Foreword

Abstract

Foreword Mark Giordano (bio) We are in the midst of the first global pandemic to occur in a hyper-connected world. Individuals have been forced to change their daily routines through social distancing, wearing masks, and observing quarantine procedures. National governments are mobilizing resources within their borders to create and distribute vaccinations, confronting the economic impacts of shutdowns, and—we hope—addressing the uneven burdens of dislocation, disruption, and suffering. But as noted by Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s first female Prime Minister, the virus cannot be successfully defeated without multilateral cooperation.1 We have international institutions to facilitate that cooperation, though their effectiveness has sometimes been undermined by national agendas unrelated to health. The clash between China and the United States over Taiwan’s status at the World Health Organization is a case in point. Vaccine development has also become a new form of national power projection, as exemplified in Russia’s reference to the Space Race in the naming of its Sputnik V vaccine.2 China’s delivery of pandemic supplies to African states is framed using phrases like the “health silk road” and with references to its Belt and Road strategy.3 Meanwhile, the United States and Europe are accused, with reason, of ignoring the shared nature of the problem through choosing to focus on their own short-term, domestic health interests. Thankfully, the cooperation news is not all negative. Scientists working on vaccines have established international linkages that The New York Times has called “a global collaboration unlike any in history.”4 After initial fears that pandemic related border closures and national restrictions on medical supply exports might mortally wound the European Union, a budget was passed that broke norms for cross-border transfers and laid the groundwork for stronger European cooperation beyond the pandemic. And when the severity of Iran’s COVID crisis became clear, the United Arab Emirates offered—and Iran accepted—medical aid.5 The extent to which state and non-state actors have worked together to defeat the pandemic and confront potential long-term consequences has prompted questions of collective responsibility. Who bears the onus for addressing problems that transcend concepts and constructs like state borders? In what ways do and should these responsibilities manifest? What lessons can we learn from the successes and failures witnessed in the age of COVID-19 that may be applied to future global problem sets? After all, COVID-19 is neither the first nor the last issue to pose such widespread challenges. The impacts of illicit trade, the spread of misinformation, the realities of climate change, and further issues will force various levels of actors to expend resources and to collaborate with one another to successfully confront these threats. The articles in this edition of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs help us think through a range of issues related to multilateral collaboration and the pandemic, with a particular focus on topics that may be less commonly addressed in the news. These include the role of Latin America militaries in support of pandemic response efforts, the need to rethink frameworks for humanitarian governance, and the potential of technology-enabled contact tracing regimes to supplement global arms control. Through [End Page 3] engaging with these issues and innovative perspectives, the GJIA staff hopes to encourage its readers and the international affairs community to seek better solutions to global challenges and to further our collective understanding of what it means to serve our fellow citizens of the world in a time of uncertainty and change. Mark Giordano Mark Giordano is a professor of geography, the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environment and International Affairs, Vice-Dean for Undergraduate Affairs in Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, and the faculty advisor for GJIA, a role he assumed in the fall of 2019. His research focuses primarily on the international political dimensions of water, agriculture, and the environment. He teaches classes on those and other topics, including the (in)famous Map of the Modern World. Notes 1. Gro Harlem Brundtland, “COVID-19’s threat to our global civilisation and the need for collective responsibility,” The Elders, April 11, 2020, https://theelders.org/news/covid-19s-threat-our-global...