The pandemic is just a trigger that is sweeping
the globe and has done much more than take lives and livelihoods across the
length & breadth of the world. The current virus crisis given is much
deeper than that.
It has shaken the fundamental assumptions that
the peaceful capitalism of the USA constitutes exceptionalism that it played
for decades as global leader and an example to the world but its fabric started
to change in last four decades.
Despite the warnings that have been sounded for
decades, USA looked the other way while its corporations, always looking for
cheaper labour and short-term profits, outsourced their production overseas,
devastating own manufacturing & basic service industries.
Job loss is not a new phenomenon out of this
pandemic, but has been a deep rooted problem in USA & Europe due to its
policies, which is now getting blindsided by supplicant motives where profit is
the only concern that matters.
Blatant capitalism is no more a panacea that
would repair the social markers in USA- or help stopping immigration and trade
embargoes.
Instead of spending money on infrastructure and
investing in a more robust health system, massive tax cuts were given to the
big corporations that used it to suit their purposes, largely for share buy
backs, profligate purposes and unwanted eye popping bonuses.
It seems USA has lost the plot faster than
anyone had contemplated.
Global orders have a tendency to change
gradually at first and then all at once. In 1956, a botched intervention in the
Suez laid bare the decay in British power and breakup of USSR in 1991 marked
the end of the United Kingdom’s & Soviet Union’s reign as a global power.
Today, U.S. policymakers should recognize that
if it does not rise to meet the moment, the pandemic could take another deep
stab at its global leadership.
Missteps by key US Institutions have undermined
confidence in the competence of U.S. governance and exposed its flanks to the
world visibly.
Public statements by US President have largely
served to sow confusion and spread uncertainty. Internationally, the pandemic
has amplified its display that how unprepared USA is to lead a global response
under a shaky leadership.
The status of the USA as a global leader over
the past seven decades has been built not just on wealth and power, but also on
the legitimacy that flows from the its domestic governance, provision of global
public goods, and ability and willingness to muster and coordinate a global
response to crises.
The virus pandemic is testing all possible
elements of US leadership. So far, it has failed the test.
US President’s recent actions on WHO & UNO
could, at best, would be seen as an egotistical and irrational decision that
not only weakened those global bodies, but also seriously puts world at its
wits end to judge American Leadership wisdom.
We are living in an era of Collaboratism where
leadership is not by dominance of military hardware or damaging software, but
by leading with examples by building an enduring goodwill by right actions and
in right time for larger goods.
Leadership isn’t altruism. It is seeing beyond
the horizon. A dominant power must endure costs to achieve a collective
benefit. America, since 1945 has often fitted that description, from supporting
NATO to setting up international institutions like the World Bank or funding others
like the United Nations, WHO & others that for last few years USA had
undermined them at every step.
China had astutely taken advantage of the
opening created by USA’s mistakes, filling the vacuum to position itself as the
global leader in pandemic response. It is working to push its own system,
provide material assistance to other countries when the desperation is visible.
The sheer conceit of its move is hard to overstate it was China’s own missteps,
and especially its efforts to glaze the severity and spread of the outbreak that
helped create the very crisis now afflicting much of the world. Yet it
understands that if it is seen as leading, then USA is seen as unwilling to do
so. Curiously, it is positioning itself as binary.
This mind game perception that China is playing
could fundamentally alter the USA position in global politics and hence
leadership in coming decades.
It is painful to observe that follies of a
person at helm has made the global leadership issue a binary and China is happy
playing ball along that it currently is winning.
China wants to turn these early signs of
success into a narrative to tell the world brushing asides its downside of
authoritarian regime. It has learnt that providing global goods can burnish a
rising power’s leadership credentials globally.
When no European state answered Italy’s urgent
appeal for medical equipment and protective gear, China publicly committed resources
to Italy & to EU to fight the pandemic to the worst affected countries in
the union.
China’s advantage in material assistance is
enhanced by the simple fact that most of what the world depends on to fight the
virus & otherwise is made in China. Asides, medicines & antibiotics those
are critical for major diseases, including for COVID 19, it produces the vast
majority of active pharmaceutical ingredients necessary to make them and
fulfils majority of global demands in medicine raw materials.
The USA, by contrast today, lacks the supply
and capacity to meet many of its own demands, let alone to provide aid in
crisis zones elsewhere. Profit motives of US companies moved manufacturing them
to China in last thirty years.
China’s share of the U.S. antibiotics market is more
than 95 percent. Beijing, in contrast, is offering aid precisely when the
global need is greatest that USA is unable to fulfil and extend. Howsoever
opportunistic it may be, it gets optics.
During the 2014–15 Ebola crises, USA led a
coalition of dozens of countries to counter the spread of the disease. The
Trump administration has so far shunned a similar leadership effort to respond
to the coronavirus. Even coordination with allies has been lacking.
China, by contrast, has undertaken a robust
diplomatic campaign and it is working hard to publicize such initiatives. Every story on the front page of its party line
organs shouts of its efforts to help different countries underscoring the
superiority of its approach.
The ultimate success of China’s pursuit to
global leadership will depend as much on what happens in USA and it can still
turn the tide, if it proves capable of doing what is expected of a leader;
managing the problems at home, supplying global public goods, and coordinating
a global response.
Every misstep by USA is a steppingstone for
China towards the pedestal.
A few global events post China’s liberalisation
abased USA’s global leadership to begin with & let us look at these
chronologies to get a feel of it-
·
Breaking up of USSR in 1991 that USA was celebrating as end of cold war
& its global dominance, China quietly expanded its market in the world by
offering basic goods at cheaper cost than any that systematically killed
competitions across globe and gaining scales unmatched globally.
·
While USA was busy after 9/11 in hunting the terrorists & weapons of
mass destructions, China quietly got surefooted by joining WTO in 2001, thereby
accepting the world order and only to change the competitive matrix of the
world to become a dominant player by becoming “Factories to the world”.
·
While in 2007/2008, USA was grappling with financial market meltdown;
China quietly started acquiring listed companies in USA & began its
technology dominance journey emulating Silicon Valley story and created a
matching niche over the decade in Guangzhou in Pearl River Delta.
·
The Paris Agreement of 2016 is a historic accord that brings almost 200
countries together in setting a common target an effort to fight climate
change, USA decided to walk out of the deal and instead was busy exploding MOAB
on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2017.
All these pivot events above gradually allowed
China to get a grip over the world, while US lost its grip by its own motives.
Ultimately, the virus would serve as a wake-up
call, spurring progress on other global challenges requiring USA- Global
cooperation without excluding China. US cannot do well by chanting America
First alone.
The leadership in democracies are tricky till
the true worth of leaders are known and a wrong choice means rapid to dominance
in the world pecking orders that the world is unwilling to accept today by
being what one was.
To be a leader at global stage, to do more for
the world shall be the key and then also do some more when one has already done
a bit more.
Leadership of a nation cannot be transactional
and has to look beyond the immediate consequences and larger public goods. Nor
it is a binary of “them versus us”. Leadership is defined by results not by features.
Characters and strategies both matter in global
leadership, but when it is hard to choose between the two- world must choose
character, but right now the world is in a quagmire where it must find sanity
by sidestepping a megalomaniac and an arrogant selfish.
The world leadership is changing- it will- it
should and it must; pandemic just provided the gateway as a facilitator.
11 June 2020
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