The outset of COVID-19 and its impact on the G20 process
As one
of its primary responsibilities upon assuming the Group of 20 (G20) presidency in
December 2019, Saudi Arabia announced its 2020 G20 agenda. Setting the agenda remains an important role
of the G20 presidency, in addition to organizing year-round G20 working group
meetings that take place at the ministerial level, and which culminate in the
annual summit where the world leaders of the twenty largest economies issue a
collective communiqué on shared priorities and plans of action for
international economic and financial stability. However at the time that the
2020 agenda was drafted back in December 2019, the G20 Saudi Secretariat could
not have predicted that only a short while later, an unanticipated agenda would
impose itself not only upon the G20 member countries but the rest of the world,
and that the year 2020 would be characterized by a single phenomenon that would
wreak havoc on public health and social systems globally while causing unprecedented
disruptions to the economy, travel and international supply chains. Indeed, supporting
a global response to COVID-19 and mitigating its negative economic impacts
quickly became a priority for the Saudi G20 presidency, and two weeks after the
World Health Organization officially declared the virus a pandemic, on March 26th
Saudi Arabia organized a virtual G20 Extraordinary Leaders' Summit where the
G20 heads of state affirmed their support for the WHO and declared that they
would “further strengthen the WHO’s mandate in coordinating the international
fight against the pandemic.”
The
G20’s two largest economies, the US and China, have arguably received more
media backlash against their respective coronavirus response measures than any
other countries globally, albeit criticized for different reasons.
Nevertheless, each is determined to avoid coming in last place in the public
image competition that overshadows their management of the pandemic. China on
the one hand represents the origin of the virus, and various international
media outlets have accused it of being responsible for the virus’ early spread
by silencing whistleblowers such as the now famous Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, who later died of the virus. The US on the
other hand currently holds the title of having the highest number of COVID-19 cases and
deaths globally, numbers that are widely blamed on US
President Donald Trump’s slow reaction to the pandemic and hesitance to
implement strict response measures even after it was clear that COVID-19 had
spread beyond China. The US
began to emerge as the global epicenter of the virus at the end of March, which
was when China had conversely begun to reverse its image from virus villain to
virus hero by sending COVID-19 aid to various European countries after having driven
domestic transmission to nearly zero in a relatively short period of time. Also
at that same time, the WHO’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
contradicted President Trump’s March 21st tweet that championed the
potential coronavirus treatment hydroxychloroquine & azithromycin, stating
two days later at a WHO press briefing that “Using untested medicines without
the right evidence could raise false hope and even do more harm than good."
The US begins its efforts to overhaul the WHO
Up until
that period, Trump had largely praised China for its pandemic response. However
in the context of the US landing under the international spotlight as the new
virus epicenter, coupled with Trump’s likely interpretation of Dr. Tedros’
remarks on “untested medicines” as direct criticism, Trump announced on April 14th that he would halt US
funding for the WHO. In doing so, he accused the organization, and specifically
Dr. Tedros, of overly praising China’s COVID-19 response while simultaneously
being too critical of the US’. Following Trump’s accusations against the WHO, China’s foreign
ministry stood by the organization, also rejecting US criticism of its own
response to the pandemic. Ultimately however, an independent investigation will have to determine whether
the WHO correctly followed protocol, and whether or not the WHO enabled China
in any way to downplay the virus during the early stages of the pandemic, either
intentionally or through negligence. More than 110 countries have already demanded such an
investigation.
Moreover,
Trump has gone beyond stopping US funds to the WHO and beginning the formal
withdrawal process; over the last months, he has tried to completely overhaul
the organization by leveraging the current US presidency of the G7. His efforts
will likely increase in the coming months leading up to the G7 and G20 summits,
in addition to the US presidential election, in which the outcome partially depends
on how the American public perceives Trump’s coronavirus response. The fact
that China is not a G7 member has allowed US accusations of China in that forum
to go largely unchecked; nevertheless, Trump has failed at successfully negotiating
WHO reform talks among the G7 members (Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK), and France and Germany recently quit
the WHO reform talks entirely. Unlike the US, other G7 members have maintained
that the WHO’s main weakness is not that it is too powerful or over-funded, but
that on the contrary, an increase in WHO funding would allow the
organization to operate more effectively. Furthermore, France and Germany indicated that
the US should not be permitted to lead the WHO reform talks since it has
already begun the process of formally withdrawing from the organization. The US failure to successfully
negotiate WHO reform talks among the G7 members is likely only a preview of
what will occur at the upcoming Saudi-hosted G20 summit this November. Unlike
the G7 however, China is a member of the G20, and therefore the US will have
even less leverage over those discussion outcomes. Dominating G20 discussions
will prove much more difficult for Trump, who throughout his four-year term has
called into question various multilateral institutions after he determines them
to be unfavorable to US interests or his own political agenda. Saudi Arabia
could therefore find itself under increasing US pressure to set the G20
summit’s agenda in accordance with Trump’s own interests with regard to
discussions on the WHO and the coronavirus response narrative, yet Saudi Arabia
will want to avoid any perceived slight against China, its largest trade partner.
What the US-China WHO clash means for multilateralism as a whole
Organizations
that were established to foster international cooperation and prevent conflict
are increasingly becoming the source of conflict itself among competing
superpowers. As the US-China rivalry continues to escalate, their clashes across
the battlegrounds of the world’s most influential international organizations
will likely intensify as well, and the fate of entire organizations, such as
the WHO, run the risk of becoming collateral damage in the soft power conflict
between the two countries. For example, the ease with which President Trump was
willing to sacrifice the world’s most important international public health organization
in the middle of a global pandemic could set a dangerous precedent for the post-WWII
multilateral order. If he, or other politicians for that matter, are able to
convince the public that these organizations are not effective when we need
them the most, then it becomes easy to call into question their entire
legitimacy. While the WHO remains under the spotlight in this regard due to the
unending global threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, US-China competition continues
to unfold in other organizations as well. For example on August 14th,
in the context of its ongoing maximum pressure policies towards Iran, the
United States’ proposed extension of the arms embargo against Iran failed in a United
Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote, in which China, an ally of Iran, was one
of two countries to vote against the US proposal. Following the vote, China’s
ambassador to the UN stated that this "once again shows that
unilateralism receives no support and bullying will fail." In terms of the
World Trade Organization (WTO), domestic bipartisan support for a US withdrawal is already underway following
years of criticism that the organization emboldens China, yet such a move would
allow other countries to discriminate against US goods while at the same time
giving China free reign to influence the rules of the global economy. Furthermore,
in the years leading up to China’s establishment of the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2016, which stands in contrast to the US-dominated
World Bank, the US actively lobbied other countries not to join as members of the
new organization in fear that it would deliberately undermine other multilateral
development banks. Today however, the AIIB has the second largest global
membership after the World Bank, including among its members all the GCC
countries.
How global multilateral organizations ultimately suffer from the US-China rivalry
As long
as international organizations’ most powerful member states are actively undermining
multilateral solutions by exploiting their spheres of influence within those
organizations to advance a unilateral agenda, the organizations themselves will
suffer. In efforts to appear impartial to both China and the US, or potentially
face similar consequences as the WHO and lose a significant amount of funding, organizations
could become even less efficient in carrying out their mandates due to a fear
of making the wrong move and losing support from either the US or China. Of
course, as an international forum and not an international organization with a
permanent staff or headquarters, the G20 represents a unique platform for this
US-China soft power rivalry to play out, especially in the context of increasing
tensions between the two countries. Considering that the number one item on the
agenda of the upcoming Saudi-hosted G20 summit will likely be global response
measures to the pandemic and its economic devastation, a discussion of which
would be impossible without also invoking the WHO, one wonders how achieving
consensus or meaningful dialogue could possibly take place when the US and
China have essentially spent the last five months spouting aggressive rhetoric
at each other on these very topics. What is clear however, is that the ongoing
US-China fight for global economic influence will continue to shape the future
of multilateralism and global governance, for better or for worse.
*Aileen
Byrne is a Senior Researcher at the Gulf Research Center
