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(14)
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!!!!!!!!
It is fair to explain for those not familiar with soccer that self-goal isn’t really a proof of mastery of the game. Selfgooooaaal!!!!!!!! is really bad!!!. This is what is here public information about Sweden (from The Warsaw Institute, 2019): “The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) in its report published at the beginning of February claims that Russia is preparing to begin and conduct a large-scale war.” “The number of Swedish soldiers will increase for the first time since the ‘70s. The objectives provide for the possible Russian attack on Sweden, which is neutral after all. In six years, the size of the army is to increase from 33 thousand to 50 thousand soldiers. The number of military call-ups within the national service (re-established in 2018) will increase as well – there will be four brigades, instead of two. Aviation and submarine fleet are to be reinforced (titbit: in the 1950s, neutral Sweden was preceded only by the USA, USSR and Great Britain in this matter). In case of attack, Sweden is preparing to be able to defend itself for three months.” Please not that in 1950 Sweden was ready and more than able to defend itself. Who doesn’t remember the innovative Stridsvagn 103, or admire the Saab family of warplanes? When you write: “Now he and their whole nation will reap what they sawed.”, now everything has changed on war, it is three months of resistance until they come. This is the general NATO EU strategy, as emphasized many times by NATO SecGen Stoltenberg, basically defense free of charge at point of delivery, like your healthcare and education systems; the bipartisan ERI/EDI (Biden’s fulminations at MSC 2019 are scary) are a just a down payment. “They” pay for healthcare and borrow money for education, yet still provide free defense; Gotland is an abstraction for the vast majority, they don’t even know it is red line, even when the CNN anchor recites it from the teleprompter. You might be right with the above: compliment”, but let’s see if anything changes after first responders missing basic PPE are battling the virus in the US. Aside from this, I wish you good luck with Sweden’s particular approach in handling the pandemic. We are all in this, every life is precious.
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!
True, Steven, we are witnessing a peculiar new way of doing "invisible" politics in Berlin that they seem to like and do very well with: they love everything that the U.S.A. and Israel detest, and appear to hate, their Nazi past, displaying guilt complex and an excessive love for peace ... Not only do they make luxury cars, but their social engineers have managed to raise anti-Judaism and anti-Americanism to such high levels , as in the Third Reich: getting 20 million Mohammedans into the European Union. This is how they can openly declare: "Deutsche sind keine Antisemiten"
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. )
With all my respect: it is not so strange, Franklin, in my opinion, has clearly stated that the French, Germans and all the Europeans in the Union are being attacked by a much worse virus than the communist dictatorships that " they play "on the board of geopolitics. That is something very serious and that is why Spain does not ask for help from China or Russia for their tragedy against the coronavirus, but from NATO ... Do you know why Mrs. Dempsey explains it this way? because France and Germany are playing dangerously against a disgusting anti-Americanism and with a criminal anti-Judaism that little by little is destroying the Judeo-Christian France that has ceased to exist to make way for the Mohammedan exclusion zones where the French police cannot even enter ... That is very serious ... As serious as the "CORONA" or perhaps worse ... In my opinion, friend Franklin, the political scientist Judy Dempsey has thrown at you an overwhelming metaphor "playing with death in a pandemic frivolous with politics, it will give you back many more corpses than a virus »« the war for power in the Eurasian continent will give you millions of dead »And your way of life and your freedom will disappear ... Greetings, friend Franklin, I hope you don't confuse me with an "incurable apocalyptic".
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?
Resilience is used as Pavlovian reinforcement, a “Carthago delenda est” meme, always pointing to the upcoming conflagration, a cyclopic clash of civilizations. The author incorrectly points to the use of fossil fuels as resilience, instead of the German universities leading in solar, nuclear, and such (Intermarium is in a distant future, and lignite will still be a major source of energy for decades). Populist movements, even in extreme, such as Brexit, are reactions, and are well documented; Johnson took advantage of an existing state of affairs after years of Milton Friedman. Fake news, that is about education; cyber, same. What is probably, unfortunately, true, is the 60—70% infection rate and the inability of the health system to handle a large number of serious, ICU type of cases; Germany is not on the list as of now. These medical systems will collapse in the first days of any war in our times. Imagine the hospitals after a tactical nuclear strike, preceded by EMP detonations that took out any electronic/electrical devices; strategic strike, even worse. The author is right to point that the states didn’t have access to the wealth stashed away in tax havens, tax it and use the money to invest in medical research or even buy PPE’s for medical personnel. It is true that today NHS personnel gets incredible perks such as free parking at hospitals. Trillions will be made shorting in the stock market. Taxing that money for the pittance that could be used for vaccines would be unacceptable, of course.
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.
The author has some kind of ADHD, first speaking about coronavirus and China (agree with a few first paragraph) then for no clear reason starts talking about Russia, Ukraine and Syria... Like really, no clear reason found.
The TE article referenced by the author is a great summary on what deep time has put on planet Earth in the last 4.55 billion years. The Covid virion, not even alive, is known for fifty years, and we knew it was coming. It isn’t the first time, the bubonic plague came three times; still no known vaccines, while still effective antibiotics might one day stop working. It isn’t even that we didn’t know how it looks like when it comes, Hollywood shared two wargames: The Andromeda Strain and Contagion. We also know that pandemic agents have been used as weapons of war, Japan’s Unit 731 deploying many times bio-weapons against China in WWII; operation Cherry Blossoms at Night never came to fruition and San Diego was spared of the September 1945 planned attack. This leads to the main idea of the post: nobody identified correctly what Covid-19 is: biological warfare (Gaya’s response to an invasive species), and nobody appears prepared. In a bizarre turn of events, China accused the US of developing and deploying the virus (how we got here, longer story, a war of words, later retracted) in 2019, Military Games. That would immediately indicate that China wasn’t prepared to handle biological warfare, same as WWII. In theory once a new disease was suspected, the biological warfare military units were supposed to be immediately alerted and take action. In the Hollywood war games the military has sophisticated everything (mobile labs, transport infrastructure, adequate protection, most and foremost, plans of action rehearsed and updated many times) to deal with the pandemic. It is a shock that NATO didn’t kick into full bacteriological warfare mode from the first days of the outbreak; the NATO SecGen always asking for more from the US taxpayer, be it blood or treasure, is nowhere to be seen. Defender 2020, a beefed-up Reforger is now cancelled. It was a division-scaled exercise testing the Army’s ability to deliver a force from “fort in the US to port in the US,” and then to ports in Europe, and from there to operational areas throughout Europe from Germany to Poland to the Baltic states and other Eastern Europe, Nordic countries and even Georgia, free of charge. The money spent by the US taxpayer on just fixing the roads for this exercise wasn’t spent on PPE’s for the now exposed medical and emergency personnel, now sacrificed (or hospital beds, ventilators, vaccines). In the Day After, Hollywood shares with us another war game, strategic nuclear exchange. We shall never learn.
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