The White House released a plan Wednesday to manage COVID-19 so that Americans can “move forward safely” without shutting down schools and businesses.
The 96-page plan involves additional funding from Congress for this new stage of the pandemic.
The plan was previewed by President Joe Biden on Tuesday night during his State of the Union address. He announced that starting next week, more free rapid tests will be available online. Later this month, pharmacy clinics will be able to hand out antiviral pills to be taken immediately by people who receive a positive test.
“We’re launching the Test to Treat initiative so people can get tested at a pharmacy. And if they’re positive, receive antiviral pills on the spot at no cost,” Biden said during his address.
FILE – A customer makes a purchase at a drug store selling at-home coronavirus COVID-19 tests in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, Feb. 6, 2022.
The plan also includes mass production of about 1 billion vaccine doses every year in case a new variant arises. The new formula would be distributed within 100 days of detection of a new variant. Global distributions of the vaccine are also included in the plan so that future mutations can be addressed on a global scale.
The plan will require more funds on top of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package that was administered last year. That money has been spent or obligated through contracts. Officials have not stated how much will be needed for the new plan.
“Without these investments, many of the activities described … cannot be initiated or sustained,” the White House said Wednesday.
“America must maintain the tools — vaccines, boosters, treatments, tests and masks — to protect against COVID-19 and dramatically decrease the risk of the most severe outcomes,” the updated National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan stated.
During his address to Congress, Biden also called for less political polarization than there has been in the country for the past two years.
“We can’t change how divided we’ve been. … But we can change how we move forward — on COVID-19 and other issues we must face together.”
In the past month, the U.S. has reported nearly 4.64 million cases and nearly 65,500 deaths from COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Nearly 66% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins.
Spain has come out of the extreme risk of coronavirus transmission by dropping below 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (486), although the total number of deaths already exceeds 100,000. This scenario poses a change in the epidemiological surveillance strategy that will be analyzed on March 10 with the autonomous communities in Zaragoza.
The celebration of the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, a reflection of the recovery of normality due to the pandemic. EFE/Enric Fontcuberta
The average number of infections in Spain reached the extreme or very high risk of coronavirus transmission on December 17 and continued to rise until reaching the peak of the sixth wave on Friday, January 21, with 3,418 cases per 100,000 inhabitants after the outbreak of the omicron variant.
After the meeting this afternoon of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, at a press conference, considered that Spain is “on the right track” and that for that reason the new scenarios must be analyzed epidemiological.
Thus, Darias has announced the holding on March 10 of a meeting in Zaragoza of the Government with the autonomous communities and epidemiological experts to address the global health surveillance strategy and the transition to a new model “jointly” throughout the national territory and in coordination with the European Union.
Asked if there has been a debate about eliminating the mandatory nature of masks indoors (it is no longer mandatory outdoors) and if the proposal to start by removing them in schools, as proposed by Catalonia and Andalusia, has been discussed, the minister has forwarded to the meeting on March 10 in Zaragoza.
“When we go together we advance further, we must work in a rhythmic manner to take firm steps forward”, he added.
The Ministry of Health has decided to change the periodicity, now from Monday to Friday, of the national epidemiological evolution reports. Thus, the vaccination report will be given one day a week from the next and the incidence, infections, deaths and hospital occupation will be issued two days a week from March 14.
The data
The cumulative incidence it has dropped 29 points since yesterday from 515 to 486 cases per 100,000.
Above this extreme risk of transmission of the virus are Galicia, the Canary Islands and Murcia with more than 700 cases; Catalonia and the Basque Country with more than 600 and with more than 500, Aragón, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Extremadura and Navarra.
With less incidence: Melilla (246); Castilla-La Mancha (274), Andalusia (291) and Madrid (297).
By age bracketsthe group between 12 and 19 years old has the highest incidence (742), followed by those between 20 and 29 years old (620).
Health has reported 18,803 infections since yesterday, the lowest daily figure in recent weeks.
Since the start of the pandemic in Spain there are already 11,054,888 coronavirus infections on record.
The positivity rate of diagnostic tests it continues to fall to 17.06%, a few tenths less than yesterday.
Despite the decline in all indicators, the death toll remains high and, since records have been available since the start of the pandemic, 100,037 have been reached this Wednesday, after the 154 most reported since yesterday.
The ucis they are at 9.8% bed occupancy with 902 patients, although they are still at high risk (between 10% and 5%).
In Spanish hospitals, on the ward and ICU, there are 6,188 covid patients (4.9% occupancy) and in a low risk situation (from 5% to 2% of occupied beds).
Vaccines
In total there are 39,062,167 citizens91% of the population over 12 years of age, with the full course of the covid vaccine.
In addition, 24.1 million people have already received the booster dose, 50.9% of the general population.
57.5% of children between 5 and 11 years old (1.8 million out of 3.2 million) have received at least one dose and 19% already have the complete schedule since the campaign started on December 15 pediatric vaccination.
Spain offers 5,000 hospital beds to Ukraine
Spain has offered Ukraine, in the midst of the war over the invasion of Russia, 5,000 hospital beds in all the autonomous communities and medical supplies, medicines and respirators in coordination with the European Union.
The Spanish contribution exceeds that of the surrounding European countries in a gesture of “solidarity” with Ukraine in “times of difficulty and unity”, announced the Minister of Health.
With the global vaccine supply exceeding distribution capacity, the Biden administration is acknowledging a need to adjust its pandemic response strategy to address hurdles faced by lower-income countries to vaccinate their citizens.
“It is clear that supply is outstripping demand and the area of focus really needs to be that ‘shots in arms’ work,” said Hilary Marston, White House senior policy adviser for global COVID, to VOA. “That’s something that we are laser-focused on for 2022.”
Marston said that the administration has helped boost global vaccine supply through donations, expanding global manufacturing capacity and support for COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing mechanism supported by the United Nations and health organizations Gavi and CEPI.
Following supply setbacks in 2021, COVAX’s supply is no longer a limiting factor, a Gavi spokesperson told VOA. He said COVAX now has the flexibility to “focus on supporting the nuances of countries’ strategies, capacity, and demand.”
However, the pivot from boosting vaccine supply to increasing delivery capacity depends on whether the administration can secure funding from Congress, including funds for the U.S. government’s Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, or Global VAX, a program launched in December by USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Global VAX is billed as a whole-of-government effort to turn vaccines in vials into vaccinations in arms around the world. It includes bolstering cold chain supply and logistics, service delivery, vaccine confidence and demand, human resources, data and analytics, local planning, and vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Four-hundred-million dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act has been put aside for this initiative, on top of the $1.3 billion for global vaccine readiness the administration has committed. Activists say this is not nearly enough, but USAID says it’s a good first step.
“The U.S. government will surge support for an initial subset of countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have demonstrated the potential for rapid acceleration of vaccine uptake with intensive financial, technical, and diplomatic support,” a USAID spokesperson told VOA.
Those countries include Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
FILE – A worker handles the cargo of COVID-19 vaccines, donated through the U.N.-backed COVAX program in Madagascar, May 8, 2021.
Critical bottleneck
In January, COVAX had 436 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to allocate to lower-income countries, according to a document published in mid-February. Those countries, however, only asked for 100 million doses to be distributed by the end of May – the first time in 14 allocation rounds that supply has outstripped demand, the document from the COVAX Independent Allocation of Vaccines Group said.
“We’ve seen now 11 billion plus doses of vaccine being manufactured,” said Krishna Udayakumar to VOA. “We’re estimating 14- to 16- plus billion doses of vaccine being available in 2022,” added Udayakumar, who is founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center and leads a team that tracks global vaccine production and distribution.
But rather than fulfilment of vaccination targets, the oversupply highlights a weakness in global distribution capacity, which Udayakumar said is becoming “the critical bottlenecks.”
Only 12% percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to country data compiled by Our World in Data. Many countries still face massive hurdles to get those shots in arms, including gaps in cold-chain storage, and lack of funding to support distribution networks.
Global COVID funding
As the administration prepares to pivot its global pandemic response, humanitarian organizations are criticizing it for requesting insufficient funding from Congress.
“After two devastating years of this pandemic, U.S. leaders are dropping the ball on fighting COVID-19. Today we learned the Biden administration briefed Congress on the need for $5 billion in funding from Congress to fight COVID-19,” said Tom Hart, president of the ONE Campaign, in a statement to VOA last week. “What the world needs, though, is a formal request for $17 billion.”
Hart argued the $5 billion funding would be insufficient to provide critical resources needed to deliver vaccines, tests, and life-saving treatments to low-income countries, and achieve the administration’s goal of 70% global vaccination by September – a goal that is already far below pace.
The White House said the number is not final. “I don’t have any specific numbers; we’re still in conversation with the Hill (Congress) at this point about funding and funding needs, both domestically and internationally,” press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA on Wednesday.
In a statement to VOA, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, said they are still reviewing the funding request. “I will work with my colleagues to meet these important public health needs at home and around the world,” she said.
Meanwhile, Gavi, a COVAX co-sponsor, said it has only raised $195 million out of the $5.2 billion it asked for this quarter. The Gavi spokesperson told VOA the call to donors only went out in January and typically campaigns such as this require extensive rounds of consultation.
“The reason we launched a campaign to raise US $5.2 billion in additional funding is to ensure countries are able to roll out vaccines rapidly and at scale and have the resources on hand to be able to immediately step in as and when countries’ needs change,” the spokesperson said. “We need resources available now to prevent lower income countries once again finding themselves at the back of the queue. This is the only way we will break this pandemic.”
TRIPS waiver
Humanitarian organization Oxfam also argues that $5 billion dollars is not enough.
“We need to do much more to vaccinate the world, including investing in local manufacturing and most importantly, sharing the vaccine recipe,” Robbie Silverman, Oxfam’s senior advocacy manager told VOA.
Sharing vaccine recipes essentially means implementing a temporary TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver at the World Trade Organization to allow the generic production of current vaccines, as proposed by South Africa and India in October 2021. The proposal is supported by the Biden administration but rejected by the European Union.
Following a summit between European Union and African Union leaders last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered a compromise and said that the EU and AU will work together to deliver a solution within the next few months.
The U.S. is by far the biggest vaccine donor. The administration is sending 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Angola, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Zambia and Uganda this week, bringing the total shipped globally to 470 million doses out of 1.2 billion doses pledged.
A major initiative to strengthen and cement America’s ties with Asia and counterbalance China’s expanding influence lacks robust trade incentives that are viewed as politically perilous in the United States, where protectionist sentiment runs high, experts told VOA.
The United States needs to intensify its focus on the Indo-Pacific region because of the “mounting challenges” posed by the rise of China, according to a strategy document released by the Biden administration last week.
“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] is combining its economic, diplomatic, military and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power,” the strategy document said.
That description of China largely mirrors the view taken by the former Trump administration, which often took a bluntly adversarial stance toward Beijing. Beyond rhetoric, however, Biden’s strategy seeks to shore up regional alliances and partnerships that many see as critical to U.S. strategy in Asia.
It responds to the desire of many countries in the region for the United States to play a galvanizing role in addressing common challenges such as public health, climate change and anti-corruption, Ryan Hass, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA.
“It is a welcome departure from the America-first mindset during the Trump era,” Hass said.
No economic framework, leadership
The new strategy calls for advancing freedom and openness, building collective defense capacity within and beyond the region, and building regional resilience. It also embraces what the administration calls “promoting shared prosperity.”
But Hass and other observers say the Indo-Pacific strategy lacks a coherent trade framework that gives countries in the region a good economic reason to deepen relations with the U.S. They say Washington’s international economic agenda should match the leadership role the United States seeks for itself in the region.
Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, told VOA the strategy suffers from a fundamental contradiction in that it implies that the U.S. will engage in a high degree of global activism, following years of far more isolationist foreign policy under the Trump administration. At the same time, the Biden administration has not primed the American public to shift away from the Trumpian critique of globalization.
“They’ve put themselves in a box where they, for political reasons, seem to accept the Trump view that globalization is the playground of self-indulgent coastal American elites who don’t care about the heartland [of America],” Daly said. “What was needed was a better form of globalization that serves American interests — the Biden administration has chosen not to take that on.
Preceding Trump, the former Obama administration championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade agreement with 11 other countries designed to be the cornerstone of U.S. economic policy in the region. The Trump administration withdrew from the TPP in 2017, leaving the other members to sign a revised deal, called Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
With no public support for multilateral trade agreements, the Biden administration has said it has no plans to join the CPTPP and has made clear it intends to continue its predecessor’s protectionist trade policies.
The White House has not yet shared details of its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a component of the larger Indo-Pacific Strategy. The framework, which they billed as a “multilateral partnership for the 21st century,” was scheduled for launch early this year.
“As we consult with the Indo-Pacific partners, Congress and other stakeholders, we will have more to share as the process is ongoing,” deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told VOA on Thursday. “It’s underway.”
The administration said the framework would “promote and facilitate high-standards trade, govern the digital economy, improve supply-chain resiliency and security, catalyze investment in transparent, high-standards infrastructure, and build digital connectivity — doubling down on our economic ties to the region while contributing to broadly shared Indo-Pacific opportunity.”
But officials have acknowledged the framework will not include opening up American markets, the economic carrot that analysts say is missing from the strategy.
“Why would regional states agree to serious concessions on climate or labor standards if the United States is unwilling to discuss trade or investment liberalization?” asked Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “It appears that Washington is content to remain on the sidelines as Beijing integrates more deeply into the region’s economic order.”
In a briefing to reporters this month, a senior administration official acknowledged that regional countries want more but are “very realistic” about the constraints and challenges that shape the Biden trade policy.
Build Back Better World
Some analysts see the potential for incentives beyond market access.
“The promise of this [Indo-Pacific] initiative is that it will offer some other things that aren’t market access,” said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Goodman told VOA those may include improving international trade regulations or investing in infrastructure as promised in the Build Back Better World initiative.
Biden launched his Build Back Better World plan (B3W) during the June 2021 Group of Seven summit, with the goal of creating “a values-driven, high-standard and transparent infrastructure partnership” to help finance projects in developing countries.
U.S. officials led by Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics, have scouted several countries in Latin America and Africa to identify potential infrastructure projects, particularly those that focus on climate, health, digital technology and gender equality.
“There’s been enormous enthusiasm in every country we visited, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Ghana, Senegal, DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], parts of the Middle East, Indonesia, Thailand, and other parts of the world,” Singh told VOA Friday.
B3W has been framed as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s international development program that has financed infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America and has made inroads in Europe. China’s BRI investments have been criticized by outside groups for not assessing environmental and social impacts, lacking financial transparency and leaving some governments struggling to pay for costly infrastructure.
“The reason there’s so much enthusiasm is that countries do want a choice,” Singh said. “For a long time. China has been the only game in town for many of these countries, and in many cases, they have buyers regret.”
Last year the administration promised to include details of some initial projects during the formal launch of the initiative, originally scheduled for early 2022.
“We will have more details to come in the coming months on how to continue to implement this initiative, and the projects the U.S. government is investing in with allies and partners,” Jean-Pierre said to VOA Thursday. “This is something that the president is committed to.”
FILE – From left: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne, India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar, and Foreign Minister of Japan Yoshimasa Hayashi participate in the Quad foreign ministers’ press conference in Melbourne, Feb. 11, 2022.
Allies and partners
Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy promises steps to deepen America’s existing treaty alliances with Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. It also aims to strengthen relationships with regional partners such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Pacific Islands.
Continuing Trump’s approach, the administration is putting strong emphasis on the Quad – a regional grouping among the U.S., India, Japan and Australia.
Much of the strategy rests on the presumption of what the other actors will do, according to Aparna Pande, director of the Hudson Institute’s Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia.
“Japan and South Korea should get along, ASEAN should remain central, India should play a bigger role,” she told VOA, pointing out that with India’s plummeting economic growth, New Delhi may not be able to accept that challenge.
The strategy also aims to strengthen deterrence of military threats, with Japan and South Korea to pursue denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang has taken a series of provocative steps while ignoring Washington’s offer of talks without preconditions.
North Korea conducted 11 missile launches in January, a record in a single month, including a new type of “hypersonic missile” able to maneuver at high speed. It has also raised the possibility of restarting nuclear or intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
FILE – In this U.S. Navy photo, the Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Missouri departs Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Sept. 1, 2021. Australia decided to invest in U.S. nuclear-powered submarines and dump its contract with France to build diesel-electric submarines because of a changed strategic environment.
Military deals
While the Biden administration is not offering greater access to American markets, it has been handing out military deals.
Earlier this month, the administration approved a possible $100 million sale of equipment and services to Taiwan to “sustain, maintain and improve” its Patriot missile defense system.
The sale is in line with the Indo-Pacific Strategy goal of supporting Taipei’s self-defense capabilities in hopes of promoting peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. However, it has triggered an angry threat of retaliation from Beijing, which claims the democratically self-governed Taiwan as its breakaway province.
Earlier this month, the administration also approved the potential sale of F-15ID aircraft and related equipment to Indonesia in a deal valued at up to $13.9 billion, despite human rights concerns that have delayed previous arms sales to the country. The last arms deal made by Washington and Jakarta was in 2011.
Other deals include AUKUS, the September trilateral security pact with Australia and the United Kingdom to provide Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines.
More deals are expected and sharper contours of the Indo-Pacific Strategy may take shape as Biden hosts ASEAN leaders in Washington in the coming months and travels to the region for summits later in the year.
The U.S. needs a nimble, multipronged strategy and Cabinet-level leadership to counter its festering overdose epidemic, a bipartisan congressional commission advises.
With vastly powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl driving record overdose deaths, the scourge of opioids awaits after the COVID-19 pandemic finally recedes, a shift that public health experts expect in the months ahead.
“This is one of our most pressing national security, law enforcement and public health challenges, and we must do more as a nation and a government to protect our most precious resource — American lives,” the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking said in a 70-page report released Tuesday to Congress, President Joe Biden and the American people.
VOA Special Report: The Damage Done – Living America’s Opioid Nightmare
The report envisions a dynamic strategy. It would rely on law enforcement and diplomacy to shut down sources of chemicals used to make synthetic opioids. It would offer treatment and support for people who become addicted, creating pathways that can lead back to productive lives. And it would invest in research to better understand addiction’s grip on the human brain and to develop treatments for opioid use disorder.
The global coronavirus pandemic has overshadowed the American opioid epidemic for the last two years, but recent news that overdose deaths surpassed 100,000 in one year caught the public’s attention. Politically, federal legislation to address the opioid crisis won support across the partisan divide during both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Rep. David Trone, D-Md., a co-chair of the panel that produced the report, said he believes that support is still there, and that the issue appeals to Biden’s pragmatic side. “The president has been crystal clear,” Trone said. “These are two major issues in America: addiction and mental health.”
The U.S. government’s record is also clear. It has been waging a losing “war on drugs” for decades.
The stakes are much higher now with the widespread availability of fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. It can be baked into illicit pills made to look like prescription painkillers or anti-anxiety medicines. The chemical raw materials are produced mainly in China. Criminal networks in Mexico control the production and shipment to the U.S.
FILE – This photo provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Phoenix Division shows one of four containers holding some of the 30,000 fentanyl pills the agency seized in Tempe, Ariz., in August 2017.
Federal anti-drug strategy traditionally emphasized law enforcement and long prison sentences. But that came to be seen as tainted by racial bias and counter-productive because drug use is treatable. The value of treatment has recently has gained recognition with anti-addiction medicines in wide use alongside older strategies like support groups.
The report endorsed both law enforcement and treatment, working in sync with one another.
“Through its work, the commission came to recognize the impossibility of reducing the availability of illegal synthetic opioids through efforts focused on supply alone,” the report said.
“Real progress can come only by pairing illicit synthetic opioid supply disruption with decreasing the domestic U.S. demand for these drugs,” it added.
The report recommends what it calls five “pillars” for government action:
Elevating the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to act as the nerve center for far-flung federal efforts, and restoring Cabinet rank to its director.
Disrupting the supply of drugs through better coordinated law enforcement actions.
Reducing the demand for illicit drugs through treatment and by efforts to mitigate the harm to people addicted. Treatment programs should follow science-based “best practices.”
Using diplomacy to enlist help from other governments in cutting off the supply of chemicals that criminal networks use to manufacture fentanyl.
Developing surveillance and data analysis tools to spot new trends in illicit drug use before they morph into major problems for society.
Trone said it’s going to take cooperation from both political parties. “We have to take this toxic atmosphere in Washington and move past it,” he said. “Because 100,000 people, that’s husbands, sisters, mothers, fathers. As a country, we are better than that.”
U.S. experts agree on the need for Washington to rethink its strategy for Central Asia in light of its withdrawal from Afghanistan but are divided on what shape that new strategy should take.
Until 2001, few Americans knew this remote region. But it played a key role in U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan hosting air bases and helping the coalition transport critical goods.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lesslie Viguerie said Central Asia is still strategically important, despite the U.S. exit from Afghanistan. “Many things have changed over decades, but our overarching goals remain the same: sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity,” Viguerie said.
Lesslie C. Viguerie, the U.S. State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Central Asian and Pakistan Affairs.
At a recent U.S. Institute of Peace forum, Viguerie said the nations of Central Asia— which include Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan — have become more concerned about their own security since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.
As the State Department’s top official for the region, he said Washington steadfastly supports political, economic and social reforms.
“Pluralism and democratic governance are the foundational bedrock for a free and prosperous society,” he said. “We continue to advance the rule of law, promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and fight corruption.”
In 2015, Washington created the regionally focused C5+1 forum to discuss common challenges and “to enhance connectivity, economic integration and energy linkages.” That discussion included links with Afghanistan, but whether that continues will largely depend on the actions of the Taliban, officials said.
Viguerie said regional cooperation could help the five nations to deal more effectively with problems as diverse as the pandemic, climate change and disinformation campaigns.
“Recent events in Kazakhstan remind us of the importance of addressing the underlying social and economic factors that can lead to instability,” he said in reference to nationwide protests sparked by a sharp spike in fuel prices.
“We continue to highlight the positive role civil society can play in examining the root causes of economic and social frustrations.”
Mistaken presumption
Richard Hoagland, a former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, said that while Washington speaks publicly about democracy and economic development, it is more quietly focused on countering Russian and Chinese influence in the region.
In the 1990s, Hoagland recalled, U.S. policy presumed that the nations of Central Asia “would surely become free market democracies if only we could offer enough assistance. But they didn’t. And in retrospect, that’s not the least bit surprising.”
The ways of the West were too foreign to Central Asians who had long lived under repressive rulers, Hoagland said.
Going forward, he said, these five countries will need to resist outside pressure in order to balance their relationships with Moscow, Beijing, Brussels and Washington. “Russia would not be at all displeased to see the West and especially the U.S. pack up its bags and go home.”
Leaders of five Central Asian states hold a virtual forum with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Jan. 25, 2022. (president.uz)
Beijing, the largest investor in the region, made further commitments during a virtual meeting last week between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the five Central Asian presidents. India showcased its own interest in investing in the region during a similar summit a day later.
Presidents of five Central Asian states hold a virtual summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jan. 27, 2022. (president.uz)
Hoagland argued that U.S. concerns over governance and human rights problems should not lead Washington to dial back its relations with the region.
“We need patience,” he said, noting the rise of a new generation in Central Asia, including some with Western education and values.
Jennifer Murtazashvili, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said U.S. strategy for the region does not take current realities into account.
“The U.S. can play a very constructive role in Central Asia but has to understand their needs, desires and goals,” she said at the USIP forum.
She urged Washington not to look at the region through the lens of Russia or China, saying, “We can’t be reactive to what other countries are doing, but proactive.”
Murtazashvili said U.S. engagement with the region should focus on the intersection between economic development and public administration, including efforts to combat corruption and work with emerging civil society. “Without reforms in these areas, it will be difficult for Central Asians to achieve their goals,” she said.
She considers education the biggest area of demand for cooperation with the U.S. because of youthful populations.
Security cooperation first
But Fred Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, contends that security cooperation should instead be front and center. “A discussion with the countries that honestly includes security, sovereignty, self-government and self-determination is what’s been missing,” he said.
Speaking at the same virtual forum, Starr said Central Asia is the only region in the world that doesn’t have its own intraregional organization without outsiders and urges Washington to support such initiatives.
“The C5+1 is thin. The concept is good, they have meetings, but it’s been very passive by comparison to what China and Russia are doing,” Starr said.
“We have to be more patient and tenacious with those who are underperforming in areas that are important to us,” he added. “Treat them as a region, treat them with respect, foster a regional thinking in our programs.”
Murtazashvili sees Afghanistan as a place with potential to foster positive relationships among Russia, China and the United States. Now that the geopolitical implications of a major foreign presence in Afghanistan no longer overshadow more immediate regional interests, she said, major powers could collaborate on development and investment opportunities in this part of the world.
Afghans wait for food rations from the World Food Program in Pul-e-Alam, Logar province. Afghanistan, Jan. 18, 2022. The Taliban’s sweep to power in August drove billions of dollars in international assistance out of the country.
“Having a Central Asian strategy that was so dependent on what happened in Afghanistan was a huge risk,” she said. “We weren’t seeing the strong mutual interests that many countries in Central Asia had with Afghanistan regardless of who is in power.”
Starr and Murtazashvili recommend the United States make Afghanistan part of a renewed strategy. “Central Asians are more confident in dealing with Afghanistan than we are,” said Murtazashvili, specifically referring to Uzbekistan’s humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan.
Values-based approach
Steve Swerdlow, professor of human rights at the University of Southern California, argues for a values-first strategy toward the region. In an interview with VOA, he said America’s reputation as a defender of human rights and democracy has been damaged in recent years but argued that the Afghan withdrawal frees up the U.S. to reclaim a more values-based approach to Central Asia.
“Washington should speak out more about the harassment of journalists and create greater recognition that support for civil society is a core national interest of the U.S.,” he said.
“Global Magnitsky sanctions against bad guys should be used more in Central Asia in a strategic way,” he added. “Go after corrupt individuals; curtail some of the globalized, offshore asset holdings by” a close circle of former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Swerdlow said Washington should utilize the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations to raise human rights issues in Central Asia and negotiate with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan as members of the U.N. Human Rights Council about their obligations.
The sweeping “zero-tolerance” strategy that China has used to keep COVID-19 case numbers low and its economy functioning may, paradoxically, make it harder for the country to exit the pandemic.
Most experts say the coronavirus around the world isn’t going away and believe it could eventually become, like the flu, a persistent but generally manageable threat if enough people gain immunity through infections and vaccines.
In countries like Britain and the U.S., which have had comparatively light restrictions against the omicron wave, there is a glimmer of hope that the process might be underway. Cases skyrocketed in recent weeks but have since dropped in Britain and may have leveled off in the U.S., perhaps because the extremely contagious variant is running out of people to infect. Some places already are talking about easing COVID-19 precautions.
China, which will be in the international spotlight when the Beijing Winter Olympics begin in two weeks, is not seeing the same dynamic.
FILE – In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a staff member disinfects parcels at a community where a locally transmitted COVID-19 case was found, in Haidian district, Beijing, China, Jan. 18, 2022.
Find and isolate
The communist government’s practice throughout the pandemic of trying to find and isolate every infected person has largely protected hospitals from becoming overwhelmed and staved off the deaths that have engulfed most of the world.
But the uncompromising approach also means most people in China have never been exposed to the virus. At the same time, the effectiveness of China’s most widely used vaccines has been called into question. New studies suggest they offer significantly less protection against infection from omicron, even after three doses, than people get after booster shots of the leading Western vaccines.
Together, those factors could complicate China’s effort to get past the pandemic. Experts say if the country of 1.4 billion people were to relax restrictions, it could face a surge similar to what Singapore or Australia experienced, despite a highly vaccinated population.
“China’s susceptibility to outbreaks is likely to be more because most people have not been exposed to the virus due to the stringent measures that were put in place, thus lacking hybrid immunity, which is supposed to prove better protection than vaccination alone,” said Dr. Vineeta Bal, an immunologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
“It is risky for China to reopen right now because omicron is spreading globally, and even if the variant doesn’t cause major illness, it’ll spread like wildfire,” she added.
Dali Yang, a professor who studies Chinese politics at the University of Chicago, said, “It’s a big challenge, for leaders, especially their rhetoric on saving lives. How do you justify opening up and then having tens of thousands of people dying in the process?”
Workers from the restaurant industry line up for their covid tests in Beijing, China, Jan. 22, 2022. Chinese authorities have called on the public not to travel during the Lunar New Year.
Tough-minded strategy
Chinese President Xi Jinping has cited China’s approach as a “major strategic success” and evidence of the “significant advantages” of its political system over Western liberal democracies.
The world’s most populous nation was the only major economy to grow in 2020, and it accounted for a fraction of global deaths and infections.
As part of the country’s tough-minded strategy for keeping the virus at bay, residents in Chinese cities must display their infection status on a government-monitored app to enter supermarkets, offices or even the capital.
But weeks ahead of the Olympics, omicron is testing this approach with outbreaks in the southern province of Guangdong, as well as Beijing.
Organizers of the Olympics announced they will not sell tickets locally and will allow only select spectators in. Foreign fans are not allowed.
A man takes a photo at an overlook in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 22, 2022.
Stay home for the new year
Authorities have also asked people to not visit their hometowns around the Lunar New Year at the start of February, a move that will dampen spending during China’s most important family holiday. And the major city of Xi’an in the west and parts of Ningbo, a busy port south of Shanghai, are under lockdown.
With the Communist Party gearing up for a major meeting this fall, at which Xi is expected to be appointed to a third term as party leader, China is unlikely to relax its policies in a major way any time soon.
“If the numbers from COVID start to skyrocket to big levels, then this will reflect badly on his leadership,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese political leadership at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
China relies heavily on its own Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, along with several others made domestically. It has not approved the Pfizer shot, even though a Chinese company bought distribution rights in 2020.
Instead, the focus is on developing China’s own mRNA vaccines, like the Pfizer and Moderna formulas. One such vaccine is in late trials.
Another option for China may be to track how the virus is evolving and put off opening its borders until it becomes even milder. But it’s anyone’s guess when or if that might happen.
“What will the next variant be? How serious will it be? You can’t tell,” Bal said.
