It’s Every Nation for Itself in the Coronavirus Fight

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Some of the most intractable political problems of our time were hashed out behind closed doors, with leaders huddled close, weighing half gestures, each other’s body language, and tone of voice, literally breathing over each other. Call it the human touch. It was the very thing that helped thaw the Cold War, laid the groundwork for U.S. President Richard Nixon to visit Chairman Mao Zedong and end Communist China’s decades of isolation, and, most recently, unlocked the Greek financial crisis..Today there’s virtually no hope of that kind of close collaboration to stop a deadly virus from metastasizing around the world. It was only two weeks ago that Angela Merkel, the longest-serving political ruler of a major Western democracy, walked briskly into a meeting in Berlin and extended a hand to her interior minister, only to be told “nein.” She laughed, he laughed, the room laughed. With the number of global novel coronavirus cases at more than 160,000, and the death toll more than 5,000, the whole thing is no longer a joke..Not least for politicians who’re fast discovering they’re just as vulnerable as the rest of us, if not more. They tend to be older and come into contact with lots of people all the time. Privilege and rank won’t protect you from a virus that defies borders in the age of globalization. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has entered self-quarantine after his wife tested positive for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has died from it. If you’re going to get close to U.S. President Donald Trump, 73, you’ll get your temperature checked first..In the front lines, most of the time-tested diplomatic methods to put out a crisis of this magnitude no longer apply. Goodwill was already in short supply, what with a White House that sneers at multilateral institutions and a European Union that’s stuck in an existential funk. Getting everyone in a room together the old-fashioned way used to make a difference—and we took it for granted. It’s unthinkable now that we need to stay at least one meter (3.2 feet) apart from each other..Merkel had largely delegated the virus problem to her health minister—until she had an epiphany on March 11 and decided to take charge. A trained physicist, she cut to the chase in her statement that day: “The consensus among experts is that 60% to 70% of the population will be infected as long as this remains the situation.” Suddenly, Merkel was back in command. But has she awakened to the catastrophe too late for heads to be banged together to avert a disaster?.On March 16 she joined other Group of Seven leaders on an extraordinary videoconference call to chart a way on what has proved excruciatingly elusive: a coordinated approach. The upshot was they borrowed what has become something of a cliché, “Whatever it takes.” Those three words were used to great effect by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in 2012 to save the euro. But today the promise has been overused and rings hollow..One has to be in “the room where it happens,” or so goes the song in the musical Hamilton, which recounts the famous secret dinner of three American icons more than two centuries ago that led to the bargain that saved the U.S. economy. But is that possible anymore—even in a virtual conference room?.Trump, a self-described germophobe, is the official G-7 host, but even before the virus began ravaging the world, he’d disrupted the established world order and upset traditional allies. The G-7 itself is a bit of an antique: a postwar conceit whose importance was on the wane as the balance of power shifted east to China. It served a unique purpose of bringing some big names together in intimate settings where they could drop diplomatic pretenses and vent in a safe space. The meetings began as a cognac-over-a-fire affair in a French château on the heels of the 1973 oil crisis. That kind of private, personal diplomacy and single-minded purpose might help in the ongoing calamity—if it can be replicated over video chats. Combating the coronavirus will involve finding common cause and setting aside feuds over oil and trade and climate..There is much at stake just in Europe. A resentful Italy in lockdown is feeling abandoned to its own fate. Italians are singing patriotic songs from the confinement of their flats and long for their countryman Draghi rather than the inexperienced Christine Lagarde, who succeeded him at the ECB and failed to land the sentiment last week, sending markets into a tailspin. Having lost the U.K. to a strain of populism, the EU should tune into a founding member’s sense of betrayal..Italy is embarking on a largely unheard-of experiment in social isolation by a major democracy. Its leader is a former law professor with little political backing, who’s trying to channel Winston Churchill’s World War II spirit from an underground bunker in Rome..The U.K, having got Brexit done, seemed bent on doing the exact opposite of what the Continent was doing. Prime Minister Boris Johnson held out for a utilitarian solution in which the country achieves “herd immunity” after enough of the population is infected. That keep-calm-and-carry-on approach was out of step with most of Europe, which is shutting down schools and restaurants. Even Trump reversed his see-no-evil course to declare a national state of emergency. For his part, Johnson mused on television that “one of the theories is perhaps you could take it on the chin.” Johnson’s stance is beginning to waver, though. On March 16 he asked people to avoid any non-essential social interaction..For frightened citizens, stocking up on toilet paper and planning entire weeks around staying indoors while juggling child care and work, there’s no consolation in the sight of leaders appearing to make it up as they go—and being pilloried by unforgiving memes on social media. Leaders, as they follow their own directives and disappear from the public eye, do themselves no favors by appearing distant, aloof, and uncaring. Trump struggled to read off a teleprompter and made factual mistakes while announcing a new ban on travel from Europe to tackle the “foreign virus.” His own advisers have wondered about his political survival beyond November..The virus poses a strategic dilemma: Leaders are more than ever tempted to isolate themselves and their countries from the threat to everyone’s well-being—just when what’s needed is even greater engagement, as well as passionate—indeed, selfless—cooperation across borders. There’s so far been no single voice, no personality, to rally that courageous sentiment..It’s worth remembering the example set by England's King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II. As war broke out across Europe, the man who never wanted to be king overcame his stammer and intense shyness to deliver the most important speech of his life—live—from his desk in Buckingham Palace on Sept. 3, 1939. In a message heard over the radio against a crackling background, he touched the heart of the nation and its people, reaching out “with the same depth of feeling for each one of you, as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself.”.He needed to reassure a nation that it was about to enter a conflict it might not win. It worked. They made it through. From deep in his palace, he’d come into everyone’s room..©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

It’s Every Nation for Itself in the Coronavirus Fight

In the front lines, most of the time-tested diplomatic methods to put out a crisis of this magnitude no longer apply.

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