Table Of ContentGlobal Security
in Times of Covid-19
Brave New World?
Edited by
Caroline Varin
New Security Challenges
Series Editor
George Christou, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
The last decade has demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in
their causes and manifestations and that they invite interest and demand
responses from the social sciences, civil society, and a very broad policy
community. In the past, the avoidance of war was the primary objective,
but with the end of the Cold War the retention of military defence as
the centrepiece of international security agenda became untenable. There
has been, therefore, a significant shift in emphasis away from traditional
approachestosecuritytoanewagendathattalksofthesoftersideofsecu-
rity, in terms of human security, economic security, and environmental
security. The topical New Security Challenges series reflects this pressing
political and research agenda.
For an informal discussion for a book in the series, please contact the
series editor George Christou ([email protected]), or Palgrave
editor Alina Yurova ([email protected]).
This book series is indexed by Scopus.
More information about this series at
https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14732
Caroline Varin
Editor
Global Security
in Times of Covid-19
Brave New World?
Editor
Caroline Varin
Professors Without Borders
Regent’s University London
London, UK
ISSN 2731-0329 ISSN 2731-0337 (electronic)
New Security Challenges
ISBN 978-3-030-82229-3 ISBN 978-3-030-82230-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82230-9
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To those who were lost in this pandemic.
And to Alexia and Adi, for a safer world.
—Caroline Varin
Foreword: COVID-19 and Security
How Has COVID-19 Undermined Security?
HasthepandemicofCOVID-19underminedglobalsecurity,thesecurity
of countries and the security of individuals? Whilst these are diverse defi-
nitions ofsecurity, they sharea commonconcern—on the one handfor a
peaceful world and on the other for individuals to live freely in a tolerant
society. The pandemic has posed challenges to security in each of these
forms.Fromtheglobalperspective,ithasfirstraisedtensionsbetweenthe
superpowers of China and the US and second demonstrated that the will
of rich countries to help much poorer countries is strictly limited when
their own public’s health is at risk. At the level of individual countries,
it has in some cases increased their tendency to fragment and in others
led to an authoritarian regime which may well outlast the pandemic. In
the case of individuals, it has led to unprecedented forms of monitoring,
which accentuate the growth of the ‘surveillance state’. In each of these
threeareas,ithasalsoaccentuatedthegrowthofvariousformsofcorrup-
tionandinmanycountriessetbacktheagendatoaddressclimatechange.
This book provides an analysis of these issues from the perspective of
society in a range of countries and is therefore a crucial contribution to
understanding the pandemic’s immediate and longer-term impact.
vii
viii FOREWORD:COVID-19ANDSECURITY
International Cooperation
ThefightagainstthepandemicstartedbadlyasChina,thephysicalorigin
of the virus, identified it on 30 December 2019 and reported it to the
WHO on 2 January 2020, which published the information. However,
China seems to have been reluctant to take on board the scale of the
problem until 23 January when the city of Wuhan was completely locked
down, but by this time Chinese sources were quoting case numbers at
about 2300 a multiple of four in four days.1 Nonetheless the response
amongst several countries of the region, such as Taiwan, Thailand and
Singapore was strong and quickly extended to viral testing.
However, once notified by the WHO of a ‘Public Health Emergency
ofInternationalConcern’on30January,2 mostOECDcountriesdelayed
a response proportionate to the risk, and countries such as Italy, France
and the UK initiated responses which—in terms of mortalities—proved
to be tragically too late.
TheresponseoftheUS,whichintheoryhadawell-developedstrategic
response to a potential pandemic, was a disaster. This reflected the
bombastic claims of the Trump Presidency in which the actual pandemic
was wished away as a diversion, a position which led to at least 600,000
deaths.Thesurgeinthepandemicinmid-2020coincidedwithadecision
by the US to withdraw from the WHO, at a time when this UN body
was crucial to inspiring an international co-ordinated response. Further,
the tensions created by President Trump’s consistent references to the
‘Chinese’ virus further raised the stakes in relations between China and
the US, at a time when both countries were sliding into a tariff war,
whichwouldcertainlyaffectthestabilityandsecurityoftheworldtrading
system. It would also exacerbate tensions in the South China Sea.
Whilst the two superpowers railed at each other’s failures, the richer
countries of the OECD were very slow to support COVID-related
strategiesinthelow-incomecountries,whicharethetargetoftheirdevel-
opmentaidprogrammes.Inmid-2020theformofsupportthatwasmost
urgentincludedPersonalProtective(PPE)equipmentandventilators,for
both of which the demand was critical within the donor countries them-
selves and for which international supplies were very limited. China was
the country which had the greatest capacity to deliver these products to
poorer countries but not surprisingly did so in limited amounts with the
maximum publicity.
FOREWORD:COVID-19ANDSECURITY ix
Until late 2020 it remained uncertain as to whether there would be
sufficient vaccines available to have a global impact, but an international
procurement and distribution body, COVAX,3 was established in antici-
pation of their availability. By early 2021, it was clear that there were at
least six effective vaccines available from different companies with bases
in the US, the UK, Germany, Russia and China. However, whilst the
EU and the UK made substantial grants to COVAX, the availability of
vaccines, as a result of manufacturing hitches, proved far more limited
than anticipated. The US and the UK, with relatively robust supplies,
adoptedapolicyofvaccinatingallthosewhowerewillingtobevaccinated
before engaging in international distribution. The EU’s procurement
strategy proved very inadequate and the international distribution which
it allowed, though substantial by mid-2021, was limited in relation to
the need in low-income countries. In fact, the world’s largest corporate
manufacturer of vaccines, the Serum Institute, is in Pune, India, but as
global demand for vaccines increased, the government of India, faced
with an escalating pandemic, banned vaccine exports in March 2021.
This cut off supplies to a range of countries both on a bilateral basis
and through COVAX. These shortfalls, which could have been avoided
by more effective and balanced international action, accentuated a sense
of global injustice and of insecurity.
The Domestic Front
For some low- and middle-income countries, the pandemic significantly
weakened the grip of the government as public services became over-
whelmed by the acceleration of the virus, and created a vacuum into
which mafia and quasi-mafia groups inserted themselves. This was partic-
ularly true in some countries, where the informal sector is large, and may
account for more than 40% of GDP. Thus, the phenomenon was strong
in contexts such as Colombia, Peru and Brazil. In these cases, existing
groups with a capacity for violence used the pandemic both to enforce
lockdowns and to win support from the population by supplying food
and medical equipment, and in these cases the writ of the government
was seriously weakened.
In some very large countries such as the US and India, the federal
natureofgovernmentmadeitdifficulttothatlockdownensurethatlock-
down rules were applied across the country and that PPE equipment was
available on an equal basis across constituent states. In fact, in the US
x FOREWORD:COVID-19ANDSECURITY
State Governors adopted very different approaches to lockdown, group
gatherings and mask wearing. This meant that they had a ‘bigger impact
on the direction of pandemic policies than the federal government’, and
states with more preventive measures had lower rates of infections and
deaths.4 This played directly into the tensions in interparty relationships,
which were on display in the riot at the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Although the Biden Presidency was ultimately able to orchestrate
and accelerate an equitable vaccine rollout, the huge mortality figures
confirmed the cost of earlier delays at the state level. The historian and
lawyer Roger Babbit has argued that this has further undermined the
viability of the current US constitution.5
InIndia,thecredibilityofthecentralgovernmentwasseriouslyunder-
minedwhena‘thirdwave’ofthevirusbrokeoutinearly2021andanew
lockdown was imposed, necessitated by the clear rejection in some states
of rules on social distancing. Furthermore, when the central government
finally recognised the priority of mass vaccination, final orders were only
placed in March 2021 although the Serum Institute is located in Pune.
Key Examples
Contributorstothisbookdescribeindetailtheimpactonsecurityofthese
and related outcomes of the pandemic. I refer here to some outstanding
and dramatic examples. The influence of mafia groups is illustrated in
the case of Mexico by the fact that the daughter of ‘El Chapo’ (Shorty)
Guzman, the sometime boss of La Linea (one of the two largest drug
dealing cartels in the early 2000s), was active in handing out boxes with
food and medical supplies with El Chapo’s picture on it.6 This can only
havestrengthenedthehandofthecartelinthecourseofthepandemic.In
Sicily, it was the Cosa Nostra who were active in distributing food parcels
and in Calabria it was the powerful mafia group, the N’drangheta, who
enforced the lockdown.7
In some cases, governments used the excuse of lockdown to control
theoppositionandimplementeddraconianmeasures.InThailand,where
politicaloppositionexplodedinlate2020,themilitarygovernmentcould
present crowd control measures as a response to the pandemic, effec-
tively limiting the growth of the burgeoning Future Forward party 8—a
position which would certainly threaten security in the longer run. In
China, where citizen surveillance is already well-developed, the central
government ensured that in Wuhan and all over Hubei Province the
