This week, we’ll finish up our coverage of the journal International Organizations’ special issue on COVID-19 and its effects. More articles from the issue (including one on health diplomacy by Midnight Oil alumna Tanisha Fazal) are forthcoming, but today we’ll take a look at political scientist Daniel Drezner’s article discussing COVID-19’s effects on the international system overall.

Many have portrayed the COVID-19 pandemic as a system-altering shock, something that will leave the world forever changed. Drezner, however, gazes down from the heights of wherever it is that political scientists consider the basic interactions of states (Walnut Hill, in Drezner’s case) at a disease that has killed over half a million people worldwide and says, basically, “enh.” Rather than foreseeing a massive shift in the structure of international relations, Drezner predicts that COVID-19 will result in the opposite: a greater entrenchment of existing international power structures.

To make his case, Drezner looks at the history of disease and world politics. What he finds is that, while pandemics have caused major changes in international relations in the past — such as when the Antonine Plague of 165 A.D. ended the territorial expansion of the Roman empire or when smallpox and measles hastened the European genocide of native population in the Americas — those effects have lessened over time. Since Napoleon, developments in science and public health have increased the capacity of states to cope with pandemics and lessened their impacts on international politics. The influenza pandemic of 1918, for example, was basically forgotten in popular history until COVID-19, despite its massive demographic effects, because states had the ability to absorb the losses it produced. By the time SARS came around in 2003, it was contained quickly enough to barely be a blip on China’s remarkable economic expansion.

Drezner sees that trend continuing today. Despite stumbles, some major, by both countries in their COVID-19 response, it does seem that the US and China will exit the pandemic as the most powerful players in the international arena, same as they entered the crisis. Though the pandemic has upended the US economy, it has not appreciably diminished US economic power, which it has demonstrated through the Federal Reserve offering other central banks access to dollars and propping up liquidity within the US.

While China has gained plaudits for controlling the virus before the US, its attempts to grow its international profile through international pandemic response have largely backfired, Drezner argues. The personal protective equipment and other material aid China has distributed to other countries has often been poorly made, and allegations that China bullied the World Health Organization into unduly praising its early pandemic response make both the country and the WHO look bad.

Indeed, the pandemic has not even produced a major shift in economic competition between the US and China. Early in the pandemic, Drezner points out, the Trump administration pursued its trade deal with China rather than pressing China on public health cooperation. The resulting trade deal remains in place, even as rhetoric between the two countries has again grown heated.

Ultimately, it is unlikely that COVID-19 will cause a transformation of the international system on its own. Instead, like in so many crises, the default result will be increased power for those who already hold it. In this age, shaking up the balance of power requires political organization rather than simply waiting for nature to have its say.

Charles Maynes wrote about the fate of Soviet-era statues that came down in Moscow during Russia’s post-Soviet transition in the early 1990s. Many statues memorializing oppressive figures like Soviet secret police founder Felix Derzhinsky now reside in Park Muzeon, a collection of former icons from whom Russia has moved on. Former city officials Maynes spoke to (and indeed Maynes himself) are quick to point out that the statues were removed only after a city ordinance was passed to that effect, but, nearly 30 years on, no one else Maynes spoke to seemed to remember or care about the process that brought the statues to Park Muzeon.

Kendyl Salcito argued that police departments should stop using tear gas as a weapon against protests. Though tear gas is usually presented as a “less-than-lethal” weapon, in fact it can have lethal effects, particularly in the COVID-19 era. Exposure to tear gas accelerates COVID-19 symptoms so much and makes people so susceptible to infection that the American Thoracic Society urged a moratorium on its use during the pandemic. Even once the threat of COVID-19 has passed, however, tear gas will remain a form of collective punishment, which, as Salcito pointed out, is banned in wartime under the Geneva Conventions.

Rebecca Kanthor reported on the sudden cancellation of ShanghaiPRIDE festival, which was canceled two weeks ago when organizers cited “safety” concerns. Shanghai’s gay pride festival, China’s flagship pride event, had been running uninterrupted for 12 years. Organizers have long faced interference from local and national authorities, and since the cancellation some of them have reportedly been detained by police. ShanghaiPRIDE attendees speculated that the moves against the festival may presage a wider crackdown on LGBT people in China.

In this coffee company’s defense, they did market test “Concentration Camp Inventor” brand coffee but people found it off-putting.

*Cackles in All-Volunteer Force*

The World Bank has long used its Doing Business Report to shame countries for having the temerity to institute regulations that prevent companies from doing things like cooking their books. Welp!

Can’t argue with this logic. It’s all there in the name!

The official name might be the Popular Mobilization Forces, but everyone would call them the Fashd.

Great Power Competition is: “I think we should really look at it through the lens of uh… competition." — a real life security expert.

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