Under US President Joe Biden America continues to threaten the rules-based world economic order and is pushing the trend towards de-globalization. Although the new Biden administration rhetorically seeks more „values“ and the „community of democracies,“ the United States is still at its core seeking to protect its national interests with all its economic and military power.
…
By: Marco Verch, Quelle: https://ccnull.de/foto/china-help-world-fight-coronavirus-with-new-vaccine/1018901
Western media coverage tends to downplay the success of China’s vaccine development and vaccine diplomacy, but Europe should not underestimate the appeal of Beijing’s offer. The failure of rich countries to address equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines and the West’s absence from the vaccine diplomacy game has provided China with a reputational win.
…
The COVID-19 pandemic submerged the world for more than a year now, and global infection numbers are still rising. There are huge differences in the ability of governments and societies to cope with the pandemic: while Europe and the Americas remain epicentres of the disease, there are signs that infections are now also picking up across the African continent.
In an interesting turn-of-tide in discussion, the IMF calls for more public expenditure and higher taxation of the wealthy. The IMF states that economic recovery is possible in 2021 but dependent on both, access to vaccines and other medical interventions, and continuous effective policy support. Policy support needs to cushion the effects of the economic contraction, to decarbonize energy systems and economies, and for intensified multilateral cooperation to ensure universal access to vaccines and therapeutics and adequate financial liquidity of highly indebted countries.
What could international cooperation look like that promotes economically, socially and environmentally sustainable development in the interests of the global common good? A few weeks ago, Andreas Freytag and Stefan Liebing argued here that modern cooperation with Africa had to be based on private-sector investment, market principles in project selection, and competition between partner countries for international investment. Paternalism in development policy should be replaced with principles of competition and the social market economy.…
By Sosinda on pixabay
Multilateralism reached its low point in 2020 with the crystallization of the confrontation between major global powers, the further rise of nationalism, deglobalisation and trade protectionism that even threatened access to medical products and more recently Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of a pandemic. The latter profoundly affected global health, peoples’ livelihoods, and deteriorated existing systemic problems, from climate change to inequality, and intensified national reflexes as the G20 leaders turned their focus on domestic management of COVID-19. All these factors stood in the way of a successful G20 Riyadh Summit in November 2020 and still dominate the multilateral landscape in 2021.…