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Biden's vaccine diplomacy and US global leadership; US-China bill gets bipartisan support
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
What's the significance of the US-China bill, competition bill that passed the Senate earlier this week?
Well, the bill is a major investment in American technology, research and development, semiconductor manufacturing, and it's designed to push back on the China Made in 2025 push that lawmakers have become increasingly worried about in recent years. The opinion in Washington has shifted from seeing China as a strategic competitor to a strategic rival. And you're seeing what's now likely to be one of the only bipartisan bills in Congress now pushing back on that. Significant money for semiconductors in this bill, even though some of it was set aside for automotive purposes. That money's not going to come online fast enough to really make a difference to the current global semiconductor shortage, but it will help build up US long-term spending capacity and manufacturing capacity in semiconductors.
Other aspects of the bill, banned the application TikTok from going on government devices out of security concerns, created new sanctions authorities around Xinjiang and Hong Kong for human rights abuses, and mandated a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, which is probably going to happen anyway once the Biden administration is able to align with its allies. Let the athletes play. Don't let any high level delegations go. This is probably the only bipartisan bill to happen this year, yet still, half of Senate Republicans voted against it because they were opposed to the kind of industrial policy they think this represents, but it does show the area where there's bipartisan agreement in a city that's very, very divided right now. China is the bad guy and Congress is moving in that direction.
With President Biden announcing the US will donate 500 million vaccine doses to the world, is this the first step in the US's return to international leadership?
Well, the US said they were going to buy 500 million doses from Pfizer, maker of one of the mRNA vaccines developed in the United States, and send it out through the COVAX initiative to 100 countries around the globe. Separately, the G7 said that together they would donate a billion vaccine doses around the globe, but the US is obviously leading this initiative with the greatest vaccine production capabilities and the largest contribution globally. Still, the Biden administration has come under some criticism for being a little bit too slow to get these doses out the door. And the NGO community wants to see the US support a vaccine waiver, which the US has said they want to do, but now they're trying to negotiate that to allow other countries to use the IP created by Pfizer, Moderna, and others to create vaccines around the globe and drastically increase supply over the long-term.
The US has been very cautious in its approach. It wants to make sure that it has enough doses to give every adult in the US two, which is the recommended amount, and save some reserve for booster shots in case they're needed or if the virus starts coming back next summer. So, probably no matter what the US does here, it's not going to be enough for some people, but Biden is using this as an effort of vaccine diplomacy to let the world know that the US is back. This is a very different approach from the Trump administration, and this is signaling their commitment to spreading goodwill around the world.
Biden-Putin summit: US wants predictability; G7's strong COVID response
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week:
What topics will be in focus at the G7 summit?
Well, most importantly is the collective response to coronavirus. 1 billion vaccines, repurposed, and tens of billions of dollars in financing from the G7 to lower income economies around the world. It is by far the most significant show of leadership displayed since the pandemic started and it's coming from the United States and its allies. That is meaningful, especially given the direction that the world has been heading, this G-Zero world over the course of the past decades. It's nice to see. Lots of other issues being discussed. It's only 60 seconds. I can't go that far.
What do you make of the EU joining the US in a push to investigate the origins of coronavirus?
Sure you don't want to go back to the G7? It's a much happier conversation. It means that the US-China relationship is getting more challenging. It means that the Chinese are going to be incredibly defensive about the fact that they have not provided access to the international community to investigate the origins of coronavirus. There are other countries around the world that are increasingly concerned about it. And if this becomes a really big flap, it is possible that we could start to see more formal Chinese decoupling from the West around issues of healthcare and epidemiology. I could imagine even the Chinese government leaving the World Health Organization, which would be very significant since that's where lots of the necessary transparency really is absent for the rest of the world. Anyway, we watch this space.
With Biden and Putin to meet next week, in Geneva, what does each want from the summit?
Biden's made very clear, he said it himself, and so has Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken, they want a more predictable relationship between the US and Russia. In other words, the status quo is not great, but they'd like it to persist. That's the baseline. They don't want it to get worse. They don't want sudden crises, whether it's on hacking, whether it's around Belarus, whether it's around issues of human rights, they don't want to rock the boat unnecessarily when the US-China relationship is considered to be by far the top priority, the biggest challenge. In the case of the Russians, he wants to be treated with more respect and he's unhappy with the status quo. He thinks that the West needs to be more divided, both internally and as a transatlantic relationship. Hard to see a lot being accomplished between the two leaders. But I do think if it surprises, the meeting will surprise on the upside. We'll watch next week.
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What We’re Watching: China’s vaccination blitz, Nicaraguan opposition crackdown, Dems/GOP vs China
China goes big on vaccination: China is now vaccinating about 20 million people a day against COVID, accounting for more than half of the world's daily shots. Following a sluggish initial rollout, Chinese vaccine makers have scaled up production in recent months. That's good news for the world, particularly for developing countries that rely on vaccines distributed through the COVAX global facility, which now includes China's WHO-approved Sinopharm and Sinovac jabs. It's also good news for China's government, which for months has struggled to make its production capacity match its ambitious vaccine diplomacy program (though it has already supplied a whopping 350 million doses to more than 75 countries). And finally, it's good news for the Chinese people, who can travel without restrictions, both inside and outside China, once they're vaccinated. It's not good news for India, which earlier this year had a window of opportunity to compete with the Chinese on doling out jabs to low-income countries but then had to suspend exports in order to address its own COVID crisis.
Don't try to run for president in Nicaragua: Nicaraguan police have arrested four prominent opposition figures as part of a widening crackdown on challengers to strongman President Daniel Ortega. Two of those jailed were planning to run in November elections to try to deny Ortega a fifth presidential term. In recent years, Ortega — a former guerrilla who reinvented himself as a pious, business-friendly nepotist — has faced increasing protests over corruption and authoritarianism. Last fall he passed a law that permits him to detain any citizens considered "terrorists" or "traitors." And his handling of the pandemic has been epically bad: after refusing to take any public health measures, he and his wife simply disappeared for a month. The US has imposed sanctions and labeled Ortega a "dictator," but Washington must tread carefully — the last thing this White House wants right now is more instability in Central America that will encourage more migrants to head for the US southern border. But for many Nicaraguans, the last thing they want is more Ortega.
China's hottest new export: US bipartisanship: Democrats and Republicans agree on almost nothing these days, but lawmakers of both parties fear that a rising China threatens US global dominance. That's why on Tuesday evening senators flashed a rare moment of bipartisan unity by voting overwhelmingly to pour $250 billion worth of subsidies and grants into developing advanced technologies like semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. One of the bill's sponsors, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), framed it explicitly as a bid to combat the "authoritarian image [that] President Xi Jinping would like to impose on the world." The bill now moves to the House, where it faces a few obstacles but will likely pass. Thought bubble: 20 years ago, the US thought that bringing Beijing into the "rules-based" order would make China more like the US politically. Instead, China's state capitalist model has forced the US to become a bit more like China economically — as the US develops ambitious and expensive state-driven industrial policies of its own.
What We’re Watching: US vaccine patent U-turn, right wins big in Madrid, Biden weighs in on Russia-Ukraine
US reverses course on vaccine patents: In a surprise move, the Biden administration will now support waiving international property rights for COVID vaccines at the World Trade Organization. Until now the US had firmly opposed waiving those patents, despite demands from developing countries led by India and South Africa to do so. Biden's about face comes just a week after he moved to free up 60 million of American-bought AstraZeneca jabs — still not approved by US regulators — for nations in need. It's not clear how fast an IP waiver would really help other countries, as the major impediments to ramping up vaccine manufacturing have more to do with logistics and supply chains than with patent protections alone. But if patent waivers do accelerate production over time, then that could accelerate a globalreturn to normal — potentially winning the US a ton of goodwill.
The left gets pummeled in Madrid: The two leftwing parties in Spain's national government got massacred in regional elections in Madrid this week. Both the center-left PSOE and the far-left Podemos were steamrolled by the conservative Popular Party, which more than doubled its current seats to win 64, just four shy of a majority on its own in the Madrid legislature. The PP may now even turn to the upstart far-rightists of Vox in order to form a coalition government in Madrid. The defeat was a crushing blow for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the PSOE, who has often clashed with Madrid's pugnacious regional leader over the latter's disdain for economy-crippling lockdowns. Moreover, the surge in support for PP and Vox in Madrid — always an influential bellwether for national politics — will make him very reluctant to call early elections, which he was considering doing because the PP until recently was in big trouble following its dismal showing in the Catalan election just three months ago. Interesting times ahead for Spanish politics.
Biden, Ukraine, and Russia: I'd like to speak face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin sometime this summer, says US President Joe Biden. Not a bad idea, says the Kremlin. If it happens, the two leaders are sure to talk about Ukraine, and there have been suggestions this week that the US might join Germany and France in efforts to mediate the conflict and find a path to peace. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken is actually in Kyiv this week to assert "unwavering US support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's ongoing aggression." Russia has lately been dialing up the pressure on Ukraine – with a brief military buildup along the border between the two countries, military exercises in the disputed Crimea peninsula, and Russian threats to blockade key Ukrainian ports. These are reminders that the central challenge for any mediator is ending a conflict that Russia's government still finds useful for both domestic and international purposes.
America’s “narcissism pandemic”: Tom Nichols, author of "Our Own Worst Enemy"
Is America's real problem a "narcissism pandemic"? According to Tom Nichols, an Atlantic contributor and author of "Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within On Modern Democracy,," the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the degree to which Americans expect things to come easily to them. "There is a real selfishness and self-absorption and narcissism that has come with living in a country that is peaceful, prosperous, affluent, super high standards of living—technological innovations that we now just take for granted that things just work." Ian Bremmer asks Nichols to suggest some solutions to the problem in an interview on GZERO World, airing on US public television.
Watch the episode: Make politics "boring" again: Joe Biden's first 100 Days
The urgent need for doses—not dollars—in the global vaccination race
600 million people worldwide have already received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, but about 75% of those doses were given in only ten countries. Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization, explains why the pandemic will not effectively end even in the world's richest nations until it is curtailed in its poorest. "A new variant that is less susceptible to the immunity that's brought about by vaccines or that's more transmissible or makes people more ill could easily then spread, in fact, to people in parts of the world where there have been large numbers of people vaccinated and where they think that they are then immune." Dr. Swaminathan discusses the urgent need to distribute vaccines worldwide in an interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, airing on US public television stations starting April 9. Check local listings.
Watch the episode: Vaccine nationalism could prolong the pandemic
What We're Watching: Netherlands election, US election meddling, Taiwan's vaccine diplomacy effort
Netherlands votes: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is slated to win a fourth term in office as polls show his People's Party for Freedom and Democracy on track to win a clear victory. While Rutte has been caught up in a political maelstrom in recent months — his government was forced to resign in January amid a scandal over childcare benefits, while the Netherlands has also been rocked by sometimes violent anti-lockdown protests — polls showed that he was set to win around 36-40 seats (76 are needed for a majority), an even bigger win than he saw in 2017. But forming a coalition could be trickier. Rutte says he will not work with Geert Wilders and his anti-Islam and anti-immigrant Freedom party, the second largest force in parliament. As a result, Rutte will likely need to join forces with three other parties — drawing from the Christian Democrats (left wing), D66 (progressive liberal), Labour, Green Left and the Socialist party — to form a government, a process that could take many weeks given the ideological diversity of the political blocs.
Taiwan's vaccine diplomacy: Taiwan has offered Paraguay, the only country in South America that recognizes its independence from China, assistance to procure COVID vaccines. This comes as nations in the region become increasingly reliant on Chinese-made jabs, and as Paraguay itself has seen mass street protests and growing calls to impeach President Mario Abdo over his handling of the pandemic and slow vaccine rollout. Paraguay is now in a tough spot: it wants to maintain warm ties with Tapiei and desperately needs more jabs, but has also increasingly struggled to counter growing political pressure at home to drop its recognition of Taiwan and instead establish bilateral ties with the People's Republic of China in exchange for Chinese economic assistance (the lower house of parliament approved it last year, but senators voted against the move). We're watching to see how this all pans out, and if Taiwan can help Paraguay find enough vaccines to prevent China from coming in to save the day and conquering its last holdout in South America through its vaccine diplomacy.
Foreign meddling in US 2020 election: US intelligence believes that Russia attempted to influence the outcome of the US election in 2020, hoping to lock in another win for Donald Trump. A new US government report also notes that Iran sought to help Joe Biden get over the finish line — who has said he wants to reenter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — and that China considered meddling in the vote but ultimately decided not to interfere to avoid "blowback." While neither the Russians' nor the Iranians' actions were sufficient to affect the result, according to US intelligence, there's still a lot to be concerned about. First, it's clear that foreign attempts at meddling in US elections are here to stay. Additionally, it's also apparent that Russia now views the benefits of stoking the flames of US political division by trying to influence American voters as outweighing the risk of more US sanctions. Moving forward, the onus is now on the Biden administration and US Congress to safeguard future elections knowing that foreign powers will surely again try to sway American voters.Can India vaccinate everyone it wants to?
As the global vaccination race heats up, the most populous country in the world is trying to do three very hard things at once.
India, grappling with the second highest confirmed COVID caseload in the world, recently embarked on what it called "the world's largest" coronavirus vaccination campaign, seeking to inoculate a sizable swath of its 1.4 billion people.
That alone would be a herculean challenge, but India is also making hundreds of millions of jabs as part of the global COVAX initiative to inoculate low-income countries. And as if those two things weren't enough, Delhi also wants to win hearts and minds by doling out millions more shots directly to other countries in its neighborhood.
How will India pull off such a gargantuan task? It's still early days, but tough tradeoffs are already emerging fast.
Domestic mistrust. When India launched its COVID vaccination campaign in January, many were hopeful. The country had both the capacity to mass-produce (India makes about 60 percent of all vaccines globally) and the logistical infrastructure already in place to inoculate hundreds of millions of children against measles or tuberculosis annually.
But six weeks in, barely 1 percent of Indians have gotten their shots. Technical glitches are one reason. But another issue is widespread skepticism. Only 40 percent of Indians say they want to be vaccinated, according to the pollster Local Circles. A fishy approvals process for India's own locally-developed vaccine contributed to that. Earlier this week Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself took the jab in a photo-op bid to boost public confidence.
There's also a basic supply constraint which is forcing India's government to balance competing priorities.
Made in India vs India First. Global prospects for ending the pandemic depend heavily on India, which has committed to producing hundreds of millions of vaccines for Oxford/AstraZeneca, under the local name Covishield. But balancing that global demand against Indians' needs is proving tough.
Delhi has already warned once that it would delay COVAX commitments until it had inoculated a critical mass of its own population. And although it walked that back a bit, two weeks ago the Serum Institute of India — the main COVAX supplier — hinted it was under pressure to prioritize India's "huge needs."
One of those needs is vaccine "friendship." Prime Minister Modi calls his strategy "Vaccine Maitri," a Sanskrit word with Buddhist overtones that means friendship, goodwill, or kindness. Modi wants the world to see India as a benevolent power, using its vaccine manufacturing capacity to help countries in need.
Indeed, Delhi is set to ship shots to several nations in South Asia and beyond, often for free. But Delhi's largesse has a geopolitical coloring too: India is sending jabs to Bangladesh, for example, as part of a strategy to mend ties with Dhaka after the fallout of India's controversial 2019 citizenship laws, which stoked tensions with the majority-Muslim country. Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, no Indian-made jabs are headed for the 200 million people of long-time adversary Pakistan.
China is part of the story too. India's main rival for Asian supremacy is waging its own complicated campaign of vaccine diplomacy, sending millions of vaccines to countries across the developing world. Delhi wants to counter that, but is focusing closer to home: India is supplying millions of doses of Covishield to neighboring Nepal, where China's growing influence has been eroding India's sway in recent years, and to Sri Lanka, which is increasingly in play in the Asian rivalry between Beijing and Delhi.
Bottom line: India has chosen to do three very difficult and somewhat conflicting things. Succeeding at any one of them alone would be an impressive step in the longer fight to end the pandemic. But can Delhi manage more than that?