Nothing focuses the mind more intensely than the thought of impending death. That is exactly what the world is going through currently. From a borderless world, humanity is transitioning to one where borders are at the doorstep of our homes. The physical world has come to a halt, while the cyber world is in a corresponding overdrive.
It is interesting to recall what I have articulated ad-nauseam: that a brick and mortar civilization evolved over the millennia and a virtual civilization is evolving. The future of humankind lies at the intersection of these two civilizations. Social distancing is the new sovereignty
With the number of reported COVID-19 infections now touching five hundred thousand odd cases across 196 Westphalian entities at the time of writing, this pandemic is truly global in every sense of the word. However, there will be a Post COVID-19 world that no one is currently contemplating. What will it be like? Is the current pandemic the first inflection point of the 21st century? These are questions that need to examined at some length.
The 20th century had five major geo-strategic crossroads. The First World War from 1914-18; the Second World War from 1939-1945; the subsequent demise of imperialism & colonialism and the rise of newly liberated nations across Asia, Africa, Latin & South America; The Cold War between 1945-1991 and the division of the world into blocs, with some nations professing non-alignment; and finally, the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the rise of uni-polarity and globalization underpinned by the Washington Consensus.
Each of these events were epochs in themselves with a before and an after. Often one dovetailed into the other or the latter was the consequence of the former. However, each of these events profoundly influenced the course of history, with or without bloodshed. Historians will remember the COVID19 outbreak as a similar such moment.
This is certainly not the worlds first modern pandemic. There was the Spanish Flu from 1918-20, the Asian Flu in 1957, the Hong Kong Flu in 1968, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2002, 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, and the West African Ebola Virus epidemic of 2016-18. However, none of these were ever elevated to the level of a geo-strategic event. Why, then, is COVID-19 different even though fewer people may ultimately succumb to the disease than what is anticipated?
COVID-19 is different because it is truly universal, with known cases in 196 countries and territories around the world. The previous five had a more localized influence. Currently three of the eight billion people on planet Earth are in the throes of an unprecedented lockdown. More than one hundred nations around the world have put their people under some form of punitive restrictions or the other. Global travel has all but stopped and supply chains stand disrupted. The most primitive form of disease prevention “stay away from each other”— under the chic new ‘nom de guerre’ called social distancing— seems to be the only weapon available to governments. Medical practitioners have been experimenting with what is colloquially called ‘hit and trial’ to save the most critical.
The first and the biggest failure has been the lack of any substantive global leadership to pre-empt or prevent the proliferation of COVID-19. What are the known knowns at the moment? On 20th March, the World Economic Forum reported that: “sometime in December 2019, 27 of the first 41 people hospitalized (66%) passed through a market located in the heart of Wuhan city in Hubei province. But, according to a study conducted at Wuhan Hospital, the very first human case identified did not frequent this market. Instead, a molecular dating estimate based on the SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences indicates an origin in November….”.
However, it was only on December 31st 2019 that China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of several cases of an unusual pneumonia in Wuhan. Several of the infections were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was shut down the following day.
As late as the 9th & 11th of January 2020, the WHO put out bizarre tweets either downplaying the situation or trying to undercut travel advisories that were anticipated. On 9th January 2020, the official WHO Twitter handle had this to say at 11.58 PM: “Novel coronavirus emerge periodically as we have seen. SARS emerged in 2002 and MERS emerged in 2012. Several known coronavirus are currently circulating in animals that have not impacted humans”.
On 11th of January 2020 they followed it up with a travel advisory as follows: “WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travellers to and from Wuhan China. It is generally considered that entry screening offers little benefit, while requiring considerable resources”. Even entry screening of passengers from Wuhan or China were discouraged.
It would be interesting to find out how many passengers travelled to and from Wuhan before the city was finally locked down. It was only on the 20th & 21st of January 2020 that the WHO conducted it’s first field visit to Wuhan. It is apparent from a perusal of the summary of the report that the full impact of the epidemic was not grasped even three weeks after China had notified the WHO. It took another five weeks until, on March 11th 2020, the Director General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declare COVID-19 as a pandemic.
It also calls into question the WHOs failure to question China about the Whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, who in early December 2019 had privately warned his colleagues that a new SARS type illness had started manifesting—nearly a month before China grudgingly informed the WHO. It is another matter that this brave whistleblower is ostensibly dead because of the same COVID-19 that he had exposed.
It is therefore clear that there has been gross failure of the WHO leadership. It was both negligent if not complicit in the initial cover up and therefore needs to be investigated by a special Investigation Unit under the joint auspices of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), International Criminal Court and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). If the bureaucratically top heavy United Nations Security was to argue that these bodies do not have the mandate to carry out such an exercise, then the UN General Assembly should amend their remit.
The second is the failure of the United Nations leadership itself. The UN Secretary General has been extremely slow in coordinating a global response to the situation and has all but abdicated the organizations responsibilities. Kaysie Brown and Megan Roberts had this to say in a Council for Foreign Relations blog post on March 24th 2020: “The coronavirus crisis is unfolding against a historic backdrop, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the UN Charter, signed in San Francisco in June 1945. As part of the UN 75 commemoration, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had launched a global discourse, in the hopes of “crowding in” ideas about the UN we want and the United Nations we need. It is a timely effort, ever more so now. The United Nations, after all, was established in a moment of crisis, as was the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in 2002 and the G-20 in 2008 in the face of the global financial crisis”.
However exactly the opposite seems to be happening. As Colum Lynch, the senior diplomatic reporter of Foreign Policy, wrote on 18th March 2020: “The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, has essentially stopped meeting in its chamber around its iconic horseshoe table and is unlikely to reopen for the foreseeable future, issuing its edicts from a remote computer. One council diplomat said that sensitive closed-door meetings that are critical for hammering out differences would be put off for the “foreseeable future.” With China vetoing a UNSC meeting on COVID-19 and Estonia’s call for transparency on the issue, no further evidence is required of the failure of the UNSC at this critical moment in time.
Some missions have shut shop and others have gravely reduced their footprint when global leadership is sorely required. If the UN is going to be conspicuous by it’s absence when it is required most then it would be legitimate to question its efficacy or even continuance. The time has perhaps come to move the UNSC to a safer location where it can keep functioning when required most. The reform of the UNSC should be the first item on the global agenda, including and not limited to, doing away with this invidious veto power.
The third has been the failure of even the G-20. Created in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 had its first virtual summit on the 26 th of March 2020– A full eleven weeks after the initial report to the WHO. So far all the responses have been national if not nationalistic. Most countries and cities have tried to isolate themselves to insulate their populaces. This is also the result of sustained assaults by the right wing on globalization and the neo-liberal global order at whose heart lies an increasingly frail United Nations system.
The fourth is a call for immediate action. The ninth review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention is scheduled for November 2021. It must be preponed and convened at the earliest to assess as to how the COVID-19 situation evolved from the biological weapons standpoint.
As a backgrounder, it would be interesting to recap that the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is a legally binding treaty that outlaws biological arms. After being discussed and negotiated in the United Nations' disarmament forum commencing 1969, the BWC was opened for signature on April 10, 1972, and entered into force on March 26 th 1975.
The BWC proscribes development, stockpiling, acquisition, retention, and production of Biological agents and toxins "of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes;" Weapons, equipment, and delivery vehicles "designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict. The transfer of or assistance with acquiring the agents, toxins, weapons, equipment, and delivery vehicles described above.
The convention further requires states-parties to destroy or divert to peaceful purposes the "agents, toxins, weapons, equipment, and means of delivery" described above within nine months of the convention's entry into force. The BWC does not ban the use of biological and toxin weapons but reaffirms the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits such use. It also does not ban biodefense programs.
The time has come for a complete and total ban on any kind of bio-offense or bio-defensive weapons. Infact the Biological Weapons Convention Secretariat that is grossly understaffed needs to strengthened so that it can strictly monitor both developments and research in the bio-technology sectors whether in the government or private domain.
In the post-COVID-19 world the United Nations General Assembly must meet in an extended session. It must divide itself into special Committees that should consist of Permanent Representatives to the United Nations or their equivalents to review the functioning of each and every institution of the United Nations whether tasked with a role or otherwise during the current crisis.
Similarly, other global governance institutions will have to be revisited and remodeled so that they have the ability, efficiency and nimbleness to respond swiftly to global challenges. Moreover, countries and institutions will have to be held accountable for practices, whether deliberate or inadvertent, that put humanity at risk and are testing the resilience of national health care systems by the second.
Both in the developed and the developing world, health care paradigms and national economic priorities, especially social safety nets for the most vulnerable sections of society, will have to be reimagined and re-budgeted, because what would follow COVID-19 is a deep economic recession.
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