Vaccine Diplomacy
Joshua O’Brien
It is no surprise that the national and international crisis of this pandemic will require national and international policy to correct. This includes vaccines. Vaccine nationalism is a huge problem that world health and trade authorities warn will cost global safety from future mutations, and prolonged harm to the economy. This is not to mention the moral and ethical harm of refusing cooperative policy in the pandemic. The issue of vaccine nationalism has been addressed to some degree by the ACT Accelerator and its fourth pillar, COVAX, which is working to fund and provide vaccines to non-Western countries.
But far more insidious than vaccine nationalism is vaccine diplomacy. Vaccine diplomacy sounds like a wonderful idea, but the term is misleading. Vaccine diplomacy is less about creating global policy, and more about using vaccines to advance political and security strategies. Recently, India and China have made use of vaccine diplomacy to strategically provide their own domestically produced vaccines to strategically important countries. China has sent vaccines to partners in Sub-Saharan Africa and even Serbia. India has sent doses to Nepal and Sri Lanka, both in a strategic calculation to offset China.
On one hand, this diplomacy seems like a responsible effort to protect developing countries from vaccine nationalism. On the other, I shudder to consider the political and moral ramifications as vaccine diplomacy is worked through Foreign Ministries, rather than Geneva. COVID-19 vaccines, vital to ending the acute phase of the worst pandemic in a century, should not be issued on a grand strategy agenda in Beijing, New Delhi, Washington, or elsewhere. It is obvious that vaccines are a moral imperative far above political consideration, and that an effective diplomatic effort to protect countries against vaccine nationalism would be a multilateral effort in Geneva, rather than a bilateral one between capitals. Though I am not optimistic, I hope that states employing such political considerations will redirect their efforts to assisting the World Health Organization and the COVAX initiative instead.