the “Security of State Power”.[23] America is placed within its response to the attacks, which generated more anxiety, more terror, and more fear.[24]
The rhetoric of the war on terror influences the way US citizens view the world: it is continually a dangerous place. This view reverts to those days when they went to bed and shut the windows fearing that communists may jump in. After 9/11 the specter of communism was replaced by fear of Muslim terrorists. Since then, terror itself has affected human interactions as another facet of globalization along with economic, political, and social aspects.[25]
Therefore, globalization itself, which originates from trade, became more the globalization of the impact of terror. So, there is already a precedent to a global threat or a threat that has invaded all corners of the earth. Just let us remember the immediate impact of 9/11 and how many people traveled or moved with fear. The result was that by 2011, as Stewart Patrick contends, “globalization and other forces had transformed the structure of world politics by altering the security, economic, normative, and institutional context in which sovereign states operated, and complicated the challenge of building a cooperative world order.”[26]
In this environment, the US removed terrorism from the top of the list of threats and installed China and Russia instead.[27] In December 2017, the National Security Strategy labeled China as a “revisionist” power, which “seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.”[28]
The cost of the war on terror on the United States included nearly 7,000 of its soldiers and sailors killed in the post-9/11 wars.[29] Since late 2001, the US has appropriated and been obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 trillion through to Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to the post-9/11 wars – an estimated $5.4 trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the coming decades.[30]
While the United States was engaged in its global war on terror, China was expanding in key global projects, which provides China with an enhanced global position.[31] The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one of the largest projects of the century thus far is, as Xi Jinping highlighted, a sure path toward peace and cooperation for win-win outcomes.[32]
The difference between the US and China is that China views the world in different terms; consequently, China sees coronavirus and the impact of the pandemic in different ways than the US. While the Trump administration is preparing for a “big fight” with Beijing, on March 28, China lifted a lockdown on the city of Wuhan that lasted for 76 days and the Chinese workers simply went back to work. There is a geostrategic feature to this: China’s policy is to minimize the political impact of the pandemic.
China is increasingly assuming a more global role, which is surely in line with the logic of its strong economy, moderate foreign policy, and its role in building global governance institutions.[33] China established global projects such as the New Development Bank, Silk Road Fund, The Free Trade of Asia Pacific Framework, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and, what is dubbed as the project of the century, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These projects are operated within the Chinese view of global order. According to the Chinese view, powerful nations design global institutions, rules, and norms to reflect and further their national interests.[34]
The United States has so far failed to understand that even if China is reluctant and less enthusiastic to take on a global leadership role, China’s current leadership position in global affairs is already evident. This role, while being an outcome of China’s increasing global economic influence, is also a result of the overall global geostrategic setting, with the US, willingly or not, being unable to maintain global leadership. It is a result of the US’s engagement for, at least, the past two decades with the hunt for terrorists in the Iraqi and Afghan deserts. The same factors that made China minimize the impact of the pandemic are also the same factors that have made China popular among countries and cities that receive Chinese help, including New York.[35]
The first of these factors is benevolence. In essence, China’s foreign policy is this: if unable to say something positive, then remain silent. This helps China gain the trust of many partners around the world unless other countries merely aim to categorize China as a communist country aiming at dominating the globe. From a different perspective, Beijing’s policy reflects its view that the US and other developed Western nations designed global institutions in an era when China was a much weaker power; consequently, Beijing assumes that the current system benefits Western nations at China’s expense.[36] Wang Yi, the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, refutes this Western dominance through his statement: “in a highly uncertain world, China has become an important source of stability”.[37]
Trump has correctly reiterated that the US is not the world’s policeman. Trump was also correct to disengage from many of the old, decayed international organizations. Trump has also been right to demand more payments from countries “taking advantage” of the United States. However, the Trump administration, and the US lawmakers in general, should review their response to the pandemic’s impact by the doctrine of engagement rather than containment.
A lesson from Washington’s response to 9/11 is conceivably recommended. China’s main interest is to keep its 1.4 billion people’s needs met by, so far, all possible peaceful means. The only problem facing the United States is that China is still called “communist” and that unsettles the core of US foreign and domestic politics.
Conclusion
As the current pandemic will create a global readiness for similar future crises, it will highlight the essential role of governments in preparing and organizing efforts, whether on a national or multilateral level, to meet global health security threats. On a political level, the pandemic will further exacerbate existing political tensions as more countries will grow anxious and veer toward nationalistic tendencies of protectionism. This was seen in the case of the European Union when Italy appealed to its fellow member countries was met with an inadequate response while Schengen Area countries in Europe reinstated their borders.[38]
Overall, however, there will be no major new constructive political tools designed to respond to the impact of the pandemic apart from further divisions and an emphasis on those political factors that existed prior to the pandemic. The main features of the geostrategic and global politics after the pandemic will be determined by financial and economic factors. Even though Trump described himself as “Wartime President”,[39] he remains more likely to focus on financial rather than military coercion to achieve his aims.
Thus, the “shift to military language to describe his administration’s battle against an “invisible enemy” is a tougher sell, especially following his struggle to get the initial response to the coronavirus right, including weeks where he sought to downplay its severity.”[40] As a result, we will be better able to assess the post-pandemic political order following the November 2020 US Presidential elections.
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[1] Kishore Mahbubani. “A More China-Centric Globalization”, Foreign Policy, March 20, 2020 Mahbubani’s observation about China’s location in global politics after the Pandemic are an extension of his overall argument about this subject presented in his book Has China Won?
[2] Shivshankar Menon, “This Pandemic Can Serve a Useful Purpose”, Foreign Policy, March 20, 2020
[3] See, Mie Oba. “Coronavirus and the Future of Globalization.” The Diplomat, March 18, 2020. (Online); Ian Bremmer, “Why COVID-19 May be a Major Blow to Globalization”, Time, March 5, 2020. (Online)
Marcelo Gleiser contends that “the year 2020 will be remembered as a turnaround point in human history. Gleiser went so far as to conclude: “We must respond not just as nations fighting an enemy, but as a species fighting for survival.” See Marcelo Gleiser. “Covid-19 will change us as a species” CNN, March 29, 2020 (Online); Fareed Zakaria highlighted the impact of the Pandemic on global inequalities between the rich and the poor. He observes that the Pandemic is “more dramatic, more global, and more unusual than anything we have seen in a long time […] There is a current paralyses in global economy, then you get the result of what this does in poor countries, these countries are cash-poor, constrained in budget terms, have poor healthcare systems […] think about the slums like Mumbai, or Kolkata or Nairobi. Then you add to this the geopolitics that is going to come to play as everybody becomes more nationalist. See TED Ideas Worth Spreading.
https://www.ted.com/talks/fareed_zakaria_how_the_world_could_change_after_the_coronavirus_pandemic#t-162836. April 8, 2020.
[4] The Science journal Nature has issued an apology associating China and the Wuhan province with COVID-19.
[5] It is imperative to deal with this question and find answers, so that in the future, when a pandemic may occur, a swift determination of the origin of the virus could help the world to deal with its ramifications. This could help an immediate and uncontested lockdown of the origin of the virus.
[6] Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, March 20, 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/20/world-order- after-coronavirus-pandemic/
[7] “America’s economy is widely expected to shrink by a quarter. That is as much as during the Great Depression.” See, Adam Tooze, “The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back” Foreign Policy, APRIL 9, 2020, Online.
[8] Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, March 20, 2020.
[9] Robin Niblett, Foreign Policy, March 20, 2020.
[10] See Alexander Mallin and Josh Margolin. “Homeland Security warns terrorists may exploit Covid-19 pandemic.” Abcnews. March 25, 2020; See Manfred. J. Kern. “Global Epidemics, Pandemics, Terrorism: Risk Assessment and European Responses.” ISPSW Strategy Series: Focus on Defense and International Security, Issue No. 421 May 2016.
[11] Stampedes, fights, and violent chaos are commonly expected around Black Friday shopping, illustrating the emotional tension and outbursts of violence. See Linda Simpson, “An Analysis of Consumer Behaviour on Black Friday”, American International Journal of Contemporary Research, Vol. 1 No.1; July 2011. pp. 1-5
[12] Gayatri Spivak, “Terror: A Speech After 9/11”, boundary 2, Summer 2004, 31(2): 81-111 p. 81.
[13] Shoon Kathleen Murray and Jason Meyers, Do People Need Foreign Enemies? American Leaders’ Beliefs after the Soviet Demise. The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 43, No. 5 (Oct., 1999), pp. 555-569; Patrick E. Tyler. Pentagon Imagines New Enemies To Fight in Post-Cold-War Era. New York Times, February 19, 1992; Odd Arne Westad writes that “the 1990s was a lost opportunity for international cooperation, particularly to combat disease, poverty and inequality.” See Odd Arne Westad, “The Cold War and America’s Delusion of Victory.” New York Times. August 28, 2017; Krista E. Wiegand (2009) Islamic Terrorism: The Red Menace of the Twenty-First Century. In: Morgan M.J. (eds.) The Impact of 9/11 on the Media, Arts, and Entertainment. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
[14] Including Attorney General William Barr, Peter Navarro, Tray Goudy, and Steve Bannon to name a few. It is worth mentioning that on Jan. 24, about a month after the virus was discovered in China, Donald Trump tweeted: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency.”
[15] Niall McCarthy, “Which Countries Are The Biggest Financial Contributors To The World Health Organization?” Forbes, April 08, 2020. (Online).
[16] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/22/trump-coronavirus-election-november-2020
[17] See https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/15/coronavirus-latest-news/ April 15, 2020.
[18] The Independent, https://www.indy100.com/article/obama-trump-coronavirus-prepare-pandemic-2014-
speech-watch-video-9457926
[19] Lindsey Graham Interview with Fox News, Apr 10, 2020 (Online)
[20] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/this-could-have-been-stopped-steve-bannon-blames-murderous chinese-communist-party-and-front-who-for-pandemic; Interview with Fox News, April 8, 2020.
[21] See an interview with U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. Fox News. April 9.2010. (Online)
[22] The Guardian, “New York’s Andrew Cuomo decries ‘eBay’-style bidding war for ventilators” March 31, 2020. Cuomo said that “you have 50 states competing to buy the same item,” he said. “We all wind up bidding up each other and competing against each other, where you now literally will have a company call you up and say, ‘Well, California just outbid you.’ It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator.” “How inefficient! And then FEMA gets involved and FEMA starts bidding. And now FEMA is bidding on top of the 50. So FEMA is driving up the price. What sense does this make?”
[23] Noam Chomsky. (2014) “Security and State Power / the Prospects for Survival.” (Adapted from a lecture by Noam Chomsky on February 28, 2014 in Santa Barbara, CA, sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation). https://chomsky.info/20140303/
[24] See a good assessment on this by Kathleen Hicks. “What Will Americans Do About Their Fear of Terrorism?” The Atlantic, August 17, 2016. (Online).
[25] See Audrey Cronin, “Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism,” International Security 27, no. 3 (2003): 30–58; Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005); Jamal R. Nassar, Globalization and Terrorism: The Migration of Dreams and Nightmares (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Michael Mousseau, “Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror,” International Security 27, no. 3 (2003): 5–29; Mark Sedgwick, “Inspiration and the Origins of Global Waves of Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 30 (February 2007): 97–112; Walter LaFeber, “The Post-September 11 Debate Over Empire, Globalization, and Fragmentation,” Political Science Quarterly 117 (Spring 2002): 1–17; Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, “Transnational Terrorism in the Post-Cold War Era,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (March 1999): 145–167; Robert Gilpin, The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
[26] Patrick, Stewart. (2013). The Evolving Structure of World Politics, 1991-2011. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199666430.003.0002. p. 16
[27] Nath Aldalala’a, “A Trade War? The Battle of Washing Machines”, Countercurrents, February 6, 2020.
[28] White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C., December 2017), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.
[29] Neta C. Crawford. “Human Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars: Lethality and the Need for Transparency.”
November 2018. (Brown University, Watson Institute, International and Public Affairs.) November 2018. (Online).
[30] Neta C. Crawford. “United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post-9/11 Wars through FY2020: $6.4 Trillion.”, (Boston University, The Fredrick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.) November 13, 2019. (Online)
[31] A recent article by Democratic Party’s likely Presidential Candidate Joseph Biden illustrates the current position of the United States in the world. See “Why America Must Lead Again Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump”, Foreign Policy, March/April 2020.
[32] https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1649905.shtml
[33] Wang Yiwei, a leading Chinese scholar maintains that “[…] China’s self-confidence in global governance, […] comes from the development miracle made in reform and open-up, from the achievements in domestic governance and from the gigantic contributions made by China in promoting world poverty reduction, economic growth and the cause of peace and development of mankind.” Wang Yiwei. China’s Self-Confidence and Consciousness in Global Governance.” Contemporary World, 2017.1, p. 30. (Online).
[34] Melanie Hart and Blaine Johnson. “Mapping China’s Global Governance Ambitions: Democracies Still Have Leverage to Shape Beijing’s Reform Agenda,” Center for American Progress, 2019. P. 3
[35] New York received a donation of 1,100 ventilators from China. See Time, April 6, 2020. (Online); Russia also sent the United States medical equipment o to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. See Reuters, April 1, 2020. (Online)
[36] Melanie Hart and Blaine Johnson. ‘Mapping China’s Global Governance Ambitions: Democracies Still Have Leverage to Shape Beijing’s Reform Agenda,’ Center for American Progress, February 28, 2019. P. 3 (Online).
[37] https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1621221.shtml
[38] See Elizabeth Braw, The EU Is Abandoning Italy in Its Hour of Need, Foreign Policy, March 14, 2020 (Online).
[39] Mario Parker “Trump Pitches Himself as Wartime President for 2020 after Markets Fail Him.”
Bloomberg, March 19, 2020, Online
[40] “Trump threatens to hold WHO funding, then backtracks, amid search for scapegoat.” The Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/07/trump-coronavirus-who-funding-deaths-briefing
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