We need a global response to covid as urgent as that against Russian aggression

By Mike Gerson | March 7, 2022

The global response to the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine has been shockingly effective.

NATO (created in October 1949) has been a flexible instrument of power and deterrence. The European Union (created in November 1993) has displayed unexpected unity of purpose. Even the various organs of the United Nations (created in October 1945) have shown a preference for the idealism embodied in the U.N.’s own Universal Declaration of Human Rights (signed in December 1948).

Discovering the enduring strength of these 20th-century liberal ideals and institutions has been like finding a beat-up 1949 Hudson Commodore, putting the key in the ignition and having the engine start with a pleasing purr.

We should be encouraged that 20th-century institutions, to this point, have been relatively effective against 20th-century threats. If only we could put the same faith in our institutions’ response to 21st-century problems. For when it comes to the dangers of the 21st century, the global community appears dramatically less prepared.

Our 20th-century institutions were specifically designed to prevent the rise of a hegemonic power in Europe that might conquer or intimidate the continent and threaten world peace. Russian President Vladimir Putin is the spiritual offspring of the fascist rulers of the 1930s and ’40s, and of the Soviet Union dictators of the Cold War. Though Ukraine is a 21st-century war, it remains a 20th-century challenge.

But challenges such as slowing the impact of global warming and preventing pandemics are more difficult for our existing institutions to address than tanks crossing a border. The 21st-century threats require current sacrifice for longer-term benefits — which is always a tough political sell. And it is particularly tough in a highly polarized electorate, where the whole idea of expert scientific knowledge is in dispute.

Take the global fight against covid-19 in particular. No one can deny that the distribution of vaccine doses has been obscenely unjust. In high-income countries, some 72 percent of people have received at least two coronavirus vaccine doses; in low-income countries it is only 5.5 percent. Of over 4.7 billion coronavirus tests administered so far, about 22 million have been in low-income countries — about 0.4 percent of the whole. The cost is being paid in economic disruption; in school closures where remote learning is not an option; and in the growth of a massive genetic pool where dangerous variants continue to emerge.

The global institution charged with understanding and confronting this problem — the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator — estimates that $16 billion in funding is necessary just to respond to immediate needs. So far, the world has donated a pathetic 5 percent of what is required.

In all this, the Biden administration has demonstrated the difference between compassion and leadership. The administration has certainly been compassionate. It has pledged to donate more than 1 billion vaccine doses to less-developed countries and has delivered nearly 500 million already. And the United States Agency for International Development has mustered an effort to help get shots into arms.

The administration is rightly proud of these humane acts. What is missing, however, is a global response to covid that has some relationship to the size and urgency of the actual need. If the United States doesn’t frame, coordinate and raise funds for an adequate response, such an effort will not spontaneously generate. And the administration’s failure of will and purpose in this matter might eventually be seen as a major foreign policy failure.

What we have seen so far can’t be called leadership. Last September’s Global Covid-19 Summit was a slapdash affair that alienated some of its participants. The administration promised a follow-up summit in the first quarter of this year. But the deadline is approaching and no date for the conference has been set. Even if that meeting takes place, the Biden administration’s paltry $5 billion budget request for the global covid crisis will inspire more derision than generosity in others.

These delays and half-measures demonstrate an unavoidable focus on Ukraine. But the White House staff should be capable of focusing on more than one thing at a time. The treatment of this issue demonstrates a lack of high-level White House engagement and sponsorship.

We need institutions — and leaders — that can respond to familiar threats while preparing for the next generation of less-familiar dangers.