It’s Every Nation for Itself in the Coronavirus Fight
The world used to solve crises by getting heads of state together. Now, leaders are hemmed in with fear of contagion and the lack of a broader vision.
Group of Seven leaders and guests pose for a picture at the G-7 summit in Biarritz, France, on Aug. 25, 2019.
Photographer: Andrew Parson/Getty Images
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.