The upcoming UK general election is arguably a 'Brexit election', and as such, whoever wins the election will have little time to get their strategy for Brexit up and running to meet the new Brexit deadline of 31 January 2020. But what are the political parties’ policies for the UK's future trade? This event will present and discuss what the five main parties’ manifestos imply for future UK trade. Each manifesto will be presented and analysed by a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) and will be followed by a Q&A session. 

An unexpected bounty for Iran

Sanam Vakil

The assassination of Qassem Soleimani has been an unexpected bounty for the Islamic Republic at a time when Iran was balancing multiple economic, domestic and regional pressures stemming from the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign.

Coming on the heels of anti-Iranian demonstrations in Iraq and Lebanon, and following Iran’s own November 2019 protests that resulted in a brutal government crackdown against its own people, the Soleimani killing has helped the Iranian government shift the narrative away from its perceived regional and domestic weaknesses to one of strength.  

The massive funeral scenes in multiple Iranian cities displaying unending waves of mourners chanting against the United States has provided the Islamic Republic with a unique opportunity to showcase its mobilizing potential. This potential is not limited to Iran but also extends to Iraq and Lebanon, where Tehran’s transnational summoning power has also been visible. The Iraqi parliamentary vote to end the American military presence is one early negative consequence. While the region awaits Iran’s response, further anti-American rallying cries will continue to reverberate.  

Domestically, Soleimani’s death and President Donald Trump’s continued provocations on Twitter, including threats to attack 52 Iranian cultural sites, are being used as a nationalist rallying cry. This sentiment should not be seen solely as Islamic or ideological, but rather an opportunity for the state to pivot to an Iranian-based nationalism that is more inclusive and empowering for much of the country’s disgruntled youth.

Iran’s notoriously divided political factions have also unified in the face of this crisis. With parliamentary elections looming in February and turnout previously expected to be low, the political establishment is likely to use this crisis to mobilize voters in favour of conservative candidates.  

How Tehran chooses to respond to Qassem Soleimani’s death will very much determine its ability to continue to control the narrative and manage its swell of domestic and regional support. For these benefits to continue to manifest, it is important for Tehran to balance the mix of public sympathy and international anxiety and not overplay its hand in its quest for revenge.

A reset for Iraqi politics

Renad Mansour

The US strike which killed Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis has grave implications for Iraq. The act jeopardizes Iraq’s recently stabilized security situation, and threatens to reshape the country’s political environment, moving backwards to the days of anti-Americanism and sect-based mobilization. If Baghdad loses relations with the US and other diplomatic representations, it risks turning into a pariah state. 

Over the past few years, and notably since October 2019, young Iraqis have taken to the streets demanding reform and the downfall of the political establishment, and its main external backer Iran. The political establishment, including political parties and militias close to Tehran, failed to appease or suppress these protests. Now, these political elites are using the deaths of Muhandis and Soleimani to (re)gain popularity from their own population, by drawing on the old tool of anti-Americanism. 

Following the attacks, Shia populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr – who until recently had called for an end to Iranian and pro-Iranian militia influence in Iraq – has called to revamp the Mehdi Army that he led until 2008 and is calling for ‘Islamic resistance’ to the US. In seeking to regain control of his former movement, he is coming closer to former Shia foes.

For years, pro-Iranian groups attempted to push the US out of Iraq. Their calls often fell on deaf ears, as public opinion in Iraq did not consider the US as a threat and some even supported the US and international effort against ISIS. Following the attacks, however, anti-American voices have gained more ammunition.

A complete American withdrawal would not only have direct security implications but force other countries and organizations, from European states to NATO, to reconsider their positions and role.

Limited options for ‘revenge’ in the Levant

Lina Khatib

Iran’s use of Lebanon and Syria as spaces for revenge against the US is unlikely.

On Sunday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed revenge for Soleimani’s death by singling out American soldiers as a target. However, Hezbollah’s options are limited. Lebanon is in the middle of wide-ranging protests against the country’s ruling political class, of which Nasrallah is a key figure.

Unlike in 2006, when Hezbollah’s military actions against Israel rallied the public around it, today there is no public appetite for dragging Lebanon into a war. Were Hezbollah to instigate one, it would incur public anger, if only for the economic repercussions that would exacerbate an already severe financial crisis in Lebanon. Lebanon also does not have any US military bases that could be a target for Hezbollah.

In theory, Hezbollah or other Iranian-backed groups could attack American bases in Syria. But these bases are staffed by multinational forces from the international anti-ISIS coalition. Attacking them would therefore put Iran in confrontation with other countries besides the US, which is not in Iran’s interest.

Attacking US soldiers in northeast Syria would also go against Kurdish interests because it would weaken the anti-ISIS coalition front of which Kurdish forces are part. It would, furthermore, anger Arab tribes in the area, opening up possibilities for ISIS to take advantage of public dissent to stage a comeback. Iran would then find itself fighting on several fronts at once, which it does not have the capacity to handle. 

More likely, Iran’s allies and proxies in the Levant are going to engage in strong rhetoric without taking hasty actions. When a key Hezbollah leader, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in Damascus on 2008, there were strong words and public vows to seek revenge for his killing, but ultimately there was no response.    

Summary

• North African integration is not a new idea. However, countries in the region have so far struggled to form a cohesive bloc with deep political, economic and social ties. Political instability has effectively deprioritized North African integration. A focus on thematic (political, economic and security) ‘synergies’ may provide a better framework for cooperation than seeking opportunities for all-encompassing ‘deep’ and ‘comprehensive’ integration.
• Governments of North Africa dedicate considerable resources to domestic security. Much of their efforts are conducted at the national-level and directed towards threats from terrorists, insurgents and militias. Improved security cooperation would achieve better outcomes and economies of scale, including efforts to tackle human trafficking.
• A new generation of jihadis has emerged in North Africa since 2011. Nearly 27 per cent of the 30,000 fighters who travelled to Syria are from the Maghreb. While government counterterrorism operations have been effective, countries have failed to address the root causes of radicalization.
• Border economies have suffered as a consequence of a security focus on terrorism and smuggling, which has rendered many previously accepted cross-border trade activities illegal. States have struggled to provide alternative livelihoods for those who have lost this source of income. Border forces tend to lack the right combination of capacity, training and equipment to secure borders and often resort to heavy-handed tactics.
• New thinking is required to develop a more human-centric and proactive approach to migration issues in the region, which continues to witness huge flows of migrants. The migration policy of Morocco, introduced through legislation in 2014, could be a model for North Africa.
• The countries of North Africa have varying economic profiles, ranging from economically diverse Morocco to oil-and-gas-dependant Libya. However, they all face similar challenges including unemployment (particularly among the young), poor public-service delivery, low FDI levels, an oversized public sector, ineffective tax collection, and high informality.
• Fostering entrepreneurship and the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are priorities for North African countries, particularly regarding job creation. Regulatory cooperation – such as harmonizing SME definitions, legislation and support institutions – across North Africa is an obvious area where further integration would encourage the development of start-ups and small businesses.
• With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, North African governments must address their technological gaps and work to improve public–private cooperation. In some sectors, such as the fintech industry, North African countries can build upon nascent synergies that have developed organically, such as those of start-up incubators and angel investors that work across the region.
• Renewables, particularly solar energy production, are a promising development for North Africa. While regional initiatives, such as Desertec, have stalled due to political differences between countries, the sector has witnessed exponential growth in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, where the involvement of the private sector has proved successful.

Yemen suffered from the excessive control of the central government prior to the current conflict. Federalism has been put forward by many Yemeni political parties since the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) as the supposed magic cure for this significant problem. Today, Yemen is more fragmented than ever, its state central institutions have been scattered and lack leadership and the state has lost most of its sovereignty. The prevailing narrative that decentralization through federalism is Yemen’s inevitable path post-conflict often fails to acknowledge that there are prerequisites for effective local governance, beyond political will.  

In a recent article, Osamah Al Rawhani addressed how the weakness of central state institutions is the key challenge to proceeding with federalism in Yemen and highlighted prerequisites and contextual factors that need to be addressed before reforming the structure of the state. He argued that the viability of decentralization relies on the presence of a functioning, representative central government that is capable of devolving power but also able to keep the state from further fragmentation. 

In this webinar, part of the Chatham House project on The Future of the State in the Middle East and North Africa, the article’s author will discuss recent developments in Yemen, where shifting frontlines and regional divisions are fragmenting the country in new ways. The speaker will explore alternative approaches to pursue the path of federalism that recognize the current realities and the critical need for strong central institutions. He will also survey the internal and external factors that must be considered to rebuild a stable state in Yemen.

You can express your interest in attending by following this link. You will receive a Zoom confirmation email should your registration be successful. Alternatively, you can watch the event live on the MENA Programme Facebook page.

Iraq is a country already in turmoil, suffering fallout from the major military escalation between the US and Iran, mass protests calling for an end to the post-2003 political system, and a violent government crackdown killing more than 600 and wounding almost 30,000 - all presided over by a fragmented political elite unable to agree upon a new prime minister following Adil abd al-Mehdi’s resignation back in November.

COVID-19 introduces yet another threat to the fragile political order, as the virus exposes Iraq’s ineffective public health system dismantled through decades of conflict, corruption and poor governance.

Iraqi doctors are making every effort to prepare for the worst-case scenario, but they do so with huge structural challenges. The Ministry of Health lacks enough ICU beds, human resources, ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Bogged down in bureaucracy, the ministry is struggling to process procurements of equipment and medications, and some doctors have made purchases themselves.

But individual efforts can only go so far as many Iraqi doctors are concerned the official numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases do not reflect the complexity of the situation on the ground.

The ministry relies predominately upon patients self-presenting at designated public hospitals and has only just begun community-based testing in areas of suspected clusters. Reliance on self-presentation requires a level of trust between citizens and state institutions, which is at a historic low. This gap in trust – 17 years in the making – puts Iraq’s COVID-19 response particularly at risk.

Iraq’s myriad vulnerabilities

Certain social and political factors leave Iraq uniquely exposed to the coronavirus. The country’s vulnerability is tied directly to its social, religious and economic interconnections with Iran, an epicenter of the pandemic.

Exchanges between Iran and Iraq are concentrated in two regions, with strong cross-border links between Iraqi and Iranian Kurds in the north-east, and Iraqi and Iranian Shia pilgrims in the south. Cross-border circulation of religious pilgrims is particularly concerning, as they can result in mass ritual gatherings.

The high number of confirmed cases in the southern and northern peripheries of the country puts a spotlight on Iraq's failure in managing healthcare. The post-2003 government has failed to either rebuild a robust centralized healthcare system, or to pave the way for a federalized model.

Caught in an ambiguous middle between a centralized and federalized model, coordination across provinces and hospitals during the coronavirus crisis has neither reflected strong management from Baghdad nor robust ownership at the governorate level.

This problem is part of a wider challenge of managing centre-periphery relations and federalism, which since 2003 has not worked effectively. Baghdad has provided all 18 provinces with instructions on testing and treatment, but only a handful have enough resources to put them into practice. Advanced testing capacity is limited to the five provinces with WHO-approved centers, with the remaining 13 sending swabs to Baghdad.

But the greatest challenge to Iraq’s COVID-19 response is the dramatic deterioration of state-society relations. Studies reveal a profound societal distrust of Iraq’s public healthcare institutions, due to corruption and militarization of medical institutions. Numerous videos have recently circulated of families refusing to turn over sick members - particularly women - to medical teams visiting households with confirmed or suspected cases.

As medical anthropologist Omar Dewachi notes, the ‘moral economy of quarantine’ in Iraq is heavily shaped by a history of war and its impact on the relationship between people and the state. Although local and international media often interpret this reluctance to undergo quarantine as a matter of social or tribal norms, distrusting the state leads many families to refuse quarantine because they believe it resembles a form of arrest.

The management of coronavirus relies upon an overt convergence between medical institutions and security forces as the federal police collaborate with the Ministry of Health to impose curfews and enforce quarantine. This means that, troublingly, the same security establishment which violently cracked down on protesters and civil society activists is now the teeth behind Iraq’s COVID-19 response.

Without trust between society and the political class, civil society organizations and protest movements have directed their organizational structure towards awareness-raising across Iraq. Key religious authorities such as Grand Ayatollah Sistani have called for compliance to the curfew and mobilized charitable institutions.

However, such efforts will not be enough to make up for the lack of governance at the level of the state. In the short-term, Iraq’s medical professionals and institutions are in dire need of technical and financial support. In the long-term, COVID-19 is a lesson that Iraq’s once robust public healthcare system needs serious investment and reform.

COVID-19 may prove to be another catalyst challenging the ‘muddle through’ logic of the Iraqi political elite. International actors have largely been complicit in this logic, directing aid and technical support towards security forces and political allies in the interest of short-term stability, and neglecting institutions which Iraqis rely on for health, education, and well-being.

The response to the crisis requires cooperation and buy-in of a population neglected by 17 years of failed governance. This is a seminal event that may push the country to the brink, exposing and stirring underlying tensions in state-society relations.

This analysis was produced as part of the Iraq Initiative.

The NATO Summit, held in September in Newport, Wales, was a way point in the larger strategic vision for NATO over the coming decade. The deliverables that the leaders laid out must now been acted upon. NATO and its member states must find ways to more effectively harness their significant resources to meet the challenges ahead, from the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, to the longer term threats posed by cyber-attack and energy insecurity.

The event will bring together senior representatives from a number of the NATO member states, NATO partners and external experts from industry, the media and the think-tank and academic communities, to discuss how best to move the deliverables forward, and how to most effectively work together in so doing.

This is the first of two workshops being held in collaboration with SWP-Berlin.

The speaker will outline the importance of economic cooperation in the transatlantic relationship and consider recent developments in the global economy.

The international community is in urgent need of successful, cooperative strategies for both preventing mass atrocities before they begin and stopping those in progress. As recent crises have highlighted, effective international cooperation to save lives and preserve peace and security remains largely aspirational. Participants will discuss current thinking on mass atrocity prevention and intervention, and identify how transatlantic cooperation in this space could be more effective.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Summary

• The United States’ transatlantic allies need to appreciate how its global leadership is changing and what this means for their interests, and respond accordingly. Notions of US decline have been overstated, but the country is not going to play the same international role in the future that it has previously.
• As the United States’ international engagement changes, Canada and Europe should increase coordination with it to prevent power vacuums from emerging. The transatlantic allies should work together to build greater links at all stages of the policy process, from perceptions of threat, prioritization, analysis, threat definition and policy formation to implementation and action.  
• As the United States’ capabilities adapt to its changed circumstances and role, so too must those of its allies. This adjustment must go far beyond military aspects to enhancing diplomatic, energy, economic, intelligence and other resources.
• In addition to the challenges around differing interests, priorities and capabilities inherent in any alliance, Europe appears to have lost its confidence. In part this is due to its growing disengagement and introspection. But Europe retains huge potential for influence if it uses its resources effectively. There is much that European states can do, individually and together, to take more control over advancing their strategic interests. Equally, by working together they can do much to nudge the United States in helpful directions to support the mutual interests of all parties.
• The conversation on reforming global institutions such as the IMF must move beyond the need for change per se towards articulating the actual shape of such changes. Europe and Canada will likely need to push the United States into accepting reform of these institutions to better reflect today’s reality and tomorrow’s challenges. Global institutions need more diversified leaderships if they are to ensure their long-term legitimacy and influence. This will be difficult to push through politically in the United States, but by working with new regional and global powers to propose reforms, Europe and Canada can help find an acceptable solution.
• The use of ad hoc coalitions does not necessarily damage the efficacy of broader consensus institutions such as NATO. In fact, flexible coalitions may often be desirable when solutions to new challenges need to be developed and agreed quickly.
• Canada and Europe should consider partnering with other actors besides the United States where necessary. This may be expedient for meeting individual objectives, and would have the secondary benefit of demonstrating to emerging powers that the West does not exclude cooperation with others out of an arbitrary loyalty to the United States.
• Europe needs to appreciate the potentially dire consequences of failing to adapt to changing US leadership and an increasingly complex world. There is a real chance that the European project could unravel in the next few years due to external and internal pressures. While many European policy-makers display an understanding of these challenges in private, in public there is little appetite for taking the decisions necessary to bring long-term stability to the continent. 

The liberal international order has always depended on the idea of progress. Since 1945, Western policymakers have believed that open markets, democracy and individual human rights would gradually spread across the entire globe. Today, such hopes seem naïve.

In Asia, the rise of China threatens to challenge US military and economic hegemony. In the Middle East, the United States and its European allies have failed to guide the region toward a more liberal and peaceful future in the wake of the Arab Spring. And Russia’s geopolitical influence has reached heights unseen since the Cold War, as it attempts to roll back liberal advances around its periphery.

But the more important threats to the order are internal. For the past half-century, the European Union has seemed to represent the advance guard of a new liberalism in which nations pool sovereignty and cooperate ever more closely with one another. Today, as it reels from one crisis to the next, the EU has stopped expanding.

Other countries will probably not follow the United Kingdom out of the EU. But few European leaders appear willing to continue relinquishing sovereignty, whether to manage flows of refugees or to ensure the long-term viability of the single currency. Many European politicians are demanding more national sovereign control over their destinies rather than more integration.

Across the Atlantic, the US commitment to global leadership, which until now has sustained the liberal international order through good times and bad, looks weaker than at any point since the Second World War. After the costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the chaos that followed the intervention in Libya, President Barack Obama consistently encouraged allies in Europe and the Middle East to take greater responsibility for their own security. In his presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump twisted this argument into an explicitly transactional bargain: America would become a mercenary superpower, protecting only those countries that paid, so that it could focus on making itself great again at home. In so doing, he ignored the hard-won lesson that investing in the security of its allies is the best way of protecting America’s own security and economic interests.

Meanwhile, America’s rebalance to Asia is in jeopardy. With Trump promising to roll back the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Beijing has wasted no time in laying out its own vision for a more integrated Eurasia that may exclude America and in which China will play the leading role. We may be on the brink of a Eurasian century, rather than a Pacific century.

Sustaining an international liberal economic order

In the past, as other political systems have crumbled, the liberal international order has risen to face its challenges. Yet so long as the economies of its leading members remain fragile and their political institutions divided, the order they have championed is unlikely to regain the political momentum that helped democracy spread across the globe. Instead, it will evolve into a less ambitious project: an international liberal economic order that encompasses states with diverse domestic political systems.

This need not be bad news if it allows democracies and their illiberal counterparts to find ways to coexist. Non-Western rising powers, China chief among them, will remain committed to sustaining the international economic order of open markets and free flows of investment. After all, only through continued integration into the global supply chains of goods, services, people and knowledge can emerging markets meet the aspirations of their growing middle classes.

It is in the West’s interests that China’s economic development continues smoothly. US and European markets for goods, services and infrastructure should remain open to Chinese trade and foreign direct investment, as long as Chinese companies abide by their WTO commitments and by US and European rules on security and transparency and the protection of intellectual property. European countries should take the same approach toward Russia, on the condition that Russian companies abide by EU rules. A mutual commitment to the international liberal economic order would help Western governments and their illiberal counterparts keep open other avenues for cooperation on shared challenges, such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Meanwhile, European governments and businesses should take part in the Chinese-led strategy to connect northeast Asia with Europe across the Eurasian continent, a component of a series of regional infrastructure investments known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Today, the world is experiencing a structural decline in growth rates of trade, as emerging markets like China make more of their own products and developed countries bring some production back on-shore. Against this backdrop, ramping up investment in infrastructure that can connect the thriving coastal areas of Asia to their underdeveloped hinterlands and then to Europe could create new opportunities for economic growth in both the liberal and the illiberal worlds.

Similar cooperation will be harder to build with Russia. Russia’s system of centralized, opaque political and economic governance makes deeper integration incompatible with the EU’s market and rules-based system. And NATO members have begun a much-needed upgrading of their military readiness in the face of recent Russian provocations. EU and NATO tensions with Russia will likely persist. However, the initiative to build new Eurasian economic inter-connections could provide an alternative way for the United States and Europe to engage Russia in the future.

A period of awkward coexistence

The countries that built the liberal international order are weaker today than they have been for three generations. But liberal policymakers would be wrong to hunker down or resort to containment. An extended stand-off with those who contest a liberal international order may accidentally lead to outright conflict. A better approach would be for liberal countries to prepare themselves for a period of awkward coexistence with illiberal ones, cooperating on some occasions and competing on others. Time will then tell whose form of government is more resilient. If history is any guide, liberal democracy remains the best bet.

An extended version of this article appears in Foreign Affairs.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback

The US and the EU face many of the same challenges today: they must maintain economic growth in the face of global competition, harness and manage rapid technological change and respond to diverse security threats. Yet a transatlantic alliance that has endured since the end of the Second World War now appears increasingly divided over how to respond.  

The 2016 Brexit referendum and the US presidential election resulted in victories for populist campaigns that questioned the core values and institutions of this alliance. More recent elections in Europe have bolstered centrist candidates, and helped to rejuvenate the EU. But on questions of trade, security, climate change and relations with Russia, Europe’s leaders have frequently been at odds with the Trump administration. On these and other critical issues, an opportunity and impetus has arisen for the EU to assume a global leadership role that many feel the US is abandoning.

Are the EU and the US on divergent paths? How are changing geopolitical and economic realities transforming the transatlantic alliance? And how committed is this alliance to defending the global institutions and rules it created? Chatham House and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs will convene policy experts, journalists and practitioners for a half-day event to chart these trends and consider their implications.

Please note, this event will take place in Chicago between 2.30pm and 7pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Chatham House members will be able to follow a livestream of the event here on the day.

This event is being co-hosted with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

At the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019, all governments re-committed their countries to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) whereby ‘all people obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them’. To achieve UHC, governments will need to oversee health systems that are predominantly publicly financed although countries may use both private and public health providers of health services.

Robert Yates will provide a review of recent transitions towards Universal Health Coverage, highlighting the importance of genuine political commitment by heads of state, and the potential benefits to corporate stakeholders in helping reach this sustainable development goal. What are the political, economic and health benefits of UHC? Why can only public financing mechanisms, rather than a free market in health services, deliver an equitable health system? And what is the role of the private sector within the political economy of UHC?

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations of Chatham House. If you would like to register your interest, please RSVP to Linda Bedford. We will contact you to confirm your attendance.

To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

As coronavirus spreads across the globe, states grapple to find the ideal strategy for coping with the global pandemic. And, in China, Singapore, South Korea, the US, the UK, and Europe, divergent policies are a product of state capacity and legal authority, but they also reveal competing views about the optimal role of centralized state authority, federalism, and the private sector.

Although it is too soon to know the longer-term effects, the apparent capacity of centralized state authority in China, South Korea and Singapore to respond effectively and rapidly is making headlines. In the United States, the opposite has been true. 

America’s response is being shaped by its federal structure, a dynamic private sector, and a culture of civic engagement. In the three weeks since the first US case of coronavirus was confirmed, state leaders, public health institutions, corporations, universities and churches have been at the vanguard of the nation’s effort to mitigate its spread.

Images of safety workers in hazmat suits disinfecting offices of multinational corporations and university campuses populate American Facebook pages. The contrast to the White House effort to manage the message, downplay, then rapidly escalate its estimation of the crisis is stark.

Bewildering response

For European onlookers, the absence of a clear and focused response from the White House is bewildering. By the time President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, several state emergencies had already been called, universities had shifted to online learning, and churches had begun to close.

By contrast, in Italy, France, Spain and Germany, the state has led national efforts to shutter borders and schools. In the UK, schools are largely remaining open as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared a strategy defined by herd immunity, which hinges on exposing resilient populations to the virus.

But America has never shared Europe’s conviction that the state must lead. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading national public health institute and a US federal agency, has attempted to set a benchmark for assessing the crisis and advising the nation. But in this instance, its response has been slowed due to faults in the initial tests it attempted to rollout. The Federal Reserve has moved early to cut interest rates and cut them again even further this week.

But states were the real first movers in America’s response and have been using their authority to declare a state of emergency independent of the declaration of a national emergency. This has allowed states to mobilize critical resources, and to pressure cities into action. After several days delay and intense public pressure, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo forced New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s schools.

Declarations of state emergencies by individual states have given corporations, universities and churches the freedom and legitimacy to move rapidly, and ahead of the federal government, to halt the spread in their communities.

Washington state was the first to declare a state of emergency. Amazon, one of the state’s leading employers, quickly announced a halt to all international travel and, alongside Microsoft, donated $1million to a rapid-response Seattle-based emergency funds. States have nudged their corporations to be first movers in the sector’s coronavirus response. But corporations have willingly taken up the challenge, often getting ahead of state as well as federal action.

Google moved rapidly to announce a move allowing employees to work from home after California declared a state of emergency. Facebook soon followed with an even more stringent policy, insisting employees work from home. Both companies have also met with World Health Organization (WHO) officials to talk about responses, and provided early funding for WHO’s Solidarity Response Fund set up in partnership with the UN Foundation and the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation.

America’s leading research universities, uniquely positioned with in-house public health and legal expertise, have also been driving preventive efforts. Just days after Washington declared a state of emergency, the University of Washington became the first to announce an end to classroom teaching and move courses online. A similar pattern followed at Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia - each also following the declaration of a state of emergency.

In addition, the decision by the Church of the Latter Day Saints to cancel its services worldwide followed Utah’s declaration of a state of emergency.

The gaping hole in the US response has been the national government. President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency came late, and his decision to ban travel from Europe but - at least initially - exclude the UK, created uncertainty and concern that the White House response is as much driven by politics as evidence.

This may soon change, as the House of Representatives has passed a COVID-19 response bill that the Senate will consider. These moves are vital to supporting state and private efforts to mobilize an effective response to a national and global crisis.

Need for public oversight

In the absence of greater coordination and leadership from the centre, the US response will pale in comparison to China’s dramatic moves to halt the spread. The chaos across America’s airports shows the need for public oversight. As New York State Governor Cuomo pleaded for federal government support to build new hospitals, he said: ‘I can’t do it. You can’t leave it to the states.'

When it comes to global pandemics, we may be discovering that authoritarian states can have a short-term advantage, but already Iran’s response demonstrates that this is not universally the case. Over time, the record across authoritarian states as they tackle the coronavirus will become more apparent, and it is likely to be mixed.

Open societies remain essential. Prevention requires innovation, creativity, open sharing of information, and the ability to inspire and mobilize international cooperation. The state is certainly necessary, but it is not sufficient alone.

On 10 January 2020, Chinese scientists released the sequence of the COVID-19 genome on the internet. This provided the starting gun for scientists around the world to start developing vaccines or therapies. With at least 80 different vaccines in development, many governments are pinning their hopes on a quick solution. However, there are many hurdles to overcome. 

Vaccine development

Firstly, vaccine development is normally a very long process to ensure vaccines are safe and effective before they are used. 

Safety is not a given: a recent dengue vaccine caused heightened disease in vaccinated children when they later were exposed to dengue, while Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccine caused the same problem. Nor is effectiveness a given. Candidate vaccines that use novel techniques where minute fragments of the viruses’ genetic code are either injected directly into humans or incorporated into a vaccine (as is being pursued, or could be pursued for COVID-19) have higher risks of failure simply because they haven’t worked before. For some vaccines, we know what levels of immunity post-vaccination are likely to be protective. This is not the case for coronavirus. 

Clinical trials will have to be done for efficacy. This is not optional – regulators will need to know extensive testing has taken place before licencing any vaccine. Even if animal tests are done in parallel with early human tests, the remainder of the process is still lengthy. 

There is also great interest in the use of passive immunization, whereby antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (collected from people who have recovered from infection or laboratory-created) are given to people who are currently ill. Antivirals may prove to be a quicker route than vaccine development, as the testing requirements would be shorter, manufacturing may be easier and only ill people would need to be treated, as opposed to all at-risk individuals being vaccinated.

Vaccine manufacturing

Developers, especially small biotechs, will have to make partnerships with large vaccine manufacturers in order to bring products to market. One notorious bottleneck in vaccine development is getting from proof-of-principle to commercial development: about 95 per cent of vaccines fail at this step. Another bottleneck is at the end of production. The final stages of vaccine production involve detailed testing to ensure that the vaccine meets the necessary criteria and there are always constraints on access to the technologies necessary to finalize the product. Only large vaccine manufacturers have these capacities. There is a graveyard of failed vaccine candidates that have not managed to pass through this development and manufacturing process.

Another consideration is adverse or unintended consequences. Highly specialized scientists may have to defer their work on other new vaccines to work on COVID-19 products and production of existing products may have to be set aside, raising the possibility of shortages of other essential vaccines. 

Cost is another challenge. Vaccines for industrialized markets can be very lucrative for pharmaceutical companies, but many countries have price caps on vaccines. Important lessons have been learned from the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic when industrialized countries took all the vaccines first. Supplies were made available to lower-income countries at a lower price but this was much later in the evolution of the pandemic. For the recent Ebola outbreaks, vaccines were made available at low or no cost. 

Geopolitics may also play a role. Should countries that manufacture a vaccine share it widely with other countries or prioritize their own populations first? It has been reported that President Trump attempted to purchase CureVac, a German company with a candidate vaccine.  There are certainly precedents for countries prioritizing their own populations. With H1N1 flu in 2009, the Australian Government required a vaccine company to meet the needs of the Australian population first. 

Vaccine distribution

Global leadership and a coordinated and coherent response will be needed to ensure that any vaccine is distributed equitably. There have been recent calls for a G20 on health, but existing global bodies such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and GAVI are working on vaccines and worldwide access to them. Any new bodies should seek to boost funding for these entities so they can ensure products reach the most disadvantaged. 

While countries that cannot afford vaccines may be priced out of markets, access for poor, vulnerable or marginalized peoples, whether in developed or developing countries, is of concern. Developing countries are at particular risk from the impacts of COVID-19. People living in conflict-affected and fragile states – whether they are refugees or asylum seekers, internally displaced or stateless, or in detention facilities – are at especially high risk of devastating impacts. 

Mature economies will also face challenges. Equitable access to COVID-19 vaccine will be challenging where inequalities and unequal access to essential services have been compromised within some political systems. 

The need for global leadership 

There is an urgent need for international coordination on COVID-19 vaccines. While the WHO provides technical support and UNICEF acts as a procurement agency, responding to coronavirus needs clarity of global leadership that arches over national interests and is capable of mobilizing resources at a time when economies are facing painful recessions. We see vaccines as a salvation but remain ill-equipped to accelerate their development.

While everyone hopes for rapid availability of safe, effective and affordable vaccines that will be produced in sufficient quantities to meet everyone’s needs, realistically, we face huge hurdles. 

As a body with a relatively small operating budget and no formal mechanisms, or authority, to sanction member states that fail to comply with its guidance, the World Health Organization has been limited in its ability to coordinate a global response to the COVID-19 outbreak. At the same time, the organization is reliant on an international order that the current coronavirus crisis is, arguably, disrupting: as containment measures become more important in stemming the spread of the virus, the temptation to implement protectionist policies is increasing among nations. For example, the UK did not participate in an EU scheme to buy PPE and Germany has accused the US of ‘piracy’ after it reportedly diverted a shipment of masks intended for Berlin. Elsewhere, despite rhetorical commitments from the G7 and G20, a detailed plan for a comprehensive international response has not been forthcoming. 

The panel will discuss issues of coordination and cooperation in the international response to COVID-19. Have global trends prior to the outbreak contributed to the slow and disjointed international response? How has the pandemic exposed fissures in the extent to which nations are willing to cooperate? And what is the capacity of international organizations such as the WHO to coordinate a concerted transnational response and what could the implications be for the future of globalization and the international liberal order?

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