It won’t happen here, not in Europe. It’s taking place far away, across the world, in China. Such was the refrain until the coronavirus struck northern Italy and with a terrible vengeance.
Until then, much attention in Europe was focused on how the Chinese Communist Party had imposed draconian methods to contain the virus and equally draconian methods to silence criticism. Such measures were not for the West.
Well, it has taken the first road now after European governments saw what happened in Italy. As a result, most of Europe is now in shutdown. French President Emmanuel Macron has put France on what he calls a war footing in order to fight the virus.
Depending on where you live, some people believe the measures adopted by their governments are legitimate. Others—some of my Berlin neighbors for example (and, by the way, two of them are doctors)—believe the reactions are over-exaggerated. Forget the fact that thousands across Europe have already died. And don’t even think about how poor countries will cope. The instruction “wash your hands with soap as often as possible” is a luxury for some populations.
This virus, so well explained in the Economist, knows no bounds. But as the magazine pointed out, the West should have been prepared, particularly after the SARS virus that swept across parts of Asia in 2003.
The reaction by Singapore and South Korea to the coronavirus showed what they had learned from SARS. They had strengthened their health infrastructure and medical training to cope with any future virus outbreak. And when it broke out, the authorities kept the public informed. Resilience kicked in.
Resilience was one of those buzzwords used by the EU and NATO after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and its invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Following the Russian aggression, the Europeans and NATO allies decided to adopt resilience measures.
It really didn’t amount to much in substance. The energy sector did become a bit more diversified—although German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stubbornly stuck to the Nord Stream 2 project, which will make Germany permanently dependent on Russian gas—but Europe as a whole didn’t become much more resilient.
NATO members have increased their defense spending and improved on the slow modernization of their armed forces, but duplication still exists across the armaments sector, and inside the alliance there is fierce competition instead of cooperation over what military hardware to purchase. Intelligence sharing is lacking and democracies continue to be vulnerable to cyber attacks, fake news, and populist movements that mock cooperation and solidarity.
For all the talk about resilience, it has not created real momentum for cooperation or preparedness among EU and NATO members.
If anything, the example of refugees fleeing the war in Syria or migrants wishing to reach Europe to start a new life has shown a resilience in Europe, but a negative one.
The continuing bombardment of civilians in Idlib by Russian and Syrian regime forces and the shocking conditions refugees are forced to endure on some of Greece’s islands and along the Greek-Turkish border has shown the shabby, shameful side of resilience. Europe’s reaction to the refugee problem is lockdown, similar to its reaction to the coronavirus. The latter has conveniently become a way to keep refugees out.
This negative kind of resilience contradicts the idea of resilience. Resilience is about having a long-term approach to protecting vital infrastructures essential for security, stability, and for reassuring the citizens. This means investing in research, energy, health, and education.
Too often, some Western governments have looked to the short term, concerned with keeping budgets under strict control, concerned with cutting back on public infrastructure investments, concerned with saving money. But if research and the health structures—which underpin aspects of resilience—are neglected, governments will not be prepared for a crisis.
Just consider the lack of ventilators in countries as wealthy as France and Germany. The coronavirus has exposed the basic lack of resilience.
It has also shown another aspect of the West’s weak resilience: the lack of cooperation and empathy among Europeans—especially for Italy—and the acrimony between Europe and the United States.
At a time when the United States, with its vast reservoir of research centers and top medical clinics, should be working hand in glove with its allies and offering inspired leadership, the latter is completely absent.
U.S. President Donald Trump (and, until recently, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson) has been in denial over the coronavirus. Just take a look at journalist David Leonhardt’s recent analysis in the New York Times of Trump’s handling of the pandemic over time. (No doubt the Trump administration will deny that article and continue to bash the media.)
And this is another requirement for resilient democracies: that governments build up trust by communicating and telling the truth rather than having social media set the agenda.
Merkel tried doing just that during a press conference on March 11, 2020: “When the virus is out there, and the population has no immunity, and no vaccination or therapy exists, then a high percentage—experts say 60 to 70 percent of the population—will be infected, so long as this remains the case,” she said.
The subtext of her remarks was that the pandemic had caught the Europeans off guard. Resilience and cooperation had taken a big knock.
The coronavirus is the West’s big test.
Comments(8)
The US fell on their own trip wire. We Swedes I bet share information. We are better off since most of the shelves in at least my supermarket doesn’t gap empty. I have seen videos from supermarkets in parts of the US. All the shelves gap totally empty. There clearly is a difference in thinking. Trump didn’t want to share information, he even hid it. Now he and their whole nation will reap what they sawed. Looks like God is forgetting to bless America. No more God state, that is all in the past. We see what Jabba de Hut are doing! He tried to comfort his people at the same time as he was clandestine with information to the Europeans by saying in a muffled way that the virus will all go away by springtime. And it certainly will for some parts of the world. But not for the northern US states and Canada. Selfgoooaaal!!!!!!! And Trump also tried to make further politics of the virus when he shut out the Europeans from the US, with the exception of Britain. So the virus in Britain is less contagious? Selfgooooaaal!!!!!!!!
Germany closed its land borders to stem the tide of the virus. Yet, air traffic into Germany from Iran continued. Why? Iran is one of the epicenters of Covid-19! Iran is also the epicenter of the drive to destroy Israel, the only Jewish State. Meanwhile Germany is the staunchest Western European appeaser of the Islamic Republic. In the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people, the German response was feeble (to say the least). Now, only 75 years later, Berlin has championed trade with Iran in an effort to boost their economy and make them even stronger. This is a black mark against the EU and all the countries of the NATO West. In other words, history, morality and the Jews be damned, profits are all that matter. Many in America, including its president, find this position unconscionable. Why should Washington continue to support any nation with such a policy? Germany has absolutely no shame!
What a strange article; the author speaks about her obsessions regarding the unity of the West, i.e. and the link between EU and Nato! She combines everything together without any logic, Crimea, Idlib, Syrian refugees, etc...Why not the cimate change. Here in France we have absolutely nothing to do with all this, trying to prevent the spread of the covid-19 epidemic. For God's sake, Mrs. Dempsey, stop your nonsense. )
At Idlib, Syria is fighting for her territorial integrity. Turkey wants impose her conditions in violation of a country's sovereignty. Probably a political solution is needed there based on genuine aspirations of the Syrian people .
I am a little surprised that the EU has not provided additional respiratory ventilators to Italy. Many of those Covid-19 deaths are due to the reality that Italian hospitals can not provide respiratory ventilators to patients that need them and they are experiencing respiratory arrest and complete respiratory failure. According to a detailed article in the Journal Lancet titled "COVID-19 and Italy: what next?" published on March 13, 2020 by two Italian doctors. The mean age of those who have died in Italy was 81 years and more than two-thirds of these patients had diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, or cancer, or were former smokers. It is therefore true that these patients had underlying health conditions, but according to the article they had acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pneumonia, needed respiratory support, and would not have died otherwise. The article also indicates that among those who have died the survival time from admission to an ICU unit is 1–2 weeks. It is obvious that other EU nations are not shipping respiratory ventilators to Italy because they are assuming they too will need everyone they have. They union is not really much of a union right now, it's every nation trying to save their own people. NATO needs to be playing a big role now especially in coordinating all medical resources available in Europe and providing logistical support to the movement of those resources. I am not seeing that happening.
This article is full of non-sequiturs. Random thoughts and words strung together: energy sector, NATO, defense spending, Russian annexation of Crimea, cyber attacks, fake news and populist movements, refugees fleeing war, resilience, etc. It all ends with “The coronavirus is the West’s big test”. Was this a computer-generated article?
Lost in all of the distraction of the Coronavirus – and the clear lack of cooperation among NATO members in addressing this pandemic for example, are a number of related issues that all governments need to address namely: climate change; overpopulation; massive environmental degradation; automation and income inequality; along with massive human suffering for most of the worlds inhabitants. Getting governments to agree on any of this will require a series shared, globally experienced and painful events. As per Jeremy Bentham “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure” Until the pain generated by our collective arrogance, stupidity and greed, overcomes the pleasure gained by conducting ourselves in the aforementioned way, mankind will never make any sustained progress whatsoever. In fact I believe the human race on our present course, the future of the mankind hangs in the balance
The west says the chicoms are liars. So you can blame your own remiss for the pickle you are in now.
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