Geopolitics raises ugly head in life-and-death struggle
That the world is an iniquitous
place is no profound statement. Yet, it is still shocking to see people
dropping dead from COVID by the hundreds per hour because sufficient production
of vaccines and their equitable distribution could not be ensured even as
finger-pointing and geopolitically motivated rabble-rousing were in full
display over the last one year.
Estimates have it that at least
70 percent of the world's population must be vaccinated to achieve herd
immunity. COVAX, the global arrangement aimed at ensuring fair and equitable
access to COVID-19 vaccines for all, has a target of vaccinating 20 percent of
the global population—and even that is appearing to be a tall order. According
to a Duke
University study, as of mid-January, 60 percent of the more than seven
billion vaccine doses purchased globally had gone to high-income countries, which
represent only 16 percent of the world’s population. More than 75
percent of vaccines worldwide have been administered in just 10 countries. The
World Health Organization (WHO)’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
has described the vaccine crisis as a "scandalous" inequity.
A litany of mistakes and missteps
and the wearing of geopolitical blinkers on the part of influential nations on
the world stage contributed to the crisis. Some rich countries placed advanced
purchase orders for vaccines enough to vaccinate their people several times
over. They stockpiled the precious commodity. They banned the export of
vaccines, including those they had not authorized for domestic use. They
imposed restrictions on the export of raw materials used in vaccine production.
COVAX remains an abandoned ship. There was an organized attempt to discredit
alternative vaccines on spurious grounds—the underlying geopolitical motive
barely hiding just beneath the surface.
Consumed by crass geopolitical
rivalry, nations flexing or aspiring to flex their muscles on the global ring were
out of tune with ground realities—including those concerning the capacity, or
lack thereof, of individual countries to produce and supply vaccines for the
world. For India and the geopolitical bloc it has embraced, the assumption or
conferral of the title of the world's pharmacy quickly proved to be an exercise
in self-delusion. The vicious second wave in India served as a rude awakening.
It was foolhardy of a section of world leaders to invest all vaccine hopes in a
single country while refusing to accept the alternatives offered by rival
powers. Oh—how the connotation of "vaccine diplomacy" has changed in
but one year! Truth be told, Western hopes that India would rise to the
occasion, à la a knight in shining armour, to be the world's
vaccine-supplier-in-chief were partly born of the desire to see a strengthened
role of Quad in undercutting the significant role in the worldwide provision of
vaccines scripted by China, either through direct exports or collaborative
production. Poisonous geopolitics constrained some poor countries from
exercising their full range of options for procuring vaccines. Diversifying
one's sources of supplies is a sane strategy even in normal times. And COVID times
are far from normal. It is only rational to secure vaccine supplies from
multiple sources. But basic caution was sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics
of, by and for outsiders—at the behest of both real and wannabe global powers. Until
the second wave came calling in India, disabusing all and sundry of the ludicrous
notion of a single global pharmacy.
Spurred by the devastating second
wave in India, the United States at long last agreed in principle to consider
waiving intellectual property protection over COVID vaccines. India and South
Africa had tabled a proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in October
2020 for a temporary waiver, for COVID medical supplies, of the provisions in
the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
The US, the European Union, Switzerland and Japan, among other developed
countries, had vehemently opposed the proposal, which had the support of over
60 WTO members. While it could well take months for the WTO membership to reach
a consensus decision to waive intellectual property protection on vaccines—and
it is far from certain that members currently opposed to the proposed waiver
will support the same, not to mention the pressure that will be brought to bear
by the pharmaceutical lobby in the US itself—it is nevertheless significant
that the US, ever in the vanguard of intellectual property protection in global
fora, has agreed to a waiver, albeit temporarily, to ease the supply of and
access to COVID vaccines. This, however, speaks as much to the urgency of the
pandemic as to the perceived challenge to maintaining the US-led world order,
driven home vividly by the crisis in India, a key developing country in the Western
strategy to contain China.
Predictably, the pharma industry
is up in arms against the Biden administration's acquiescence—a sacrilege to
them. They have powerful allies among the political class in the US, as well as
across the Atlantic. They will fight tooth and nail at the WTO, where the
matter could drag on for many months. Already, Big Pharma and the votaries of
unabridged intellectual property rights have gone into overdrive with the
message and argument that waiving intellectual property protection is not going
to result in increased availability of the life-saving vaccines, and that it
will take more than the waiver to enable facilities in developing countries to
start or expand vaccine production. Responding to these attempts to queer the
intellectual-property-protection-waiver pitch are credible voices, from
academia to the WHO—not to mention the over five dozen countries pressing for a
waiver at the WTO—that hold intellectual property protection in its current
form as the biggest obstacle to ensuring adequate supplies of, and affordable
and equitable access to, COVID vaccines.
Stripped of political
correctness, where does the Biden administration really stand in the
intellectual property debate as it relates to COVID vaccines? Deep down, does
it subscribe to Big Pharma's argument that the waiver is not going to lead to
greater production? Is its acquiescence to the proposed waiver, then, just a
gimmick aimed at appeasing the domestic Left gallery and an empty promise to keep
the world community occupied? Or, does it believe that the waiver will be
instrumental in bringing about vaccine relief, as has been argued forcefully by
eminent scholars and activists, including those based on US soil, and by the
WHO itself? It is in the interests of the world that the latter is the case.
The US will have a pivotal role to play in steering WTO negotiations on the
waiver to a speedy and meaningful conclusion with the intended effect.
Ideally, cooperation among all
three leaders in COVID vaccine technology—the West (the US, the UK and the EU),
Russia and China—and the world's leader in mass vaccine production prior to the
pandemic (India) is the first-best outcome for humanity facing one of its
greatest crises ever. The record so far since the outbreak of COVID makes this
wishful thinking. The non-elites in the vast majority of poor countries without
the ability to manufacture vaccines fervently hope that even if geopolitics
does not allow active and constructive engagement among the feuding powerful
nations to facilitate access to vaccines on humane terms and conditions, it
will at least not become the arbiter of life and death in a vaccine-scarce
world.
(Published in Trade, Climate Change and Development Monitor (SAWTEE),
Volume 18, Issue 5, May 2021)