Coronavirus Has Driven A Stake Through Globalism’s Heart
In 2020, it is even more evident that global institutions are not to be trusted. During times of actual crisis, they are not just incompetent, but also downright indifferent to tragedy.
By Sumantra Maitra
TheFederalist.com
APRIL 1, 2020
People across Italy are burning the European Union flag while playing the Italian anthem loudly. Remember all the debates about being on the “right side of History” during Brexit? Log on to Twitter and check the hashtag #CiSalviamoDaSoli—“we save ourselves.” The slogan “Stop the CCP Virus” was trending alongside.
Meanwhile, a World Health Organization (WHO) director for Covid-19 response rudely cut off an interview when asked about Taiwan’s membership in WHO, which has been denied due to Chinese bullying, as China considers Taiwan its territory. Taiwan warned WHO about Chinese coronavirus in late December, only to be ignored. WHO’s corrupt head argued that WHO’s reputation was soiled by online Taiwanese mobs.
Yet Taiwan has been extraordinarily successful in stopping the virus, and is helping the United States with masks, compared to China profiteering by selling masks and test kits to Europe, which Spain, Czech Republic, and Netherlands have rejected for being faulty and fake. The European Union watched, helplessly.
There are many lessons to be drawn when this is all over, including the lack of nationalism among the ruling elite and corporate media, the failure of centralized healthcare in Italy and Spain, the supply chain issue of future strategic medical reserves, the hideously partisan rhetoric by a section of liberal Twitter activists and media-persons against Drs. Deborah Birx and Seema Verma for the sin of being non-partisan.
But the biggest lesson to be drawn from this is that the days of transnational institutional diktats are over. This crisis drove a stake through the hearts of liberal institutions and so-called global governance. The calls will only grow, with more arguments of disbanding and defunding institutions like WHO.
A Flawed Theory that Has Run Its Course
Internationalist liberal institutionalism is an idea opposed to the natural state of affairs between great powers, nation-states, and empires balancing each other. It has been the backbone of international politics for decades now. One needn’t go back to Woodrow Wilson to see the push for a Kantian Perpetual Peace among liberals. The means to achieve that global dream was through global institutions.
The Rest…HERE
