/ 10 June 2020

Thank our lucky stars and stripes Trump did not take the lead in the pandemic

US president Donald Trump on Tuesday said calls for his impeachment were "ridiculous."
US President Donald Trump. (Reuters)

Rarely does the whole world agree on a common enemy as much as we do on coronavirus. Yet the opportunity to tackle it together was thoroughly squandered. The result was a virus rampage that quickly overwhelmed the globe and put more than half its population under lockdown within three months of its first appearance. By June 2 it had infected 6 619 022 people (1 906 692 in the United States) and killed 388 856 (109 255) … and counting. 

It is claimed, in agonised tones, that one of the key problems has been the lack of American leadership to the response. Although it is true that the global response has been slow and unco-ordinated, probably resulting in more fatalities than might have been, it is not necessarily true that American leadership, at this historical juncture, would have made a difference for the better. On the contrary, given the current American leadership, highly likely for the worse.  

An effective response to the virus depended on at least three important steps going right: the source country response (the speed with which it comprehends the virus and the transparency with which it shares information), the quality of the global response strategy and the effectiveness of implementation.  

China, as the presumptive source country of the coronavirus, has faced a lot of questions and an investigation was agreed on at the World Health Organisation (WHO) general assembly. As for a robust global strategy, that takes leadership. The world has come to rely on the US to provide the necessary leadership when a response to a global challenge is needed, and it was no different this time.  

But the US did not lead the global response. No one did. Although many regret that the US did not lead — with the implied or stated assumption that it would have made for an effective global response — I think the world was lucky that at this historical moment, it didn’t. Imagine the chaotic disaster, confusion and breathtaking incompetence of the US response to the virus being spread worldwide?

If the world was waiting with bated breath for leadership when the American president was on an extended period of denial, South Korea might not have leapt into action and had its first test ready barely two weeks after its first case, which was reported the same day as the first US case. Neither would have Germany.  Or the world would have waited for a still non-existent response plan which Trump said, in Davos on January 22, his White House already had.

As the US was struggling to fashion its own national response, other countries were doing the same. In the US, however, chaos reigned as the president moved back and forth between denial and alarm, declaration of a national emergency and prevarication on the responsibilities between the federal and state governments.  

The co-ordination and acceptance of responsibility between the federal and state governments caused delays in decision making on strategy. In the end there were only national guidelines and states cherry-picked those and the timing they preferred. 

In Germany and Australia, which are also federal countries, the approach to intergovernmental co-ordination has been different, with more successful outcomes in terms of the number of people dead per capita. 

It is just as well that the world was forced to move on without the US. It was also good the US was not able to get in the way, except for alleged efforts at diverting other countries’ health-supply shipments and undercutting the WHO in the middle of a global pandemic. Now even they can apply the lessons learnt from those countries who did well by pioneering approaches that worked. 

There is no doubt that the world would have done much better with a collaborative approach to the pandemic, and certainly with co-ordinated economic stimulus strategies as in previous financial and economic crises. There is equally no doubt that the American institutional expertise to help generate global solutions is still there. But these can only be leveraged by a leadership that understands the US’s role and how it is exercised, not one that does not even understand its own role in the federal system. 

Joseph Mugore is an international development consultant who advises governments and their development partners. He writes in his personal capacity