project-syndicate | Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy
focused on great power competition with China. Many Americans of both
major political parties agree that Trump was correct to punish China for
cybertheft of intellectual property, coerced intellectual property
transfer, and unfair trade practices such as subsidized credit to
state-owned enterprises.
Reciprocity does need to be enforced. If China
can ban Google and Facebook from its market for security reasons, the US
can take similar steps against Huawei or ZTE.
Anger and mistrust
festers in both countries’ capitals.But what the COVID-19 crisis teaches
us is that this competitive approach to national security is
inadequate. And COVID-19 is not the only example. The information
revolution and globalization are changing world politics dramatically.
While trade wars have set back economic globalization, environmental
globalization, reflected in pandemics and climate change, obeys the laws
of biology and physics, not politics. In a world where borders are
becoming more porous to everything from drugs and illicit financial
flows to infectious diseases and cyber terrorism, countries must use
their soft power of attraction to develop networks and institutions that
address the new threats.
As technology expert Richard Danzig points out,
“Pathogens, AI systems, computer viruses, and radiation that others may
accidentally release could become as much our problem as theirs. Agreed
reporting systems, shared controls, common contingency plans, norms,
and treaties must be pursued as means of moderating our numerous mutual
risks.” Tariffs and border walls cannot solve these problems.
On transnational issues like COVID-19 and climate change, power becomes a positive-sum game. It is not enough to think of power over others; one must also consider power with
others. On many transnational issues, empowering others helps a country
accomplish its own goals. For example, all can benefit if others
improve their energy efficiency, or improve their public health systems.
All leaders have a responsibility to put their country’s interests
first, but the important moral question is how broadly or narrowly they
choose to define those interests. Both China and the US are responding
to COVID-19 with an inclination toward short-term, zero-sum, competitive
approaches, and too little attention to international institutions and
cooperation.
