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US Vice President Kamala Harris
What We're Watching: Harris goes to Munich, French troops quit Mali, Japan's soft opening, Africa's mRNA mission
Harris goes back to the future in Bavaria. In recent years, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) – to say nothing of the broader transatlantic alliance – have suffered from a sense of unclear purpose. US President Donald Trump questioned NATO’s value, and French President Emmanuel Macron has called it “brain-dead.” Without the Cold War framework, many have asked whether NATO even has a purpose? But things couldn’t feel more different today, according to Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer. “You’re talking about US leadership and an alliance that feels unprecedentedly threatened by the recent escalation in Ukraine from Russia,” said Bremmer from Munich on Thursday. And the face of that US leadership at Munich this year is US Vice President Kamala Harris, who will deliver an important address on Saturday. Harris, who was also tasked with handling the challenge of migration at the US-Mexico border last year, has struggled to shine in her historic role as the first female Veep. A powerful address at Munich, delivered in the thick of a major transatlantic security crisis, could be her moment in the sun.
French troops quit Mali. French and allied troops will leave Mali this year, ending a nearly decade-long deployment in the unstable West African nation aimed at quashing jihadist groups in the Sahel. Since an August 2020 coup, Mali has been run by a junta that has clashed with Paris, the former colonial power, over a range of security and political issues. Most recently, the junta postponed elections, which led to a spat and expulsion of the French ambassador. Many of the roughly 2,000 French troops in Mali will redeploy to neighboring Niger, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday. But keep an eye on Mali for what happens with two key players: jihadist groups and the Russian mercenaries whose presence there (and elsewhere in Africa) is irking Europe.
Japan eases “seclusion.” After two years of nearly total isolation, the Land of the Rising Sun will begin to ease pandemic-related travel restrictions next month. The world’s third-largest economy will gradually increase the number of daily arrivals by foreign business travelers and students, from 3,500 to 5,000, and reduce quarantine requirements. Although nearly 60% of Japanese polled say they prefer to keep the travel bans in place for now, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has come under immense pressure from business groups that say restrictions are hobbling the economy. Some 150,000 foreign students have been locked out until now, waiting to put their visas to use. But don’t book that cherry blossom tour just yet: tourists are still not welcome.
Is Moderna thwarting Africa’s vaccine plans? Vaccine inequality has been a hallmark of the global pandemic. But there was some positive news last week when a South African biotech lab announced it had produced its first batch of mRNA jabs based on publicly available data from American vaccine maker Moderna. After much wrangling with European and American drug makers opposed to waiving intellectual property rights, the World Health Organization helped set up the African vaccine hub to address vaccine shortages in low-income countries. But now the Cape Town lab worries that its plans to start human trials by November will be scuttled after Moderna applied this week for vaccine patents in South Africa. The pharma giant says it won’t enforce any IP rules during the ongoing pandemic, but the African scientists clearly have their doubts. Moderna said last fall that it will spend $500 million to build a new facility in Africa that could produce up to 500 million vaccine doses per year.
COVID hypocrisy & misinformation
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here from sunny Nantucket and going to be here for a little bit. Thought we would talk about the latest on COVID. Certainly, we had hoped we'd be talking less about it at this point, at least in terms of the developed world. A combination of the transmissibility of Delta variant and the extraordinary misinformation around vaccines and COVID treatment means that we are not in the position that many certainly had hoped we would be today.
The United States is the biggest problem on this front. We are awash in vaccines. Operation Warp Speed was an enormous success. The best vaccines in the world, the most effective mRNA, the United States doing everything it can to get secure doses for the entire country quick, more quickly than any other major economy in the world, and now we're having a hard time convincing people to take them. The politics around this are nasty and as divided as the country, absolutely not what you want to see in response to a health crisis.
On the left, I'm seeing so much talk about mask mandates and so much hypocrisy. The mayor of Washington, DC announcing a mask mandate for the entire district and literally within hours, she shows up to officiate a wedding and nobody's wearing masks, including the mayor, Muriel Bowser. You remember back, the governor of California, now under a recall campaign, Gavin Newsom, when everything was shut down and he's there at the French Laundry, a great restaurant, having an indoor party with his buddies mask-less when nobody else was doing that. President Obama, former President Obama now about to have 475 people at a big party for his 60th birthday in the (Martha's) Vineyard while you have so many among the Democrats that are saying, "no, we have to have mask mandates when cases are increasing. You shouldn't be gathering in these larger groups."
At the same time, you've got people like Governor DeSantis in Florida, Governor Abbott in Texas, and others that are saying that vaccine mandates among private corporations should be illegal. That if you're a restaurant, if you're a store, you're not allowed to tell people who are coming into your establishment that they have to show proof of vaccination, which strikes me as a ludicrous thing to do. And certainly, given how extraordinarily effective we know these vaccines are, there's just far too much virtue signaling.
We don't need everyone in the country wearing masks. We just need everyone vaccinated. And there need to be consequences otherwise. And yes, I know the vaccines are not yet proven safe for children. I would not make an argument that we should be requiring children to take vaccines until we know that they're safe. But we also know that those children are at extremely low risk for getting sick and dying from the disease. And given the amount of damage lack of attending classes does to kids and their development for well over a year now, the idea that we have teachers unions in the United States that are saying, "no, we refuse to open up classes again this fall given where the country is," that's extraordinary to me. It shouldn't be allowed. The schools have to open across the country. It's not like the danger of the disease is the only danger that's out there. You've got economic damage. You've got sociological and psychological damage. We have to get people, particularly poor people, at able to live normal lives. And who are the ones that can't effectively homeschool or have private tutors? Those are the ones that are going to be most affected by this yet again. So, I think that's a serious problem.
This outrageous politics-first approach on COVID response promotes misinformation. It is a tax on the poor and the uneducated. The wealthiest 1% in the United States are almost all vaccinated. The people with graduate degrees are almost all vaccinated, but the QAnon supporters, the National Enquirer readers, they are not. And if you believe that Trump actually won the presidency and is going to be reinstated in the next few weeks, of course you believe that the Delta variant is a fraud and that the vaccine is mind control. Bad domestic actors are perpetrating this on America. People are profiting from this. Social media companies are allowing this disinformation to persist. It is not coming from the Kremlin. We in the US are damaging ourselves far worse than Moscow or Beijing ever could. And that's in the United States.
And meanwhile, while the Americans are awash in vaccines that we are not taking and that are even going bad in Africa, the continent is almost fully un-vaccinated. 1.3 billion people on the African continent, 1% of that population is fully vaccinated. It's an obscenity. It can only be allowed to persist if we think that people living in Africa somehow aren't fully human beings, that they don't deserve the opportunities, the health care, the ability to live and protect their families, their children the way that we do in the wealthy countries.
I saw Secretary of State Tony Blinken saying that we are, the United States, sharing as many safe and effective vaccines around the world as possible. I couldn't believe he said that. I know Tony and I understand, and he's not a bad guy, I've known him for a long time, and as secretary of state, you have to be diplomatic. You can't always say what you mean. It's certainly why I shouldn't have that job, but this is just a false hood. The United States is not doing anything close to everything we can for the rest of the world.
We are shockingly ungenerous in the ability and willingness to fund and to provide vaccines for those that don't have them. The COVAX Facility so far, 150 million doses delivered. The plan, the modest and reasonable plan for now was 650 million doses. We are 500 million doses short. It's underfunded. You had 1.8 billion per vaccine delivery that was provided for last month, over a billion dollars short of their modest goals. This was the kind of thing, it's not just the United States, pretty much any G20 economy, maybe not Argentina, any individual G20 economy could have done the COVAX funding by themselves, and they didn't. They all looked, I guess, not even at each other because they wouldn't budge. As long as you're taking care of your own country, that's all you need to do.
In this environment at a time that we are facing the worst crisis of our lifetimes, the United States on the one hand, refuses to follow basic science. We are as deeply politicized as any time we've ever experienced it, pointing fingers, calling names, thinking that we are our own worst enemy while we're not taking care of even the basics. And we can so easily afford to do so for those around the world.
It's much easier not to talk about this. It's much easier to not to focus on it. But if we can't get this right for COVID, how are we going to get it right for the bigger crises to come? How do we get it right for climate? How do we get it right for terrorism, for migration? How do we get it right for the next pandemic or the next variants of COVID? It's challenging and it's something we're going to keep talking about, but something I wanted to address today. As so many of us are thinking about summer and enjoying ourselves and our families and our friends, and that's all wonderful, but spare a thought and some action for those that are not so fortunate.
And I hope everyone's doing well. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
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A person holds a placard as supporters of the Economic Freedom Fighters march to demand a rollout of COVID vaccines, in Pretoria, South Africa.
Africa’s COVID crisis and the politics of selfishness
This time last year, world health experts were speculating about why Africa appeared to have escaped the worst of the global pandemic. Younger populations? Natural immunity created by exposure to past viruses? Something else?
They can stop wondering. Africa is now in the grip of a COVID emergency.
A few bleak facts:
- Of the 10 countries with the highest number of current COVID deaths per capita in the week before July 18, three of the top six are in Africa. That includes Namibia at #1, Tunisia at #2, and South Africa at #6.
- Last week, recorded COVID deaths in Africa jumped 40 percent from the previous week.
- Just 1 percent of Africa's 1.3 billion people are fully vaccinated. African governments will be very lucky if that number reaches 10 percent by the end of 2021.
- African countries were slated to receive many more AstraZeneca vaccine doses from India. That was before India became a global COVID hotspot.
- Of 77.6 million doses that the COVAX facility, a vaccine-sharing initiative, has allocated to African countries, fewer than 16 million had arrived in Africa by July 7.
There are many explanations for Africa's new COVID troubles. Healthcare facilities are below international standards in many of Africa's 54 countries. Governments don't have the bureaucracies to roll out treatments and vaccine doses as efficiently as in wealthier parts of the world. Poor infrastructure in some countries compounds that problem.
But the G-Zero world disorder plays a role here too. G-Zero is a term coined by our boss, Ian Bremmer, to describe an "every nation for itself" approach to global politics that has become the dominant trend in today's world.
It's not that wealthy countries have done nothing to help Africa. Without support from the US, EU, and other rich countries, COVAX wouldn't exist to provide vaccines to anyone. But while it's completely understandable that American and European leaders want to vaccinate Americans and Europeans first, the scale of vaccine selfishness has become a topic of hot debate.
Here's your key data point: According to One.org, an activist organization, "The world's richest countries could vaccinate their entire populations and still have over 1.9 billion doses to share — enough to vaccinate the entire adult population of Africa."
As it is, healthy young people in the US and Europe will be vaccinated months before many frontline healthcare workers, elderly people, and people with serious underlying medical conditions in Africa.
Some may see this as a sad but understandable reality. Wealthier nations and people have always enjoyed advantages while the poor suffer what they must. But there are two obvious responses to that.
First, selfishness can be a matter of degree. It's one thing to argue that "my people must be vaccinated first." It's quite another to horde excess supplies that might never be used and to consider booster shots for young healthy people in one country while frontline health workers in other countries can't even get their very first vaccine dose.
Second, every time COVID is transmitted from one person to another, it mutates. Enough mutations create variants — like the delta variant that has caused COVID to rise not only in Africa, but also in the United States and Europe. Leave enough people unvaccinated and we sharply increase the risk that future variants — maybe more transmissible and more lethal than the now prevalent delta variant — will be infecting vaccinated people everywhere.
What We're Watching: Africa desperate for vaccines, US-EU truce on airplanes, ICC probes Duterte
Africa is running out of vaccines: Africa has received fewer vaccines than any other continent, and the results are now showing. Faced with a third wave of infection, many African countries say that cases are soaring and that vaccine deliveries from the WHO-managed COVAX facility remain sluggish, in large part because of shortages from Indian drug manufacturers. South Africa, Namibia, and Uganda say that their healthcare systems are inundated with COVID cases; ICU beds are scarce, and COVID patients are dying while waiting for hospital beds. To date, just 0.6 percent of Africa's 1.3 billion people are fully vaccinated, and new variants are spreading, making containment across the continent even harder. (Cases in the South African province of Gauteng, home to the hubs of Johannesburg and Pretoria, where South Africa's more transmissible COVID strain has run rampant, have doubled over the past week, and doctors are bracing for a surge in deaths.) Meanwhile, the G7 countries agreed this week to send 1 billion COVID doses to poor countries, but experts warn that these may not arrive in Africa before most states' supplies run dry.
US and EU agree to truce on Boeing-Airbus row: After 17 years of quarreling, the US and the EU have agreed to put their differences aside in the ongoing saga over subsidies for Boeing and Airbus, their respective aerospace champions. In 2019, the World Trade Organization found that Brussels had illegally been providing subsidies to Airbus, essentially clearing the way for Washington to slap billions of dollars' worth of tariffs on EU products. Shortly after, the WTO found that Washington was doing the same thing for Boeing, violating international trade regulations and leading Brussels to threaten tariffs on US exports. In reaching this truce on the sidelines of the recent G7 summit, US President Joe Biden and EU representatives have agreed to suspend punishing tariffs — championed by former US President Donald Trump — worth a collective $11.5 billion a year on a range of products like whiskey, cheese, spirits, and tractors. But why now? President Biden has made it abundantly clear that he wants to get the Europeans on side in an increasingly bitter fight with China over a range of economic, human rights and tech abuses. The Biden administration also says that this move will help stabilize manufacturing jobs in aerospace and other sectors, reflecting its "foreign policy for the American middle class."
ICC to probe Duterte's drug war: The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has asked permission to launch a full investigation of alleged crimes against humanity committed during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs from 2016 to 2019. Duterte's crackdown on drug traffickers has killed about 6,000 people, according to official police data, though local human-rights groups say the real figure is much higher. As expected, the Philippine government blasted the Hague's decision and vowed not to cooperate with the probe. In fact, Manila withdrew from the ICC in March 2019 in response to its preliminary investigation into the drug war. Duterte himself has kept quiet so far, but the threat of a full ICC probe won't draw any sign of remorse for his war on drugs, the signature campaign promise that helped elect him five years ago. Indeed, these days the Philippine president is more focused on choosing whom he'll endorse to run for the top job in next year's elections, and whether he'll be on the ballot as a vice-presidential candidate.
What We're Watching: Africa's vaccine shortage, Colombian unrest, Bibi fails to form government
India's COVID crisis hurts Africa: As COVID started to ravage India in March, New Delhi announced a ban on all vaccine exports to prioritize the domestic crisis. This development was a massive blow for the COVAX facility, which is relying on India's Serum Institute manufacturing the AstraZeneca shot for low-income countries. The impact of this export ban is now being felt acutely across Africa, where many countries have received a scarce number of doses. The World Health Organization says that at least seven African countries including Rwanda, Ghana, and Senegal have already exhausted all their vaccine supplies — and because of delays from India, will now need to wait several weeks for more to arrive. COVAX, which has received 90 million fewer doses to date than it was initially promised, says it needs an extra 20 million doses by the end of June to offset shortfalls caused by the worsening crisis in India. It's a worrying trend: while inoculation drives in places like the US, the UK and Israel are allowing their economies to reopen and life to slowly return to normal, many low-income countries will not return to normalcy for years, experts warn. To date, only 2 percent of all doses administered globally have been in Africa, despite the continent accounting for 17 percent of the global population.
Colombian unrest over tax reform: The UN has called out Colombia for using excessive force to disperse recent street protests against the government's planned tax hikes, which left at least 19 people dead in Cali, the country's third largest city. The protesters wanted President Iván Duque to withdraw his controversial proposal to raise taxes for the middle class, which Duque says is needed in order to raise revenue to help the Colombian economy recover from the pandemic. But the backlash against his measures was so strong that the government quickly relented. The fact that Duque caved after just a few days of rallies underscores how unpopular his proposed reforms are, and will likely limit his government's ability to cut back on any social spending before his term ends next year. Whoever takes over from Duque will now have to deal with a sizable hole in Colombia's finances, and the economy could become a big campaign issue in the 2022 presidential election — in which the frontrunner is now Gustavo Petro, the big-spending former mayor of the capital Bogotá.
Israel's political stalemate persists: Four weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party won the most seats in parliamentary elections — and was then tapped by President Reuven Rivlin to try and form a coalition government — Israel's political stalemate continues. After Bibi has failed again to bring enough parties together to form a workable coalition, there are several potential scenarios for how this could all play out. Rivlin could ask Yesh Atid (There is a Future) leader Yair Lapid, who heads the anti-Bibi opposition bloc and came in second in the March vote, to try and reach a 61-seat majority. Israeli media report that this is the most likely scenario, though it won't be an easy feat for Lapid amid Israel's deeply divided political milieu. Rivlin could also throw the mandate to Naftali Bennett, a former Netanyahu ally who leads a small right-wing party but whose support both sides need to form a government. Center left-leaning Lapid and Bennett might try to work together to oust Netanyahu, but ideological differences would likely undermine that effort. Both politicians say they are committed to doing whatever it takes to avoid another election, which would be Israel's fifth since April 2019. But if the current political stalemate persists, that's exactly where this is all heading.