Global Security in Times of Covid 19 Brave New World?
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Caroline Varin
Professors Without Borders
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New Security Challenges
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To those who were lost in this pandemic.
And to Alexia and Adi, for a safer world.
—Caroline Varin
Foreword: COVID-19 and Security
How Has COVID-19 Undermined Security?
Has the pandemic of COVID-19 undermined global security, the security
of countries and the security of individuals? Whilst these are diverse defi-
nitions of security, they share a common concern—on the one hand for a
peaceful world and on the other for individuals to live freely in a tolerant
society. The pandemic has posed challenges to security in each of these
forms. From the global perspective, it has first raised tensions between the
superpowers of China and the US and second demonstrated that the will
of rich countries to help much poorer countries is strictly limited when
their own public’s health is at risk. At the level of individual countries,
it has in some cases increased their tendency to fragment and in others
led to an authoritarian regime which may well outlast the pandemic. In
the case of individuals, it has led to unprecedented forms of monitoring,
which accentuate the growth of the ‘surveillance state’. In each of these
three areas, it has also accentuated the growth of various forms of corrup-
tion and in many countries set back the agenda to address climate change.
This book provides an analysis of these issues from the perspective of
society in a range of countries and is therefore a crucial contribution to
understanding the pandemic’s immediate and longer-term impact.
vii
viii FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY
International Cooperation
The fight against the pandemic started badly as China, the physical origin
of the virus, identified it on 30 December 2019 and reported it to the
WHO on 2 January 2020, which published the information. However,
China seems to have been reluctant to take on board the scale of the
problem until 23 January when the city of Wuhan was completely locked
down, but by this time Chinese sources were quoting case numbers at
about 2300 a multiple of four in four days.1 Nonetheless the response
amongst several countries of the region, such as Taiwan, Thailand and
Singapore was strong and quickly extended to viral testing.
However, once notified by the WHO of a ‘Public Health Emergency
of International Concern’ on 30 January,2 most OECD countries delayed
a response proportionate to the risk, and countries such as Italy, France
and the UK initiated responses which—in terms of mortalities—proved
to be tragically too late.
The response of the US, which in theory had a well-developed strategic
response to a potential pandemic, was a disaster. This reflected the
bombastic claims of the Trump Presidency in which the actual pandemic
was wished away as a diversion, a position which led to at least 600,000
deaths. The surge in the pandemic in mid-2020 coincided with a decision
by the US to withdraw from the WHO, at a time when this UN body
was crucial to inspiring an international co-ordinated response. Further,
the tensions created by President Trump’s consistent references to the
‘Chinese’ virus further raised the stakes in relations between China and
the US, at a time when both countries were sliding into a tariff war,
which would certainly affect the stability and security of the world trading
system. It would also exacerbate tensions in the South China Sea.
Whilst the two superpowers railed at each other’s failures, the richer
countries of the OECD were very slow to support COVID-related
strategies in the low-income countries, which are the target of their devel-
opment aid programmes. In mid-2020 the form of support that was most
urgent included Personal Protective (PPE) equipment and ventilators, for
both of which the demand was critical within the donor countries them-
selves and for which international supplies were very limited. China was
the country which had the greatest capacity to deliver these products to
poorer countries but not surprisingly did so in limited amounts with the
maximum publicity.
FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY ix
Until late 2020 it remained uncertain as to whether there would be
sufficient vaccines available to have a global impact, but an international
procurement and distribution body, COVAX,3 was established in antici-
pation of their availability. By early 2021, it was clear that there were at
least six effective vaccines available from different companies with bases
in the US, the UK, Germany, Russia and China. However, whilst the
EU and the UK made substantial grants to COVAX, the availability of
vaccines, as a result of manufacturing hitches, proved far more limited
than anticipated. The US and the UK, with relatively robust supplies,
adopted a policy of vaccinating all those who were willing to be vaccinated
before engaging in international distribution. The EU’s procurement
strategy proved very inadequate and the international distribution which
it allowed, though substantial by mid-2021, was limited in relation to
the need in low-income countries. In fact, the world’s largest corporate
manufacturer of vaccines, the Serum Institute, is in Pune, India, but as
global demand for vaccines increased, the government of India, faced
with an escalating pandemic, banned vaccine exports in March 2021.
This cut off supplies to a range of countries both on a bilateral basis
and through COVAX. These shortfalls, which could have been avoided
by more effective and balanced international action, accentuated a sense
of global injustice and of insecurity.
The Domestic Front
For some low- and middle-income countries, the pandemic significantly
weakened the grip of the government as public services became over-
whelmed by the acceleration of the virus, and created a vacuum into
which mafia and quasi-mafia groups inserted themselves. This was partic-
ularly true in some countries, where the informal sector is large, and may
account for more than 40% of GDP. Thus, the phenomenon was strong
in contexts such as Colombia, Peru and Brazil. In these cases, existing
groups with a capacity for violence used the pandemic both to enforce
lockdowns and to win support from the population by supplying food
and medical equipment, and in these cases the writ of the government
was seriously weakened.
In some very large countries such as the US and India, the federal
nature of government made it difficult to that lockdown ensure that lock-
down rules were applied across the country and that PPE equipment was
available on an equal basis across constituent states. In fact, in the US
x FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY
State Governors adopted very different approaches to lockdown, group
gatherings and mask wearing. This meant that they had a ‘bigger impact
on the direction of pandemic policies than the federal government’, and
states with more preventive measures had lower rates of infections and
deaths.4 This played directly into the tensions in interparty relationships,
which were on display in the riot at the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Although the Biden Presidency was ultimately able to orchestrate
and accelerate an equitable vaccine rollout, the huge mortality figures
confirmed the cost of earlier delays at the state level. The historian and
lawyer Roger Babbit has argued that this has further undermined the
viability of the current US constitution.5
In India, the credibility of the central government was seriously under-
mined when a ‘third wave’ of the virus broke out in early 2021 and a new
lockdown was imposed, necessitated by the clear rejection in some states
of rules on social distancing. Furthermore, when the central government
finally recognised the priority of mass vaccination, final orders were only
placed in March 2021 although the Serum Institute is located in Pune.
Key Examples
Contributors to this book describe in detail the impact on security of these
and related outcomes of the pandemic. I refer here to some outstanding
and dramatic examples. The influence of mafia groups is illustrated in
the case of Mexico by the fact that the daughter of ‘El Chapo’ (Shorty)
Guzman, the sometime boss of La Linea (one of the two largest drug
dealing cartels in the early 2000s), was active in handing out boxes with
food and medical supplies with El Chapo’s picture on it.6 This can only
have strengthened the hand of the cartel in the course of the pandemic. In
Sicily, it was the Cosa Nostra who were active in distributing food parcels
and in Calabria it was the powerful mafia group, the N’drangheta, who
enforced the lockdown.7
In some cases, governments used the excuse of lockdown to control
the opposition and implemented draconian measures. In Thailand, where
political opposition exploded in late 2020, the military government could
present crowd control measures as a response to the pandemic, effec-
tively limiting the growth of the burgeoning Future Forward party 8 —a
position which would certainly threaten security in the longer run. In
China, where citizen surveillance is already well-developed, the central
government ensured that in Wuhan and all over Hubei Province the
FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY xi
administration took exceptional measures to ensure a tough lockdown,
to the extent of only allowing one person with an ID card to leave a resi-
dence each day to buy food. This was monitored by drones equipped with
loudspeakers for the police to speak from the sky. The film Coronation by
Ai Wei Wei, released in August 2020, has shown how much resentment
this created.
Corruption in procurement is always resented by the public, even if
welcomed by a small number of fixers and beneficiaries. The COVID
pandemic has seen many billions of dollars spent on equipment purchase
and the IMF has provided very large loans to low-income countries to
facilitate such purchases. Thus, Cameroun received an ‘Emergency Loan’
of $256M from the IMF to respond to COVID-19 in May 2020, with a
commitment by the IMF to lend a further $570M over the following
three years. Both loans were subject to conventional requirements for
open reporting on the identity of selected bidders for the relevant
contracts, a commitment on which Cameroun subsequently sought and
obtained a reversal by the end of the year. Similar loans from the IMF,
totalling $7.97 Bn, were obtained by Egypt in 2020 but by mid-2021,
only $286M of procurement had been accounted for publicly.9
Yet such lapses were not unique to low- and middle-income coun-
tries. The UK government allowed a huge procurement programme to
be managed without regard for long-standing procedures, although it
is an active member of the international ‘Open Government Procure-
ment’ initiative. In the course of 2020, the government disbursed £18Bn
in COVID-related expenditure, of which £3.7 Bn was directed to the
purchase of equipment with contracts issued to 73 suppliers. Detailed
analysis by Transparency International UK (TI) has shown that 24 of
these were issued to companies with known connections to the Conserva-
tive Party, and of these 13 had been formed less than ten days before the
contract award10 . The award system was dependent on a dual list system
of potential suppliers divided into a ‘fast track’ and a standard track, with
the former acquiring a much higher proportion of the contracts. Elements
of these apparently corrupt processes occurred in a range of countries,
accentuating the lack of confidence in the public sector.
Further, equipment acquired through dubious bidding procedures
could be counterfeit. This danger was already highlighted by Interpol
in March 2020, specifying the ‘dark web’ as a key source of counterfeit
products. Later in the year, Interpol organised ‘Operation Rangers’ a co-
operative exercise between 90 countries which identified many thousand
xii FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY
shipments of such products. The US Department of Home Security is
particularly active in relation to potential counterfeit vaccines, and by May
2021 had already recovered $48M in all types of counterfeit vaccines, and
closed down 80 sites on the ‘dark web’ purporting to sell these products.
Such websites were focused on customers in countries such as Mexico and
Brazil with a record in dealing with counterfeit drugs.
On a global basis, there was a fall of seven per cent in GDP in 2020,
with a more acute fall in some low-income countries with a dependence
on commodity exports. As a consequence, the pressure for migration to
both the EU, from Africa and the Middle East, and to the US from
Central America was acute, and organised crime gangs were quick to
respond to this, in some cases promoting ever more dangerous routes.
One survey of Arab youth found that nearly a third were more likely to
seek to migrate after COVID-19.11
In the case of countries in the Sahel where large scale violence orches-
trated by jihadist and ethnic minority groups has been active for more
than a decade, the additional spread of COVID-19 raised the pressure
to ‘escape’, with sea routes attracting larger flows than those across the
Sahara had done in the recent past. In the spring of 2021, attempted
arrivals in Italy from Libya and Tunisia by sea could reach as many as a
thousand per day. In the US, an attempt by President Biden to restrict
new entries to 15,000 per day were almost immediately rescinded as
domestic political pressure forced him to double this, whilst illegal cross-
ings greatly exceeded either figure. Intense pressure for immigration,
facilitated by organised crime, is bound to heighten the public’s sense
of insecurity.
Questions of Corruption,
Climate Change and Inequality
Each of the factors discussed feed into the questions of corruption on
a global basis and the fight to accommodate climate change, both of
which accelerate the perception of a decrease in public security. TI’s
annual ‘Corruption Perception Index’ regularly places the UK fairly high
in the group of ‘least corrupt countries’.12 Given that the index is particu-
larly geared to capturing the interface between government and business,
the scandal of equipment procurement undermines the credibility of this
ranking. However, other OECD countries have experienced comparable
cases: in Germany in mid-2020, two elected MPs were exposed as having
FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY xiii
been directly associated with equipment purchase worth several million
Euros.13 Elsewhere, huge upward price movements in PPE equipment
in mid-2020 offered opportunities for organised crime—and well-placed
individuals—to take a cut on the transactions involved. Counterfeiting
was not limited to masks and PPE equipment but eventually extended to
vaccines.
Climate change was recognised by 2020 as the key issue of our time,
with the COP26 Conference due in 2021. But in the course of the year,
the pandemic had become profound enough to raise questions about
whether this could indeed be a face to face event, suggesting a less resilient
and so more insecure outcome.
This was a minor question in relation to the huge expenditure,
which OECD governments expended or planned to expend to fight the
pandemic. The EU put together a fund of Euros 750 Bn, to assist member
states, which was for the first time subject to a joint guarantee. This was
partly in the form of a loan to governments and so a slow recovery from
the pandemic will endanger financial stability in Europe.
All G7 member states expanded their public debt to an aggregate 130%
of GDP, previously regarded as quite unacceptable. It was widely agreed
that this was only sustainable if interest rates remained at a level close
to one per cent, and that they would in any case put huge pressure on
government budgets. Thus, the projected annual support to low-income
developing countries of $100 Bn per year in support of climate change
action might well be in jeopardy, with grave implications for security.
A further and little recognised consequence of the quantitative easing
employed by most G7 central banks was the explosion of billionaire
wealth triggered by an increase in the global stock market valuation of
thirty percent in 2020.14 In the course of that year, the share of GDP
held by billionaires increased dramatically across a range of countries.
From an average of 10% in 2010, it grew to 20% in the US, 30% in
Sweden and an amazing 15% even in China in 2020. This was concurrent
with a widespread debate about ‘inequality’ within countries, which had
already been encapsulated by the Presidential primary campaign of Bernie
Sanders who identified the ‘billionaire class’ as a target for the next US
administration. The fact that financial measures to counter COVID-19
exacerbated this only added to profound public doubts about the fairness
and security of the financial system.
xiv FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY
Conclusion
There is plenty in this book to guide us to some insights into the ques-
tions I mentioned at the beginning of this Foreword, though real answers
will not be available for many years, given the unique nature of the expe-
rience of the pandemic. In relation to international security, it is clear
that the institutional system has been weakened by a failure to collaborate
effectively at every stage of the crisis, a position confirmed by WHO’s
own report of May 2021.15 COVAX failed in its prime task of being
the global agency for the purchase and distribution of vaccines, leaving
much of this to ad hoc decisions by governments and companies. In spite
of a specific initiative by President Biden to make vaccine manufacturing
patents a public good, this was rejected by the EU and other relevant
governments in mid-2021. Whilst the crisis has highlighted the need for
a global approach to public health, it has also shown how far the world
has to go to achieve it.
There are few countries that emerge with a heightened sense of security
from the crisis. This is especially true of those already designated as ‘fragile
states’ (notably those of the Sahel), where COVID-19 has intersected
with ongoing civil conflicts and increased the pressure for migration. But
it is also true in larger middle-income countries such as Mexico, Brazil and
Colombia, where the weak administration of public health, the active role
of coercive violent groups and populist politics have converged to further
inflate the consequences of the pandemic. In high-income countries such
as France, Germany and the UK the incidence of corruption in procure-
ment scandals has weakened the credibility of governments (though the
UK’s successful vaccine roll-out was recognised in regional elections in
mid-2021).
The question of individuals’ willingness to be subject to ‘surveillance
for the public good’ has been sorely tested. Where it has been used to
subdue the opposition, as in Thailand, it has been very unpopular. In
China, it appears to have been widely accepted, in spite of some deter-
mined protests. In Europe, whilst political leaders have been surprised
by the willingness of the public to be ‘locked down’ in some countries
(such as France), there has been a deep resentment at the policing of
these arrangements. In the US, the popular objection to such measures
has rendered them rather ineffective, but also prevented the extensive use
of surveillance systems. Overall, the international experience appears to
FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY xv
suggest that individuals will accept a higher degree of surveillance for a
sense of public security than was expected.
Overall this book confirms that the pandemic has weakened both actual
and perceived security. It also shows the scale of the action needed to
reverse this consequence at every level. A repeat of this pandemic or the
failure to constrain another one would be a further blow from the security
which arises from international solidarity.
Laurence Cockcroft
Notes
1. Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (London: Allen Lane,
2021), p 170.
2. The defining moments of the COVID 19 pandemic, in How an Outbreak
became a Pandemic, Independent Panel for Preparedness and Response,
March 2021, Geneva, “WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dash-
board,” World Health Organization, May 4, 2021, https://covid19.who.
int/table?tableChartType=heat.
3. Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access.
4. Julie VanDusky-Allen and Olga Shvetsova, “How America’s Partisan
Divide over Pandemic Responses Played Out in the States,” The Conver-
sation, May 13, 2021, https://theconversation.com/how-americas-par
tisan-divide-over-pandemic-responses-played-out-in-the-states-157565.
5. Philip Babbit, “We Are All Failed States Now,” in Covid-19 and The
Future of Conflict, ed. Hal Brands and Francis J. Gavin (Maryland: John
Hopkins Press, 2020).
6. Chapter 2, Dr. Oscar Palma, University of Rosario, Colombia.
7. Chapter 12, Organised Crime during and after the pandemic, Virginia
Comelli, Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime.
8. Securitisation of the corona virus in Asian countries, Dr. Sipim Sornban-
lang.
9. ‘IMF Covid-19 Emergency Loans, A view from Four Countries’, Trans-
parency International, March 30, 2021, https://www.transparency.org/
en/news/imf-covid-19-emergency-loans-cameroon-ecuador-egypt-nig
eria.
10. “Track and Trace,” Transparency International UK, March April,
2021, https://www.transparency.org.uk/track-and-trace-uk-PPE-procur
ement-corruption-risk-VIP-lane-research.
11. Chapter 3, Europe a Geographical Expression? Arthur de Lied Kirke,
Mathew Robinson.
xvi FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY
12. CPI report shows the UK came 9th; Andy King, “Consumer Price Infla-
tion, UK: December 2020,” Office for National Statistics, January 20,
2021, https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bullet
ins/consumerpriceinflation/december2020.
13. Georg Nuesslein acted as an intermediary for a China based PPE manu-
facturing company and Nikolas Loebel earned Euros 250,000 in a parallel
deal; Guy Chazan, “Germany’s CDU Rocked by a Pandemic Procure-
ment Scandal,” Financial Times, March 7, 2021, https://www.ft.com/
content/85c06c2d-2c80-4e94-a792-1539ad306a5b.
14. Richir Shama, “The Billionaire Boom,” Financial Times, May 14, 2021,
https://www.ft.com/content/747a76dd-f018-4d0d-a9f3-4069bf2f5a93.
15. How an Outbreak became a Pandemic, Independent Panel for Prepared-
ness and Response, March 2021, Geneva.
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Babbit, Philip. “We Are All Failed States Now.” In Covid-19 and the Future of
Conflict, edited by Hal Brands and Francis J., Gavin, Maryland: John Hopkins
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John Hopkins University Press, 2020.
Chazan, Guy. “Germany’s CDU Rocked by a Pandemic Procurement Scandal.”
Financial Times, March 7, 2021. https://www.ft.com/content/85c06c2d-
2c80-4e94-a792-1539ad306a5b.
How an Outbreak became a Pandemic, Independent Panel for Preparedness and
Response, March 2021, Geneva.
“IMF Covid-19 Emergency Loans, A view from Four Countries.” Transparency
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imf-covid-19-emergency-loans-cameroon-ecuador-egypt-nigeria#.
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“Track and Trace.” Transparency International UK, March April, 2021.
https://www.transparency.org.uk/track-and-trace-uk-PPE-procurement-cor
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FOREWORD: COVID-19 AND SECURITY xvii
Laurence Cockcroft is a development economist who has worked across Africa
for governments, companies, international organisations and charitable founda-
tions. He is a co-founder of Transparency International and a former Chairman
of Transparency International (UK). He has written widely on corruption-
related issues and is the author of ‘Global Corruption: Money Power and Ethics
in the Modern World’ and ‘Unmasked: Corruption in the West ’ (co-authored
with Anne-Christine Wegener) (Published by IB Tauris in 2012 and 2017
respectively).
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without all the contributors who
were willing to take the time to share their experiences and analysis on the
COVID crisis in this highly unusual year. We hope that with these lessons
learnt, we can be better prepared to safeguard our future and put in place
the policies needed to protect those most vulnerable, wherever they may
be.
I am particularly grateful to:
Mitchell, for all the brainstorming sessions since March 2020.
Njomeza Blakcori, Jeanette Batchelor and Keaton McGruder for
reviewing these chapters with me.
My team at Professors Without Borders, George, Colin, Rachel, Kasia,
Richard, Hannah, Tessy, Rebekah, Sam … for keeping me optimistic
about the future, no matter how grim it sometimes looks.
And to Alexia, Daniel and Adi, for making it all matter.
xix
Praise for Global Security in Times
of Covid-19
“Will the twenty-first be the century of global pandemics as the twen-
tieth was the century of world wars and revolutions? Is this the sobering
reality of the ‘brave new world’ which lies ahead of us? This timely and
provocative collection of essays provides an acute and sustained analysis by
an outstanding group of scholars of how Covid-19 has begun to reshape
our thinking about security. One of the very few books whose own scale
matches that of the challenge it describes.”
—Christopher Coker, Director, LSE IDEAS, London, UK
“The team which Caroline Varin has assembled demonstrates both the
deep implications of covid for national and international institutions and
its likely impact on all our futures. It is particularly strong in assessing the
impact of covid at the grass roots across a range of countries. Whether
we consider personal security, the security of the state or the ability of the
world to secure a path through climate change, the epidemic has opened
a new and dangerous prospect. This is a thought provoking read shot
through with original insights.”
—Laurence Cockcroft, Co-founder Transparency International
xxi
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Caroline Varin
2 Latin America: The Covid-19 Pandemic and Security
in Latin America 17
Oscar Palma
3 The American Century in the Wake of COVID 43
Michael Stephens
4 Europe: A Geographical Expression or Unity
of Purpose? 65
Arthur de Liedekerke and Matthew Robinson
5 Africa, Virus and Vulnerability: COVID-19 Pandemic
in Africa 91
Freedom Chukwudi Onuoha
and Casmir Chukwuka Mbaegbu
6 Long COVID and the New Middle East 127
Mitchell Belfer
7 The Securitization of the Coronavirus in Asian
Countries: A Paradox of National Security
and Human Security During the COVID-19 Crisis 145
Sipim Sornbanlang
xxiii
