There will be long lasting and still unknown effects from the current pandemic, and it will affect all industries, how people socialize, how they work, and how they go to school from now on. It is way too early to predict what the world will look like in six months, let alone five years.
But one immediate result seems to be the serious injury that this has done to the globalist movement, what some would modern imperialism, where all nations are expected to subsume their own national goals to that of a greater good, as judged by unelected international leaders at the UN and EU.
From the Washington Post:
The coronavirus pandemic, with its simultaneous health and economic crises, is deepening fault lines within Europe in a way some leaders fear could prove to be a final reckoning.
The cohesion of the European Union had been battered by Brexit, bruised by the political fallout from the 2015 migration surge and the 2008 financial crisis, and challenged by rising autocracy in the east that runs contrary to the professed ideals of the European project.
Now, if Europe’s leaders cannot chart a more united course, the project lies in what one of its architects described this week as “mortal danger.”
In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, the response among European Union member states showed that national interests trump more-altruistic European ideals. Border restrictions were reimposed haphazardly, and Germany and France threw up export bans on medical equipment such as masks and ventilators, even as Italy clamored for assistance.
Similarly, the UN has become irrelevant to the current crisis. No one is looking there for leadership.
It is natural that in a time of a worldwide pandemic, with shortages of medical equipment and protective clothing, people want to look at their own governments to obtain scarce resources and protect them before they will rely on an abstract world governing body to make judgments as to who will live and who won't. In fact, the idea of a world government that is so attractive to the global Left goes against the instincts of human beings who naturally care about their own family, tribe and people before everyone else.
Someone who decides to spend his or her life helping poor children in Africa, for example, may be looked upon as a saint - unless it is seen that they abandoned their own children to do it. In that case everyone instinctively understands that people need to take care of their own before others. That is the problem of globalism in a nutshell - great in theory, but dependent on the idea that there are unlimited resources so no one goes without. When the situation is triage, no one will volunteer to be the one who sacrifices themselves for the sake of the others.
Right now governments are begging, borrowing and possibly stealing equipment needed to take care of their own people. Israel is being open about the involvement of the Mossad in this enterprise but it is clear that all governments are doing the same thing, just not as publicly:
Mossad people, scattered throughout the world, are now creating a new “battle heritage” in a totally new field. They raid factories, make connections with manufacturers, urgently dispatch boats and trucks to all kinds of strange sites, only to discover how this world is full of swindlers and con men. In one case, middlemen tried to peddle counterfeit coronavirus test sets to the Mossad. In another case, a Mossad truck rushed to an industrial plant in Europe only to discover that another truck, sent by the German government, had beaten them by a single hour and emptied out the entire inventory....The far Left hates Israel precisely because it prioritizes its own people over others. They want no national borders, with everyone working for a common good - something that goes against people's natural instincts, probably biologically hardwired, to protect their own first. Demanding that people submit to some nameless bureaucrat in Brussels or Geneva deciding where respirators should go when your own city, state or country has a shortage is against every human instinct. It is roughly as unnatural as asking people to change their sexual orientation.
But along with the failures came successes as well. Twenty-seven ventilators were brought to Israel on Tuesday morning in a special operation; hundreds of additional ventilators are on their way. They also got their hands on new technology to create ventilators, and 30 Israeli factories have begun the race against time to create these machines that can hopefully resolve the shortage in a few weeks.
“It’s similar to an armament race,” one of the war room people told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “Once upon a time, countries competed in acquiring weapons and war materials. Next was the nuclear-armament race, and now everyone’s searching for ventilators. The prices have gone up at least 500% for ventilators as well as all the other protection measures connected to the coronavirus. Countries impose embargoes; they prohibit exports. People offer crazy prices and make senseless promises in order to get what we need. Into all this, we bring the special abilities of the Mossad, the far-away and dangerous places that are accessible to us, our special ties. We hope that we will be successful.”
This is not to say that countries shouldn't cooperate - of course they should. But that should happen in ways that benefit everyone. International groups meant to identify and stop deadly diseases before they infect the planet is one obvious example.
Altruism is wonderful as well, and should be encouraged, but only when there are enough resources. Placing your own people at risk to help others may sound like a Christian ideal but in fact it is immoral.
Israel is even going above and beyond in helping Palestinians, as this Bloomberg piece mentions: "One of the spy agency’s main missions is to source at least 7,000 ventilators, a number that also takes Palestinian needs into consideration, a man identified as a senior Mossad official told Channel 12." But even that is in Israel's self interest, because an outbreak in Gaza or the West Bank is dangerous to Israel. While Israel is happy to facilitate international organizations like WHO or the UN to provide aid for Palestinians, ultimately Israel has to do what's best for Israel - and that includes getting enough respirators for the Palestinians if their need for them increases.
The BDS movement had a webcast last week with Khury Petersen-Smith where he expressed his discomfort that the US Navy sent hospital ships to New York and Los Angeles, with no media criticism. He was unhappy with the idea (33:00) that the military gains legitimacy by saving lives. While the entire purpose of a military is to protect a nation's citizens, to the far Left, that is an illegitimate goal. Yet even he and his co-host realize even now that their opinions are way outside the mainstream.
People want to feel protected and they naturally expect that their family, city and country will do that for them. They protest when that aid is not forthcoming. But New Yorkers aren't protesting outside the UN headquarters demanding the world give them masks and respirators, even though New York City is the one place on the planet that needs them most today. No one remotely expects that the UN can do a thing to help.
The COVID-19 pandemic proves that globalism is a fiction and it always has been.