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I wrote a piece for @nytopinion about the need to develop a left internationalist approach to the coronavirus crisis as it hits the developing world – & about historical analogies for thinking through the challenges of global shortages it has exposed (1) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/coronavirus-trade-medical-supplies.html
In the US, it's been harrowing to watch states compete with each other to buy PPE & ventilators, which has led to massive inflation of their prices & difficulties procuring them. And this is happening within the bounds of a single, wealthy country. (2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-feds-play-backup-states-take-unorthodox-steps-to-compete-in-cutthroat-global-market-for-coronavirus-supplies/2020/04/11/609b5d84-7a70-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html
On the global level, the situation is far worse. US buyers offering 10 x the price for goods already on planes bound for Europe. South American & African officials being charged obscene rates for expired goods. Price gouging on a massive, global scale (3) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/world/coronavirus-equipment-rich-poor.html
In the US, Cuomo proposed a multi-state buying consortia to prevent state-state competition from leading to inflation of prices. Some states are sending equipment to where it's needed more, on the understanding it'll be returned if the tables turn (4) https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/08/just-madness-governors-mull-consortium-to-end-chaos-over-medical-supplies-1273929
Something similar is needed on the global level, particularly to deal with what many predict will be the next wave of the pandemic in the developing world, where the shortages of masks, gloves, gowns, and ventilators are far, far worse. (5) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-cases.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
While metaphors from WW2 have become ubiquitous, a different wartime analogy is more useful in this case: the intergovernmental bodies created during WW1 to manage global shortages of food, raw materials, & ships -- an episode I explore at length in my forthcoming book (6)
This involved the creation of a short-lived, though ambitious, form of what the historian Elizabeth Greenhalgh has called “wartime international socialism" (7) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/victory-through-coalition/CFABD1DEEEAFA82D77267BF72FF2D892
While US cuts funding for WHO, hopes are dimming for an international response to the crisis. But for much of the world, the question is still how to buy goods in such scarcity. Nationalism offers nothing; competitive purchasing makes matters worse (8) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/global-battle-coronavirus-equipment-masks-tests
Calls for the IMF to suspend debt payments & expand SDRs to put liquidity into the hands of developing countries, while welcome, will not do enough to deal with the shortages themselves. What good is all the $ if you can’t find things to spend it on? (9) https://www.ft.com/content/9cb75566-bfd2-4f25-81f7-55780ebdaa3d
What’s needed is a more ambitious way of getting goods from countries where they can be produced in abundance to where they are needed most - whether this involves ad hoc intergovernmental purchasing arrangements or massively expanded efforts by existing international orgs (10)
tl;dr: Global inequality kills and we need to do something about it (end) https://www.rescue.org/press-release/new-irc-report-exposes-double-emergency-covid-19-humanitarian-crises-reveals-grave
