Inept Multilateral System: Council on Foreign Relations

With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, “international cooperation has been missing in action and global solidarity has been AWOL,” reports the Financial Times. Instead of confronting the shared threat, countries take unilateral steps to protect themselves, exchanging blame for the pandemic. The Group of Seven, Group of Twenty and the United Nations have taken limited actions. The G7 finance ministers and central bank governors issued a joint statement on economic impacts, promising to apply all fiscal and monetary tools to “restore confidence and economic growth.” The next day, the same group failed to release a joint statement on political and security implications after the United States insisted on referring to “Wuhan virus,” blaming China for the pandemic. The G20 virtual summit made general commitments instead of pledging specific measures. Meanwhile, the UN launched a $2 billion appeal to help less developed countries: “The scale of human suffering could be catastrophic as the disease takes hold in less developed countries, particularly weak and war-torn nations where the majority of the world’s poor now live – and where doctors, nurses, hospital beds, masks, and ventilators are in much shorter supply.” The plan is a drop in the bucket compared for the large population in need. – YaleGlobal