This commentary was first on the Asialink Insights website. It is part of a series of commentaries curated by the Australian Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, in collaboration with Asialink (University of Melbourne). Anthony Milner, Visiting Professor at AEI, is Co-Chair of the Australian Committee, together with Ric Smith AO.
A new ‘smaller’ multilateralism could emerge from this crisis, says senior diplomatic editor with The Times of India, Indrani Bagchi.
When we emerge from our lockdowns and COVID-19 is on Season 1 on Netflix, what will the new world look and feel like? I suspect a lot like the present one. Wars, conflicts and terrorism will continue; China will remain aggressively expansionist; ISIS will lift its travel advisory; the Middle East will remain a mess; Pakistan will keep its terror factory going; Xi, Putin and Orban will be presidents for life; and the United States might just re-elect Trump.
But a lot will change. India, for instance, will need to rethink some of its precepts and priorities in both domestic and foreign policy. The multilateral universe, global supply chains, health as a strategic asset, tech and bio warfare. India’s global ambitions. China. All will need an upgrade.
The crux of the changes we are likely to see in the future lies in the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is a global phenomenon but its response is intensely local.
For one thing, the whole idea of multilateralism is being re-written as we speak. If the UN was a 1945-era institution before, it is beyond obsolete today. The world’s top talk-shop is yet to have a serious discussion on COVID-19 as a peace and security issue, which it is, largely because China and Russia are opposing terms like ‘transparency’ and ‘ceasefire’, and the US just doesn’t care. The UN General Assembly, which is really a platform for an annual airing of global politics, just passed arguably the most inane resolution on COVID-19, pledging ‘solidarity’.
The world’s top health body has so blotted its copybook, it’s laughable - from being a cheerleader to China’s subterfuge and secrecy, the WHO has played directly from Beijing’s playbook, unconscionable in hindsight, and ruinous for its credibility.
Japan’s deputy PM Taro Aso blisteringly called it the Chinese Health Organisation, excoriating it for refusing to declare COVID-19 an international emergency in January, which would have bought time for everyone. Will the WHO question China about its actual casualty figures, or the source of the outbreak? Unlikely, which will leave huge gaps in our knowledge, and constrain future actions.
Meanwhile, Taiwan, kept out of the WHO under Chinese pressure, showed exemplary success in tackling the virus. This tells you a lot about how skewed the system is. The UN Human Rights Commission, already reeking of prejudice, is silent over Xinjiang and the Wuhan lockdown, but loses sleep over Jammu and Kashmir. Different departments in the UN are fully paid-up cheerleaders of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As we clear our blinkers, it should be clear that if a western-dominated UN system did not suit India, a China-coloured one does not either.
India should not mourn this 20th century brand of multilateralism. Creating a new multilateral order is important — one could argue that the current world ‘disorder’ is fertile ground. The pandemic risks turning us into Hobbesian entities, as each country fights its own battles, so burden-sharing is important. Even more important is setting the rules for a new order.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that complex global supply chains, a mantra of present trading systems, are overrated. Our vulnerability is not that we don’t make defence equipment, it is that we’re following a China-led manufacturing strategy. That should change.
The overwhelming dependence on China needs reducing, a thought that is uppermost in many parts of the world. As India furiously reopens shuttered Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) units which fell to Chinese predatory pricing, it is important to revise manufacturing and trade strategies — certainly in the short and medium term, trade, like technology, might follow the same coalitions-of-the-willing path.
Health is now a strategic asset, right up there with technology, defence and security. India will be judged not only on how we tackle the Wuhan virus, but what it says about governance, crisis management and how a democratic system prepares for the day after.
The unspoken thought keeping security experts awake - irrespective of whether the Wuhan virus was an innocuous zoonotic transfer, or a lab leak - is could this be the face of a future war? Could our investments in 5th Gen defence equipment be overturned by a virus, cleverly placed?
In 2007, Estonia had exactly this moment in the realm of cyberwarfare, prompting the world to adopt new security protocols and cyber governance. Could this be another such moment? India, with a demography that could easily be a vulnerability rather than a dividend, will have to think and work differently, factoring in both state and non-state actions.
It’s likely therefore the future of multilateralism could be smaller groupings, more cohesive, and among countries that show the ability to come together to not only address large-scale crises, but pool resources to provide global public goods and platforms for the world to use without being ‘indebted’, rather based on more overt principles of fairness.
At the operational level, this ‘coalition of the willing’ should take on a more concrete and real-world shape - the Quad-Plus for instance, involving key countries in the Indo-Pacific, needs to re-imagine cooperation where freedom of navigation is not merely parading warships on the 9-dash-line, but involves real exchanges focusing on putting regional economies back together again.
In the neighbourhood, a fairly unsexy meeting between South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) health professionals went unremarked. But it was important. In South Asia, where most neighbours dislike each other, keeping cooperation at the professional level on areas that affect everyday lives could take the sting out of, say, the India-Pakistan non-relationship. India should lead, focus on a neutral tone and outcomes, which can continue even when India takes military action against Pakistani terror.
In the post-COVID-19 world, the questions we should be answering therefore can be summarised thus:
Indrani Bagchi is senior diplomatic editor with The Times of India. She interprets foreign policy issues and global trends from an Indian perspective, covering the US, China, Pakistan, terrorism, nuclear weapons, and national security issues, among others.
Last Update: 11/11/2021