Tournament: Meadows | Round: 1 | Opponent: Homestead SL | Judge: Davina Le
COVID Vaccine Aff
1AC
1AC – Plan
Plan – The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for COVID-19 medicines.
1AC – Inherency
Contention 1 is Inherency.
Rich countries are blocking a WTO patent-waiver proposal necessary to boost global production of COVID vaccines.
Meredith 21. (Sam Meredith is a Correspondent at CNBC in London, covering international politics, energy and business news) “Rich countries are refusing to waive the rights on Covid vaccines as global cases hit record levels,” CNBC, April 22, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/covid-rich-countries-are-refusing-to-waive-ip-rights-on-vaccines.html TDI
LONDON — The U.S., Canada and U.K. are among some of the high-income countries actively blocking a patent-waiver proposal designed to boost the global production of Covid-19 vaccines. It comes as coronavirus cases worldwide surge to their highest level so far and the World Health Organization has repeatedly admonished a “shocking imbalance” in the distribution of vaccines amid the pandemic. Members of the World Trade Organization will meet virtually in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday to hold informal talks on whether to temporarily waive intellectual property and patent rights on Covid vaccines and treatments. The landmark proposal, which was jointly submitted by India and South Africa in October, has been backed by more than 100 mostly developing countries. It aims to facilitate the manufacture of treatments locally and boost the global vaccination campaign. Six months on, the proposal continues to be stonewalled by a small number of governments — including the U.S., EU, U.K., Switzerland, Japan, Norway, Canada, Australia and Brazil. “In this Covid-19 pandemic, we are once again faced with issues of scarcity, which can be addressed through diversification of manufacturing and supply capacity and ensuring the temporary waiver of relevant intellectual property,” Dr. Maria Guevara, international medical secretary at Medecins Sans Frontieres, said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is about saving lives at the end, not protecting systems.” The urgency and importance of waiving certain intellectual property rights amid the pandemic have been underscored by the WHO, health experts, civil society groups, trade unions, former world leaders, international medical charities, Nobel laureates and human rights organizations. Why does it matter? The waiver, if adopted at the General Council, the WTO’s highest-level decision-making body, could help countries around the world overcome legal barriers preventing them from producing their own Covid vaccines and treatments. Advocates of the proposal have conceded the waiver is not a “silver bullet,” but argue that removing barriers toward the development, production and approval of vaccines is vital in the fight to prevent, treat and contain the coronavirus.
The pandemic is raging through developing economies and inflicting loss on a horrific scale.
Lindsey 21. (Brink Lindsey) “Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix,” Brookings Institution, June 3, 2021. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/ TDI
Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to the short term. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines, most of the world isn’t so lucky. The virus is currently raging in India and throughout South America, overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale. And consider the fact that Australia, which has been successful in suppressing the virus, recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022. Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted: this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference.
1AC – WTO Credibility
Contention 2 is WTO Credibility.
The new head of the WTO is on track to push for reform and an increased role in the international arena, but is hindered now due to lack of vaccine agreement.
Baschuk 4-27. (Bryce Baschuk is a Bloomberg Reporter) "WTO Chief Pursues a ‘Hectic’ Agenda to Fix World Trade’s Referee," Bloomberg, April 27, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/wto-chief-pursues-a-hectic-agenda-to-fix-world-trade-s-referee TDI
The head of the World Trade Organization raised an alarm about the credibility of the multilateral trading system, urging leaders to act fast to bolster the global economy with steps like fairer vaccine distribution and cooperate to resolve longer-term problems like overfishing. During her first two months, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has met with trade ministers around the globe to communicate a message that the WTO is important, it needs to be reformed and it needs to deliver results. So far, she says the reception from world leaders has been positive, but quickly translating that goodwill into substantive outcomes during a global pandemic is just as daunting as she anticipated. “The word I would use to describe it is absolutely hectic,” Okonjo-Iweala said in a phone interview on Tuesday when asked about her first few months in the job. “The challenges we thought were there are there and getting an agreement is not as easy because of longstanding ways of negotiating business positions.” Read More: Arcane WTO Pact Moves to Center of Vaccine Debate: Supply Lines Countries need to move past the notion that one country’s gain in international commerce is another’s loss, she said. “We need to break out of the zero-sum deadlock,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “We need to remind the countries and members that the WTO is here to deliver for people. We can’t take 20 years to negotiate something.” Okonjo-Iweala said her top priority is to use trade to alleviate the pandemic and said her recent meeting with trade ministers and vaccine manufacturers provided a positive step in the right direction. ‘More Pragmatism’ “That meeting yielded quite a lot,” she said. “I see more pragmatism on both sides.” An important component of the WTO’s trade and health agenda is a proposal from India and South Africa that seeks to temporarily waive enforcement of the WTO’s rules governing intellectual property for vaccines and other essential medical products. Read More: U.S. Trade Chief Meets Pfizer, AstraZeneca About Vaccine Supply As of this week there are fresh signals that the Biden administration, which currently opposes a waiver to the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, wants vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc to help ramp up U.S. pandemic assistance to the rest of the world. “There is movement,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “Are we there yet? No, but there is a little bit of change in the air among members. I think hopefully we will be able to come to some sort of a framework for the WTO ministers to bless.” “We don’t have time,” she added. “People are dying.” Okonjo-Iweala said this month’s vaccine meeting also revealed areas where the developing world can increase its capacity to produce more doses rather than waiting for rich countries to send them their excess supplies. She said various emerging markets such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Senegal, Indonesia and Egypt already have some capacity to begin producing vaccines for people living in developing economies.
Patent waiver is necessary to revitalize WTO’s credibility as an international dispute mechanism – creates momentum for further reform.
Meyer 6-18-21. (David Meyer is the Editor of CEO Daily and a senior writer on Fortune’s European team. Author of the digital rights primer, Control Shift: How Technology Affects You and Your Rights. “The WTO’s survival hinges on the COVID-19 vaccine patent debate, waiver advocates warn,” Fortune, June 18, 2021. https://fortune.com/2021/06/18/wto-covid-vaccines-patents-waiver-south-africa-trips/ TDI
The World Trade Organization knows all about crises. Former U.S. President Donald Trump threw a wrench into its core function of resolving trade disputes—a blocker that President Joe Biden has not yet removed—and there is widespread dissatisfaction over the fairness of the global trade rulebook. The 164-country organization, under the fresh leadership of Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has a lot to fix. However, one crisis is more pressing than the others: the battle over COVID-19 vaccines, and whether the protection of their patents and other intellectual property should be temporarily lifted to boost production and end the pandemic sooner rather than later. According to some of those pushing for the waiver—which was originally proposed last year by India and South Africa—the WTO's future rests on what happens next. "The credibility of the WTO will depend on its ability to find a meaningful outcome on this issue that truly ramps-up and diversifies production," says Xolelwa Mlumbi-Peter, South Africa's ambassador to the WTO. "Final nail in the coffin" The Geneva-based WTO isn't an organization with power, as such—it's a framework within which countries make big decisions about trade, generally by consensus. It's supposed to be the forum where disputes get settled, because all its members have signed up to the same rules. And one of its most important rulebooks is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, which sprang to life alongside the WTO in 1995. The WTO's founding agreement allows for rules to be waived in exceptional circumstances, and indeed this has happened before: its members agreed in 2003 to waive TRIPS obligations that were blocking the importation of cheap, generic drugs into developing countries that lack manufacturing capacity. (That waiver was effectively made permanent in 2017.) Consensus is the key here. Although the failure to reach consensus on a waiver could be overcome with a 75 supermajority vote by the WTO's membership, this would be an unprecedented and seismic event. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine IP waiver, it would mean standing up to the European Union, and Germany in particular, as well as countries such as Canada and the U.K.—the U.S. recently flipped from opposing the idea of a waiver to supporting it, as did France. It's a dispute between countries, but the result will be on the WTO as a whole, say waiver advocates. "If, in the face of one of humanity's greatest challenges in a century, the WTO functionally becomes an obstacle as in contrast to part of the solution, I think it could be the final nail in the coffin" for the organization, says Lori Wallach, the founder of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a U.S. campaigning group that focuses on the WTO and trade agreements. "If the TRIPS waiver is successful, and people see the WTO as being part of the solution—saving lives and livelihoods—it could create goodwill and momentum to address what are still daunting structural problems." Those problems are legion. Reform needs Top of the list is the WTO's Appellate Body, which hears appeals in members' trade disputes. It's a pivotal part of the international trade system, but Trump—incensed at decisions taken against the U.S. —blocked appointments to its seven-strong panel as judges retired. The body became completely paralyzed at the end of 2019, when two judges' terms ended and the panel no longer had the three-judge quorum it needs to rule on appeals. Anyone who hoped the advent of the Biden administration would change matters was disappointed earlier this year when the U.S. rejected a European proposal to fill the vacancies. "The United States continues to have systemic concerns with the appellate body," it said. "As members know, the United States has raised and explained its systemic concerns for more than 16 years and across multiple U.S. administrations." At her confirmation hearing in February, current U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai reiterated those concerns—she said the appellate body had "overstepped its authority and erred in interpreting WTO agreements in a number of cases, to the detriment of the United States and other WTO members," and accused it of dragging its heels in settling disputes. "Reforms are needed to ensure that the underlying causes of such problems do not resurface," Tai said. "While the U.S. has been engaging with the WTO it hasn't indicated it would move quickly on allowing appointments to the Appellate Body," says Bryan Mercurio, an economic-law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who opposes the vaccine waiver. "This is not a good sign. In terms of WTO governance, it's a much more important step than supporting negotiations on an intellectual property waiver." It's not just the U.S. that wants to see reform at the WTO. In a major policy document published in February, the EU said negotiations had failed to modernize the organization's rules, the dispute-resolution system was broken, the monitoring of countries' trade policies was ineffective, and—crucially—"the trade relationship between the U.S. and China, two of the three largest WTO members, is currently largely managed outside WTO disciplines." China is one of the key problems here. It became a WTO member in 2001 but, although this entailed significant liberalization of the Chinese economy, it did not become a full market economy. As the European Commission put it in February: "The level at which China has opened its markets does not correspond to its weight in the global economy, and the state continues to exert a decisive influence on China's economic environment with consequent competitive distortions that cannot be sufficiently addressed by current WTO rules." "China is operating from what it sees as a position of strength, so it will not be bullied into agreeing to changes which it sees as not in its interests," says Mercurio. China is at loggerheads with the U.S., the EU and others over numerous trade-related issues. Its rivals don't like its policy of demanding that Chinese citizens' data is stored on Chinese soil, nor do they approve of how foreign investors often have to partner with Chinese firms to access the country's market, in a way that leads to the transfer of technological knowhow. They also oppose China's industrial subsidies. Mercurio thinks China may agree to reforms on some of these issues, particularly regarding subsidies, but "only if it is offered something in return." All these problems won't go away if the WTO manages to come up with a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies, Wallach concedes. "But," she adds, "the will and the good faith to tackle these challenges is increased enormously if the WTO has the experience of being part of the solution, not just an obstacle." Wallach points to a statement released earlier this month by Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers, which called for urgent discussions on the waiver. "The WTO must demonstrate that global trade rules can help address the human catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitate the recovery," the statement read in its section about WTO reform. Okonjo-Iweala's role The WTO's new director general, whose route to the top was unblocked in early 2021 with the demise of the Trump administration, is certainly keen to fix the problems that contributed to the early departure of her predecessor, Brazil's Robert Azevedo. "We must act now to get all our ambassadors to the table to negotiate a text" on the issue of an IP waiver for COVID vaccines, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization, has said. Dursun Aydemir—Anadolu/Bloomberg/Getty Images Earlier this week, when the U.S. and EU agreed a five-year ceasefire in a long-running dispute over Boeing and Airbus aircraft subsidies, Okonjo-Iweala tweeted: "With political will, we can solve even the most intractable problems." However, Mercurio is skeptical about her stewardship having much of an effect on the WTO's reform process. "Upon taking over she stated it was time for delegations to speak to each other and not simply past each other, but at the recent General Counsel meeting delegations simply read prepared statements in what some have described as the worst meeting ever," he says. "On the other hand, Ngozi is very much someone who will actively seek solutions to problems, and in this way different to her predecessor. If the role of mediator is welcomed, she could have an impact not in starting discussions but in getting deals over the finish line."
No alt causes – how the WTO acts now with Covid will shape its role in the international economy for decades to come.
Evenett and Baldwin 20. (Simon J. Evenett is Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Co-Director of the CEPR Programme in International Trade and Regional Economics. Richard E. Baldwin is a professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI
Purposeful, pragmatic steps towards noble goals Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that tireless campaigner against Apartheid, once remarked that “there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time”. After a decade of drift and backsliding, the task of revitalising multilateral trade cooperation may seem daunting. It may seem even more so after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant slump in world trade. Yet, in the same emergency lies the seeds of revival – especially, if trade diplomats can demonstrate the relevance of the WTO to national governments fighting this pandemic – ideally through an accord that eases the cross-border shipment of needed medical goods and medicines. Step by pragmatic step, the WTO can regain its centrality in the world trading system. Ultimately, the pandemic affords the opportunity to reframe discussions on multilateral trade cooperation away from the stalemate, frustration of recent years between governments, and the Uruguay Round mindset that ran into diminishing returns years ago. Rather, discussions between governments need to draw lessons from the second global economic shock in 15 years so as to rebuild a system of global trade arrangements capable of better tackling systemic crises and, more importantly, better able to contribute to the growing number of first-order challenges facing societies in the 21st century. Doing so will require revisiting the very purpose of the WTO.
Specifically, action now over Covid creates goodwill to establish global trade as a norm and preserve the relevance of the trading system post-Covid.
González 20. (Anabel Gonzalez is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and former Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI
EXTRAORDINARY TIMES DEMAND EXTRAORDINARY ACTION As of 2 November 2020, there are 46.9 million COVID-19 cases across all regions, with the number of deaths exceeding 1.2 million, and rising.2 The economic and social impacts of the pandemic and its containment measures are not less daunting. Global growth is estimated at -4.9 in 2020, with over 95 of countries projected to have negative per capita income growth (IMF 2020). Trade volumes are expected to decrease by between 13 and 32 from last year,3 while foreign direct investment flows could plunge by up to 40 (UNCTAD 2020). Is it estimated that the equivalent of 555 million jobs have been lost in the first half of this year (ILO 2020), which in turn could push up to 100 million more people into extreme poverty and would almost double the number of persons suffering from acute hunger (FAO 2020). While there is some evidence that goods trade may be rebounding and that the worst-case trade scenario projected in April could be averted (CPB 2020, WTO 2020a), the recovery from the deepest global recession since World War II will depend on the sustained and effective containment of the virus and the quality of government policies. The World Bank/IMF Development Committee warned that the pandemic has the potential to erase development gains for many countries (World Bank 2020a). Some consequences may also be long-lasting, such as lower investment, erosion of human capital, and a retreat from global trade and supply linkages (World Bank 2020b). It is no understatement to say these are extraordinary times. In many countries, governments are providing significant levels of fiscal support to try to stabilise their economies, sustain companies and minimise the impact on workers; in many others, limited fiscal space and informality constraint governments’ capacity to mitigate the damage. For advanced and developing economies alike, trade is a powerful, cost-effective tool to alleviate the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the health and economic fronts. And yet, protectionism is gaining an upper hand, deepening some of pre-pandemic confrontations that were already threatening the global economy. The short-term response to the virus and longer-term growth prospects depend on strong multilateral cooperation to scale back obstacles to trade and investment, increase business certainty and leverage opportunities which the pandemic has accelerated in areas like the digital economy. It is also needed to preserve stable and coordinated international relations to avoid that heavy threats implicit in the pandemic could result in catastrophic disorders or conflicts (Jean 2020). But it will not happen automatically. Unless governments accelerate their efforts to collaborate, growing protectionism and increased distortions to global value chains (GVCs) risk being a by-product of the virus, at the same time further exacerbating its negative implications. This demands extraordinary action. This chapter addresses the question of what role for trade ministers at the WTO in times of crises with a view to activating global cooperation to overcome COVID-19. In addition to the introductory section, the second section explores the need to reactivate the WTO to underpin collaboration among governments, the third section argues that trade ministers should call the shots during crisis, the fourth section suggests eight actions for ministers to rein in protectionism and mitigate further damage, the fifth section refers to the mechanics on how and when to do it, and a final section offers concluding remarks. REACTIVATE THE WTO Trade needs to be part of the response to COVID-19 and its upshots, and countries cannot afford the WTO, hobbled as it has been lately, to muddle through. Moreover, as the world confronts more frequent and severe profound shocks such as financial crises, terrorism, extreme weather and pandemics (McKinsey Global Institute 2020), the WTO needs to step up its role during systemic crises. The fact that the organisation has been faltering, that there is a leadership vacuum and that distrust runs high among major traders will not make it any easier. Exacerbated tensions related to the pandemic can only add to the feeling that WTO rules have been conceived for a very different context, increasing the risk of a loss of legitimacy (Jean 2020). This is not about a major reset of the WTO. It is about (re)activating the organisation to serve its members as they combat the devastating impact of the pandemic and the global recession. The WTO needs broader reform, in particular to address structural changes in the global economy. While extremely important, this discussion should not hamper the ability of the WTO to deliver at times of systemic crisis. Moreover, should the WTO – or more accurately, its members – demonstrate they can actually rise to the occasion in the context of COVID-19, they will also contribute to increasing trust levels on the ability of the organisation to produce results. The starting point is a shift in mindset: governments need to understand that international trade is not a problem in the crisis, but rather a core element of the solution (Baldwin and Evenett 2020). Take the shortages of medical supplies. There are three methods of assuring supply: stockpiling, investments in manufacturing capacity and trade. Of these options, relying on international trade is the most efficient and economic choice, provided the WTO can help assure security of this method of supply (Wolff 2020a). To be sure, many nations have taken unilateral steps to facilitate trade, especially in medical supplies and medicines. The Global Trade Alert reports that while 91 jurisdictions have adopted a total of 202 export controls on these goods since the beginning of 2020, 106 jurisdictions have executed 229 import policy reforms on these goods over the same period.4 After initial border closures, some neighbouring countries are beginning to facilitate the cross-border flow of goods. At the regional level and among subsets of countries, governments have issued different statements to keep trade lanes open and supply chains moving (see Table A1 in the Annex). After a tepid declaration from G20 leaders, trade ministers reaffirmed their determination to cooperate and coordinate to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade and investment and to lay a solid foundation for a global economic recovery. They also endorsed a set of short-term collective actions on trade regulation, trade facilitation, transparency, operation of logistics networks and support for small enterprises, and a group of longer-term actions on WTO reform, GVC resilience and investment; monitoring of implementation was left to senior officials (G20 2020). These actions are positive and reflect the political will of governments to collaborate to some extent – even if they have not fully countered the flurry of barriers and restrictions surrounding trade in critical medical gear. They are no substitute for trade cooperation at the global level, either. In the case of medical products, for example, the EU, the US and China account for almost three-quarters of world exports (WTO 2020b); cooperation initiatives that do not include these members would fall short on impact. The venue for cooperation should be global and open to all, even if not all 164 WTO members opt to engage in all initiatives. TRADE MINISTERS SHOULD CALL THE SHOTS DURING CRISES Challenges notwithstanding, governments need to act now to empower the WTO to play an active part in coordinating the response to the pandemic. The WTO is more than an organisation immersed in myriad drama on the shores of Lake Geneva; it is a solid framework for global trade cooperation. It is in countries’ interest to preserve the relevance of the WTO; its role can be critical in helping members help themselves. In a member-driven organisation such as the WTO, the role of the Director-General and the Secretariat is important and can and should be enhanced, for example with greater power of initiative and strengthened monitoring and analytics capabilities. The WTO dedicated page on the pandemic is a step in the right direction.5 But the ultimate responsibility to provide direction and act rests with governments. The WTO is nothing more and nothing less than the collectivity of its members (Steger 2020), a point that is frequently forgotten in the public discourse. Without strong leadership, frequent engagement and serious interest among members in addressing its challenges, the WTO itself cannot deliver results (Cutler 2020). Paraphrasing VanGrasstek (2013), the multilateral trading system receives its inspiration from economists and is shaped primarily by lawyers, but it can only operate within the limits set by politicians.
Post Covid WTO legitimacy and credibility re necessary to prevent a downward spiral of protectionism.
Solís 20. (Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. “The post COVID-19 world: Economic nationalism triumphant?” July 10, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/10/the-post-covid-19-world-economic-nationalism-triumphant/ TDI
The damage caused by the worst global health crisis in a century is vast. The new coronavirus has traveled far and fast, infecting more than 8.7 million people and killing more than 460,000. One after another, economies have gone into lockdown to slow down the spread of the disease. The combined supply and demand shocks have ravaged the world economy with the most severe downturn since the Great Depression; anticipated drops to international trade and investment flows of 30 and 40, respectively; and unemployment spikes in many countries. The pandemic has cost lives and livelihoods and has erased the chances of returning to the status quo ante, but it has also brought little clarity regarding what kind of international order it will usher in. Is the future one of deglobalization, decoupling, and reshoring of economic activity? The pandemic hit an already wounded multilateral trading system. The chances that the World Trade Organization (WTO) can deliver a multilateral round of trade negotiations to slash tariffs across the board and update the trade and investment rulebook are nil. But the WTO has also lost its central role as arbiter of trade disputes among its members. In December 2019, the Appellate Body ceased to function due to the U.S. block of new appointments, citing judicial overreach. At a time of rising protectionism, the erosion of a rules-based mechanism to adjudicate disputes bodes ill. Longstanding challenges to the WTO have been exacerbated by an abdication of leadership from the great powers to ensure its survival. China has been the godchild of globalization, leveraging its accession to the WTO to become workshop for the world and a huge domestic market coveted by foreign firms. But China lost its appetite for economic reform, reinvesting on a state capitalism model that imposes heavy costs on other nations. Unchecked subsidies and privileges awarded to its state-owned enterprises, insufficient protection of intellectual property, foreign investment restrictions, forced technology transfers, and cyber protectionism all make the Chinese government’s self-proclamation as champion of global free trade ring hollow. The Trump administration judges the WTO incapable of tackling the China challenge, but instead of creating coalitions of like-minded countries to bring about effective multilateral trade governance, it appears determined to further harm cripple the international organization. It has offered no blueprint to fix the dispute settlement mechanism, has abused the national security exemption to raise tariffs against allies, and is gearing up for its most fundamental assault to date on the WTO: a tariff reset through which the U.S. may unilaterally abandon its commitments on bound tariffs and apply larger duties to force other countries to open their markets. Trade spats as other countries retaliate in kind is a more likely result. Tariff wars and the battle for technology supremacy have come to define U.S.-China great power competition. After a grueling trade conflict, the United States and China reached a limited trade agreement in January 2020. The deal marked a pause in the tariff war and addressed some non-tariff barriers on foreign direct investment and intellectual property; but it left intact the core of Chinese industrial policy (public subsidies and state-owned enterprises) and retained U.S. duties on $360 billion worth of Chinese products. China’s massive purchase commitments ($200 billion) were quickly rendered unattainable by the severe economic downturn in China due to COVID-19. In fighting for the new economic order, setting standards on cutting-edge technologies will be at the forefront. China is using all the levers of industrial policy to gain technological primacy in areas like AI and quantum computing. Telecom and the battle over 5G offer a preview of quarrels to come. Deeply concerned with the cybersecurity risks that Chinese telecom giants like Huawei pose, the U.S. government placed the company on its Entity List, banning American exports without a license. It has since tightened the restrictions by barring foreign companies from supplying Huawei with products manufactured with American equipment and technology. National security concerns are increasingly encroaching on existing webs of economic interdependence. Wary of China’s acquisition of critical technology, countries like the United States, Australia, and Japan have tightened their screening of foreign direct investment. The pandemic has only exacerbated concerns that weakened companies in strategic sectors are at risk of foreign takeover. COVID-19’s impact on the international trading system is twofold. It has reinforced existing trends such as the deceleration and now drop in the volume of international trade, the rise of economic security as governments expand their toolkit to restrict trade and investment flows, and it has laid bare the fallout in U.S.-China relations. But the pandemic also brought new challenges that exposed the extent to which trade cooperation is in short supply. Export protectionism has risen in prominence with national restrictions on shipments of essential medical supplies and personal protective equipment. The WTO allows for such curbs for public health purposes – provided the measures are temporary and transparent. Few countries, however, have bothered to comply with their notification commitments. The blow comes at a time when the WTO is adrift with the decision of Director General Roberto Azevedo to step down early, opening the search for new leadership in a climate of divisiveness. Graph detailing the number of countries that imposed export restrictions on various categories of medical supplies and devices in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Are we on the eve of a renationalized world economy? That is the aspiration of several American and European public officials who fault extended global supply chains and overdependence on China for the current mishaps in tackling the pandemic. But the view that economic nationalism and reshoring of manufacturing is a fail-safe path to security and prosperity is wrong. For one, it skirts the responsibility of governments to properly stockpile essential medical supplies. Furthermore, the export curbs will be counterproductive, eliminating incentives for producers to expand capacity and increasing the cost of much needed medicines and medical devices. If the recent lockdowns have taught us anything, it is that exclusive reliance on the domestic market is too risky. Diversification of supply, redundancies in the manufacturing chain, and stockpiling programs are better alternatives. In this endeavor, global supply chains are part of the solution, not the problem. COVID-19 will not produce an exodus of foreign companies from the Chinese market. Recent surveys of American companies with operations in China show that most firms intend to stay put. A February survey of Japanese companies conducted by Tokyo Shoko Research shows that only a fraction (4) are considering exit from China. Therefore, the Japanese government’s $2.2 billion fund to restructure supply chains should be understood as risk management, not decoupling. When international companies map out their business strategies, they must factor in heightened risks – protectionism, national security controls, and economic lockdowns. Hence, efforts by middle powers to offer an interim arbitration mechanism at the WTO to handle trade disputes and to commit to maintaining open supply chains in essential medical goods are the right antidote to rising economic nationalism. As a staunch supporter of rules-based trade and with its decision to forego export protectionism in the current crisis, Japan has much to contribute to these efforts.
Trade solves great power competition – regionalism causes militarized crises.
Lake 18. (David Lake is a Professor of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. "Economic Openness and Great Power Competition: Lessons for China and the United States,” April 30, 2018. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171196/ TDI
I develop two central arguments. First, historically, great power competition has been driven primarily by exclusion or fears of exclusion from each power’s international economic zone, including its domestic market. Great powers in the past have often used their international influence to build zones in which subordinate polities – whether these be colonies or simply states within a sphere of influence – are integrated into their economies. These economic zones, in turn, are typically biased in favor of the great power’s firms and investors, with the effect of excluding (in whole or part) the economic agents of other great powers. These other great powers, in response, are then compelled to develop or expand their own exclusive economic zones. The “race” for economic privilege can quickly divide the world up into economic blocs. Like the security dilemma, great powers need not actually exclude one another from their zones; the fear of exclusion alone is enough to ignite the process of division. The race for privilege then draws great powers into over-expanding into unprofitable regions and, more important, militarized competition. Economic and military competition are thus linked, with the former usually driving the latter. The most significant military crises have, historically, been over where to draw the boundaries between economic zones and subsequent challenges to those boundaries. Economic closure and fear of closure have been consistent sources of great power conflict in the past – and possibly will be in the future. The major exception to this trend was the peaceful transfer of dominance in Latin America from Britain to the United States in the late nineteenth century. This suggests that economic closure and great power competition is not inevitable, but a choice of the great powers themselves. Second, this international competition is driven, in turn, by domestic, rent-seeking groups and their economic interests. In all countries, scarce factors of production, import competing sectors, and domestically-oriented firms have concentrated and intense preferences for market restricting policies, including tariffs and the formation of exclusive economic zones. Consumers and free trade-oriented groups have diffuse preferences for market enhancing policies, and thus tend to lose at the ballot box and in the making of national policy. This inequality in preference intensity does not mean protectionists always win; after 1934, the United States insulated itself by shifting authority to the executive and negotiating reductions through broad, multi-product international agreements.8 Yet, as the recent return to economic nationalism of the Trump administration suggests, protectionism often wins out. Rent-seeking is a central tendency, not an inevitable success. Contemporary great power relations are at a critical juncture. As China’s influence expands, the role of special economic interests in China is especially worrisome. In pursuit of stability, political support, or private gains, the government will always be tempted to create economic zones that favor its nationals. In this way, China will be no different than the majority of great powers before it. But, given the expansive role of the state in the Chinese economy, especially its backing of outward foreign investments by its state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the close ties between business elites and its authoritarian political leaders, however, it will be even harder for China to resist biasing any future economic zone to benefit its own firms. Although China has gained greatly from economic openness, its domestic political system will be prone to rent-seeking demands by important constituents in areas of future influence. Critically, the United States is also moving toward economic closure with the election of President Trump on a platform of economic nationalism. Demands for protection against Chinese goods have been growing over time.9 The “China shock” that followed Beijing’s joining the World Trade Organization was a huge disruption to the international division of labor, U.S. comparative advantage, and especially U.S. industry.10 The Trans-Pacific Partnership, though now defunct, was “marketed” by President Barak Obama as a means of “containing” China, both economically and militarily, but was opposed by virtually all of the candidates in the 2016 presidential election for its trade-enhancing potential. President Trump has already signaled a much more hostile and protectionist stance toward China – as well as calling for the repeal of NAFTA and even questioning the utility of the European Union. Not only has he imposed tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, steel and aluminum, dangerously declaring the latter two issues of national security, he is making exceptions on these tariffs for friends and allies. 11 Implicitly targeting China, these protectionist moves by the administration risk creating preferential trading blocs not seen since the 1930s. He has also now proposed punitive tariffs on over $60 billions of imports from China into the United States.12 Acknowledging his inconsistencies on many policy issues, Trump’s economic nationalism has remained the core of his political agenda. The threat to the liberal international economy is not only that China might seek an economic bloc in the future, but that the United States itself is turning more exclusionary. For each great power to fear that the other might seek to exclude it from its economic zone is not unreasonable. If so, great power competition could break out in the twenty-first century not because of bipolarity or any inevitable tendency toward conflict, but because neither great power can control its own protectionist forces nor signal to the other that it would not exclude it from its economic zone. The British-U.S. case, again, suggests that exclusion and competition are not inevitable, but the current danger of economic closure is real and increasing. This article is synthetic in its theory and merely suggestive in its use of historical evidence. The theory aims to integrate current work on political economy and national security, not to develop a completely original take on this relationship. In turn, rather than testing the theory in any rigorous sense or delving into particular cases to show the theoretical mechanisms at work, so to speak, it surveys selected historical episodes to illustrate central tendencies. It is the recurring pattern across multiple cases that suggests why we should worry today. The remainder of this essay is divided in three primary sections. Section I briefly outlines the analytics of economic openness and great power competition. Section II focuses on historical instances of great power competition, highlighting the role of economic openness as a central cleavage in international politics. Section III examines contemporary policies in and between China and the United States. The conclusion suggests ways that the potential for conflict may be mitigated. The Open Economy Politics of Great Power Competition All states have a tendency towards protectionism at home and exclusive economic zones abroad. A tendency, though, is not an inevitability. The pursuit of protection and economic zones by domestic interests is conditioned by the political coalition in power at any given time and institutions that aggregate and bias the articulation of social groups. 13 The tendency is also influenced, however, by the actions of other countries. Protectionism can sour great power relations, but it is the desire for exclusive economic zones that drives great power competition and, given the possibility of coercion, influences grand strategy. Thus, the theory sketched here integrates insights from international political economy (see below), the literature on domestic politics and grand strategy,14 and systemic theories of international relations.15
Independently, WTO cred solves nuclear war – allows an off-track for nuclear weapons.
Hamann 09. (Georgia Hamann is a J.D. Candidate, Vanderbilt University Law School, “Replacing Slingshots with Swords: Implications of the Antigua-Gambling 22.6 Panel Report for Developing Countries and the World Trading System,” 2009. TDI
Voluntary compliance with WTO rules and procedures is of the utmost importance to the international trading system.'0 0 Given the increasingly globalized market, the coming years will see an increase in the importance of the WTO as a cohesive force and arbiter of disputes that likely will become more frequent and injurious. 01' The work of the WTO cannot be overstated in a nuclear-armed world, as the body continues to promote respect and even amity among nations with opposing philosophical goals or modes of governance. 10 2 Demagogues in the Unites States may decry the rise of China as a geopolitical threat, 0 3 and extremists in Russia may play dangerous games of brinksmanship with other great powers, but trade keeps politicians' fingers off "the button. ' 10 4 The WTO offers an astounding rate of compliance for an organization with no standing army and no real power to enforce its decisions, suggesting that governments recognize the value of maintaining the international construct of the WTO. 105 In order to promote voluntary compliance, the WTO must maintain a high level of credibility. 106 Nations must perceive the WTO as the most reasonable option for dispute resolution or fear that the WTO wields enough influence to enforce sanctions. 10 7 The arbitrators charged with performing the substantive work of the WTO by negotiating, compromising, and issuing judgments are keenly aware of the responsibility they have to uphold the organization's credibility. 108
1AC – Developing Economies
Contention 3 is Developing Economies.
Scenario 1 is India.
India is in crisis – the recent COVID surge is fundamentally different from that of the past.
Khullar 21. (Dhruv Khullar is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, where he writes primarily about medicine, health care, and politics. He is also a practicing physician and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College) “India’s Crisis Marks a New Phase in the Pandemic,” The New Yorker, May 13, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/indias-crisis-marks-a-new-phase-in-the-pandemic TDI
Laxminarayan’s walks have changed in recent weeks. Coronavirus deaths in India have skyrocketed, and a frightening atmosphere has descended. New Delhi is roughly as dense as New York City, with some thirty thousand residents per square mile. But now Laxminarayan passes just a few scattered people; almost everyone stays inside if they can, venturing out only in search of food, medication, or medical care. Before the surge, mask-wearing had declined, but now everyone’s face is covered again. “You need public-health enforcement when the pandemic is invisible,” Laxminarayan told me. “Now fear is the dominant force changing people’s behavior.” Government statistics indicate that the virus is newly infecting millions of Indians each week, and that some twenty thousand or thirty thousand people are dying weekly. But most experts, including Laxminarayan, believe that those numbers capture a fraction of the true covid-19 toll. “It’s a war zone,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s worse than what you’re reading in the papers or seeing on TV. Whatever the numbers are, they don’t tell the full story. The human toll is devastating.” The current surge differs fundamentally from India’s experience last year. “This is truly a national wave,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s not urban. It’s not rural. It’s not north or south. It’s everywhere.” He went on, “During the first wave, the poor suffered the bulk of the health and economic toll. Now everyone is affected. I personally don’t know a single family that doesn’t have covid in it right now. I don’t mean in their extended family. I mean in their nuclear family.” In late April, after his dentist’s parents both died and after a colleague fell ill and couldn’t get oxygen, Laxminarayan decided to shift from covid research to covid relief. He and his team at C.D.D.E.P. decided to focus on India’s oxygen-supply problem, which has fundamentally limited the nation’s hospital capacity. They launched an initiative called OxygenForIndia, raising eight and a half million dollars in two weeks; with the help of corporate partners, among them Verizon Media, Logitech, and UiPath, they have secured more than two thousand oxygen concentrators—portable devices that remove nitrogen from the air to produce purified oxygen—and thirty thousand cylinders to store gaseous oxygen. By some estimates, those cylinder donations add up to more gaseous oxygen than India has received through foreign aid to date. “Right now, no one wants to leave a hospital bed they’re in,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s the only place they know perhaps they can get oxygen. We want to assure people they will have oxygen at home, so that hospital capacity is freed up for the sickest patients.” Laxminarayan thinks that bolstering critical-care capacity is a long-term proposition—“You can’t make doctors and nurses overnight”—and that India is better served today by making more efficient use of its existing infrastructure. OxygenForIndia has already started delivering oxygen to people’s homes, but the organization’s larger goal is to partner with hospitals in urban areas: Delhi, Bangalore, and Kolkata, among others. Doctors, along with algorithms, will triage patients upon presentation or as they improve before discharge. Those deemed safe to go home with supportive oxygen will be given a Q.R. code to be scanned at a nearby warehouse, where they can collect an oxygen cylinder or concentrator to keep as long as they need. (Cylinders must be refilled at the warehouse each day; concentrators can be used continuously at home.) “I’m hoping this is a scalable model that can be used by other countries when they face their big covid wave,” Laxminarayan said. “Because there’s no reason to believe they won’t.” The air around us, which contains twenty-one-per-cent oxygen, must be concentrated and purified to produce the medical-grade gas that people need when the coronavirus besieges their lungs. The most efficient way to accomplish this—the default in wealthy countries—is for factories to produce liquid oxygen, which tanker trucks then deliver to hospitals, where it can be stored in large containers and then piped into patients’ rooms. Many hospitals in poor countries, however, aren’t equipped to store liquid oxygen, and must rely on an external supply. If a hospital is in a remote location, this can be a serious logistical challenge. Another option is to install on-site plants that extract oxygen from the air. These systems, which use a technology known as pressure swing adsorption, or P.S.A., are expensive, and require maintenance. In October, the Indian government announced plans to build a hundred and sixty-two such plants around the country; thus far, thirty-three have been installed. Laxminarayan’s organization also hopes to create dozens of oxygen-generation plants at Indian hospitals. For now, many hospitals rely on simpler, decentralized technology, which comes with disadvantages: the gaseous oxygen contained in cylinders can cost ten times as much as its liquid equivalent, and oxygen concentrators are usually intended for only one or a few patients at a time. Whatever the process, it’s clear that too many Indians are going without the oxygen they need. Since this February, India’s oxygen requirements have increased fifteenfold; it now needs nearly three times as much medical-grade oxygen as it did during the height of its first wave. Some hospitals have run out of oxygen, and others are on the precipice. Hospitals won’t admit patients whom they can’t treat; many Indians therefore suffer a suffocating illness at home. The government is doing what it can: granting oxygen-transport vehicles an ambulance-like status on roads; leveraging the national railway service to move tankers around the country; enlisting the air force to transport empty containers back to factories to be refilled. On Wednesday, India’s Supreme Court ordered the federal government to present a more comprehensive plan to meet New Delhi’s oxygen needs. Meanwhile, foreign governments and international aid organizations are sending ventilators, concentrators, and cylinders. Still, each day brings fresh reports of people dying because they can’t get oxygen. (The shortage is likely to spread: globally, the deficit of medical oxygen—the gap between what’s needed and what’s being produced—has tripled in recent months, in part owing to the unmet need in India but also because of growing demand in South America and the Middle East.) Technically, Indians have access to universal health coverage: the country’s constitution guarantees everyone a “right to life,” and people can receive care at government facilities free of charge. But, over decades, low levels of public financing have led to poor quality and severe staff and supply shortages. India’s federal government spends around one per cent of G.D.P. on health care—far less than most large economies. Moreover, states share responsibility with the federal government for health-care delivery, and that has resulted in a large variation in funding and quality. Many Indians therefore opt to pay for private health care, if they can afford it, and the private sector now provides most care in India, even though commercial health insurance is available to only a fraction of the population and out-of-pocket costs can be devastating. In 2018, the central government launched a major effort aimed at insuring that low-income people could receive care at private facilities. But relatively few Indians have a regular place of care where they can receive ongoing management of their medical conditions or outpatient testing and treatment for covid-19. The coronavirus has severely strained India’s critical-care capacity, which was lacking even before the pandemic: during normal times, the country has around fifteen per cent of the critical-care specialists it needs. More generally, India has nine doctors for every ten thousand people—about half the global average, and only a third as many as the U.S. There’s also the issue of maldistribution: two-thirds of India’s population lives in rural areas, where only twenty per cent of the nation’s doctors work. (Shortages of nurses and other clinicians can be even worse.) VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER The Pandemic Through the Eyes of a Three-Year-Old Still, India’s physician-to-patient ratio is higher than that of Bangladesh, Nepal, or any nation in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the globe’s myriad health-care systems share the fundamental constraints that have transformed India’s second wave into a humanitarian crisis—including an oxygen-delivery infrastructure that is unable to meet the demands of a vast viral surge. Many Indians have experienced the current surge as a surprise. But the forces driving it are fundamentally familiar. “Society opened up without restraint,” K. Srinath Reddy, the president of the Public Health Foundation of India and the former chair of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, told me. “It was widely perceived that the pandemic is behind us, that we are unlikely to have a second wave. We didn’t just return to 2019—we entered 2021 with an extra degree of exuberance.” Politicians encouraged people to gather at massive rallies; cricket stadiums filled with fans; malls opened to shoppers and weddings welcomed guests. The government sanctioned the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival, and millions of people made the pilgrimage to Haridwar, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, to wash in the River Ganges. The festival started on April 1st and continued for nearly three weeks before the coronavirus toll became unbearable and undeniable. Afterward, people carried the virus back to far-flung cities and villages. “The euphoria of putting the pandemic behind us was a widely prevalent emotion, and it suited everyone,” Reddy said. “Industry wanted to get back to full production. Small traders wanted to get back to business. Ordinary citizens wanted to get back to their lives.” Many countries have engaged in wishful thinking during the pandemic; all have struggled to fight the virus while avoiding economic collapse. The Indian experience speaks specifically to the problem of endurance, and raises the question of how long low- and middle-income countries can maintain pandemic protocols absent a clear time line for widespread vaccination. The U.S. and much of Europe have navigated the pandemic while looking forward to early and reliable access to vaccines; if we didn’t have a firm end date, we at least knew that an end was approaching. Under such conditions, politicians and the public can examine, debate, and accept the costs of restrictions. But that calculus is harder, perhaps impossible, without some assurance that pandemic life is temporary. ADVERTISEMENT The global vaccination effort has faltered, with poor countries receiving a fraction of the vaccines they had expected. covax, the world’s primary initiative to promote vaccine equity, had planned to deliver two billion doses in 2021; so far, it’s sent out about fifty million. Less than half of one per cent of all covid-19 vaccines have been administered in poor nations. “We’re now in this very strange situation where we’re talking about fourteen-year-olds in America getting vaccinated, while older people around the world remain vulnerable and entire countries are devastated,” Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown’s public-health school, told me. “It’s a moral issue, but it’s also an epidemiological one. We’re placing everyone at risk when we let the virus run rampant. It creates a huge substrate for new variants. We need to quadruple our efforts to get the world vaccinated. That has to be the No. 1 priority for the Biden Administration going forward.” The U.S. has committed four billion dollars to covax, which still faces a funding shortfall of tens of billions of dollars. Last week, the Biden Administration also announced its support for waiving intellectual-property protections for covid-19 vaccines. The proposed waiver—it must be approved by the World Trade Organization—has been hailed by many public-health practitioners; the director-general of the W.H.O., Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called Biden’s support for the proposal “a monumental moment” in the fight against the pandemic. But others have sounded a cautionary note, raising the possibility that the spectre of patent waivers will disincentivize companies from investing in vaccine and drug development in the future. “I wonder whether we want to send potential firms the message that the larger the health crisis, the less we will respect and protect your I.P.,” Craig Garthwaite, a professor at Northwestern University, tweeted, after the Biden Administration’s announcement. “That’s a great system if you think this is the last pandemic we’ll face.”
That causes Indo-Pak conflict escalation.
Somos 20. Christy Somos is a CTVNews.ca Writer) “COVID-19 has escalated armed conflict in India, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and the Philippines, study finds,” CTV News, December 17, 2020. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/covid-19-has-escalated-armed-conflict-in-india-pakistan-iraq-libya-and-the-philippines-study-finds-1.5236738 TDI
INDIA India saw a rise in armed conflict during the study period, with violent clashes in the Kashmir region between Kashmiri separatists facing off against the Indian military, as well as conflicts between Pakistan and India. “So what mostly drove the increase in conflict intensity…were basically due to two factors,” Ide said. “The first being that there is some evidence that Pakistan sponsors or supports these insurgents in Kashmir, to encourage them to increase their attacks on Indian forces because they perceived them to be weak and struggling with the pandemic.” The second factor, Ide explained, was that while Indian government enacted a “pretty comprehensive lockdown in Kashmir, and sealing it way from international media attention…launched more intense counter-insurgency efforts and…cracked down on any pro-Pakistani sympathy expressions.” IRAQ Iraq had an increase in armed conflict, but Ide noted that the overall intensity did not change that much – a “very slight upward trend” in scale that was not linear. What did increase were attacks by ISIS in April, May, and June. “The Iraqi government was really in trouble,” he said. “They had enormous economic loss, they had to go head-to-head and use troops and funds to combat the pandemic – the international coalition supporting the government partially withdrew troops or stopped their activities.” “The Iraqi government was really in a position of weakness.” Ide said the Islamic State exploited the pandemic and the thin resources at hand to the government to expand territorial control, conquer new areas and to stage more attacks. LIBYA The civil war in Libya between the Government of National Accord’s (GNA) forces and the Libyan National Army escalated during the study period, after a ceasefire brokered in January was broken, Ide said. “As soon as international attention shifted to the pandemic…they really escalated the conflict, tried to make gains while hoping the other side is weakened because of the pandemic, hoping to score an easy military victory” Ide said. “It didn’t happen.” The UN Security Council noted in a May report that the pandemic was bolstering the 15-month conflict, citing the history of more than 850 broken ceasefire agreements and “a tide of civilian deaths” on top of a worsening outbreak. PAKISTAN The ongoing conflict with India saw a rise in armed conflict in Pakistan during the study period – which were unrelated to the pandemic, but also a rise in Taliban-affiliated groups and anti-government sentiments due to pandemic restrictions, Ide said. “There were a lot of anti-government grievances,” Ide said. “There were restrictions on religious gatherings, which religious groups did not like, and there were some negative economic impacts which affected the local people.” Ide said those two factors could have been exploited by the Taliban in a quest to recruit more followers. Later in the study period, a swath Pakistani government officials were struck with COVID-19, leaving the country with a leadership crisis, which saw an increase of attacks by Taliban groups in May.
Extinction.
Roblin 21. (Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China, "If the Next India-Pakistan War Goes Nuclear, It Will Destroy the World," The National Interest, March 26, 2021. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/if-next-india-pakistan-war-goes-nuclear-it-will-destroy-world-181134 TDI
Here's What You Need to Remember: India and Pakistan account for over one-fifth world’s population, and therefore a significant share of economic activity. Should their major cities become irradiated ruins with their populations decimated, a tremendous disruption would surely result.
Between February 26 and 27 in 2019, Indian and Pakistani warplanes launched strikes on each other’s territory and engaged in aerial combat for the first time since 1971. Pakistan ominously hinted it was convening its National Command Authority, the institution which can authorize a nuclear strike.
The two states, which have retained an adversarial relationship since their founding in 1947, between them deploy nuclear warheads that can be delivered by land, air and sea.
However, those weapons are inferior in number and yield to the thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by Russia and the United States, which include megaton-class weapons that can wipe out a metropolis in a single blast.
Some commenters have callously suggested that means a “limited regional nuclear war” would remain an Indian and Pakistani problem. People find it difficult to assess the risk of rare but catastrophic events; after all, a full-scale nuclear war has never occurred before, though it has come close to happening.
Such assessments are not only shockingly callous but shortsighted. In fact, several studies have modeled the global impact of a “limited” ten-day nuclear war in which India and Pakistan each exchange fifty 15-kiloton nuclear bombs equivalent in yield to the Little Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Their findings concluded that spillover would in no way be “limited,” directly impacting people across the globe that would struggle to locate Kashmir on a map.
And those results are merely a conservative baseline, as India and Pakistan are estimated to possess over 260 warheads. Some likely have yields exceeding 15-kilotons, which is relatively small compared to modern strategic warheads.
Casualties
Recurring terrorist attacks by Pakistan-sponsored militant groups over the status of India’s Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state have repeatedly led to threats of a conventional military retaliation by New Delhi.
Pakistan, in turn, maintains it may use nuclear weapons as a first-strike weapon to counter-balance India’s superior conventional forces. Triggers could involve the destruction of a large part of Pakistan’s military or penetration by Indian forces deep into Pakistani territory. Islamabad also claims it might authorize a strike in event of a damaging Indian blockade or political destabilization instigated by India.
India’s official policy is that it will never be first to strike with nuclear weapons—but that once any nukes are used against it, New Dehli will unleash an all-out retaliation.
The Little Boy bomb alone killed around 100,000 Japanese—between 30 to 40 percent of Hiroshima’s population—and destroyed 69 percent of the buildings in the city. But Pakistan and India host some of the most populous and densely populated cities on the planet, with population densities of Calcutta, Karachi and Mumbai at or exceeding 65,000 people per square mile. Thus, even low-yield bombs could cause tremendous casualties.
A 2014 study estimates that the immediate effects of the bombs—the fireball, over-pressure wave, radiation burns etc.—would kill twenty million people. An earlier study estimated a hundred 15-kiloton nuclear detonations could kill twenty-six million in India and eighteen million in Pakistan—and concluded that escalating to using 100-kiloton warheads, which have greater blast radius and overpressure waves that can shatter hardened structures, would multiply death tolls four-fold.
Moreover, these projected body counts omit the secondary effects of nuclear blasts. Many survivors of the initial explosion would suffer slow, lingering deaths due to radiation exposure. The collapse of healthcare, transport, sanitation, water and economic infrastructure would also claim many more lives. A nuclear blast could also trigger a deadly firestorm. For instance, a firestorm caused by the U.S. napalm bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed more people than the Fat Man bomb killed in Nagasaki.
Refugee Outflows
The civil war in Syria caused over 5.6 million refugees to flee abroad out of a population of 22 million prior to the conflict. Despite relative stability and prosperity of the European nations to which refugees fled, this outflow triggered political backlashes that have rocked virtually every major Western government.
Now consider likely population movements in event of a nuclear war between India-Pakistan, which together total over 1.5 billion people. Nuclear bombings—or their even their mere potential—would likely cause many city-dwellers to flee to the countryside to lower their odds of being caught in a nuclear strike. Wealthier citizens, numbering in tens of millions, would use their resources to flee abroad.
Should bombs beginning dropping, poorer citizens many begin pouring over land borders such as those with Afghanistan and Iran for Pakistan, and Nepal and Bangladesh for India. These poor states would struggle to supports tens of millions of refugees. China also borders India and Pakistan—but historically Beijing has not welcomed refugees.
Some citizens may undertake risky voyages at sea on overloaded boats, setting their sights on South East Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Thousands would surely drown. Many regional governments would turn them back, as they have refugees of conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar in the past.
Fallout
Radioactive fallout would also be disseminated across the globe. The fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, for example, wounds its way westward from Ukraine into Western Europe, exposing 650,000 persons and contaminating 77,000 square miles. The long-term health effects of the exposure could last decades. India and Pakistan’s neighbors would be especially exposed, and most lack healthcare and infrastructure to deal with such a crisis.
Nuclear Winter
Studies in 2008 and 2014 found that of one hundred bombs that were fifteen-kilotons were used, it would blast five million tons of fine, sooty particles into the stratosphere, where they would spread across the globe, warping global weather patterns for the next twenty-five years.
The particles would block out light from the sun, causing surface temperatures to decrease an average of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit across the globe, or 4.5 degrees in North American and Europe. Growing seasons would be shortened by ten to forty days, and certain crops such as Canadian wheat would simply become unviable. Global agricultural yields would fall, leading to rising prices and famine.
The particles may also deplete between 30 to 50 percent of the ozone layer, allowing more of the sun’s radiation to penetrate the atmosphere, causing increased sunburns and rates of cancer and killing off sensitive plant-life and marine plankton, with the spillover effect of decimating fishing yields.
To be clear, these are outcomes for a “light” nuclear winter scenario, not a full slugging match between the Russian and U.S. arsenals.
Global Recession
Any one of the factors above would likely suffice to cause a global economic recession. All of them combined would guarantee one.
India and Pakistan account for over one-fifth world’s population, and therefore a significant share of economic activity. Should their major cities become irradiated ruins with their populations decimated, a tremendous disruption would surely result. A massive decrease in consumption and production would obviously instigate a long-lasting recessionary cycle, with attendant deprivations and political destabilization slamming developed and less-developed countries alike.
Taken together, these outcomes mean even a “limited” India-Pakistan nuclear war would significantly affect every person on the globe, be they a school teacher in Nebraska, a factory-worker in Shaanxi province or a fisherman in Mombasa.
Unfortunately, the recent escalation between India and Pakistan is no fluke, but part of a long-simmering pattern likely to continue escalating unless New Delhi and Islamabad work together to change the nature of their relationship.
Scenario 2 is South Africa.
The third wave of the pandemic is fueling instability in South Africa.
Egwu 21. (Patrick Egwu is a Nigerian freelance journalist currently based in Johannesburg, where he is an Open Society Foundations fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand) “South Africa’s Twin Crises Are Feeding Each Other,” Foreign Policy, July 20, 2021. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/20/south-africa-covid-19-struggles-deadly-third-wave-zuma-violence/ TDI
South Africa is coping with two crises at once—a political storm caused by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma, whose followers have caused chaos on the streets, and a deadly new wave of COVID-19 that’s hospitalizing thousands of people a day. On July 3, South Africa hit a record 26,000 cases of COVID-19, one of the highest new daily totals reported since the pandemic started over a year ago. The country has been battling a deadly third wave of the pandemic, following previous peaks during the first and second waves between April and December 2020. As of July 19, South Africa has recorded 2.3 million cases and 67,000 deaths since the pandemic started, according to the country’s Department of Health. On June 27, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country would move to adjusted alert level 4 of lockdown for 14 days as the country faced a rising number of COVID-19 infections. After the end of the two-week lockdown and with a continuous spike in cases, Ramaphosa addressed the nation again on July 11 and announced an additional 14 days of restrictions. Ramaphosa was facing both the COVID-19 situation and the violence across the country by pro-Zuma supporters.. Banks and government buildings temporarily closed to avoid attacks. On July 12, Ramaphosa addressed the nation over persistent public violence and announced the deployment of soldiers to two provinces—Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the hometown of Zuma, where the violence started. As of July 13, more than 70 people had been killed and about 1,200 arrested. “This violence may indeed have its roots in the pronouncements and activities of individuals with a political purpose and in expressions of frustration and anger,” Ramaphosa said, but added that no grievance or political cause could justify the violence and destruction. The violence has affected access to health services, with front-line workers unable to reach vaccination stations and pharmacies often shuttered to avoid vandalism and looting. The unemployment and visible inequalities in the country exacerbated the violence. Thousands of South Africans have lost their jobs following lockdown restrictions, and there has been little government support for the economy. The violence created an opportunity to explore illegal options of survival. On top of this, the brutal police enforcement of the lockdown last year has aggravated existing tensions around police brutality, contributing to the unrest. Ramaphosa acknowledged this in his address: “This moment has thrown into stark relief what we already knew: that the level of unemployment, poverty, and inequality in our society is unsustainable.” As in so many other countries, the delta variant of COVID-19 now appears to be dominant, although the government has not published separate statistics for the different variants yet. Hospitals and front-line workers in the country are overwhelmed with the number of patients they are receiving each day. In some provinces, such as Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, many hospitals are operating above capacity, with shortage of spaces and oxygen for patients. Front-line health care workers have been hit hard. As of December 2020, over 38,000 health care workers in South Africa had tested positive for the virus, with more than 390 dead, according to data cited by Ramaphosa. Dozens Killed in South Africa Protests COLM QUINN The government is responding by calling for massive recruitment of health volunteers to beef up the staff strength at public hospitals. Earlier on in the pandemic, African countries made some gains against the virus through precautionary measures such as border closures. For instance, in March 2020, South Africa was the first country on the continent to declare a state of national disaster on the pandemic, and stiffer restrictions were announced. But these initial successes are gradually being lost with the new wave of infections and growing death rate. The gradual relaxation of restrictions to save South Africa’s ailing economy, which started last June, has worsened the situation. The World Bank says South Africa is among the most unequal countries in the world—something the pandemic has only inflamed. The unemployment rate in the country stood at 33 percent at the end of March and is highest among youth aged 15 to 24. As the third wave continues to ravage the country, just 4 million people—about 7 percent of South Africa’s population of 60 million—have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Department of Health.
COVID is pummeling South Africa’s fragile economy and fueling the worst rioting since 1994.
Steinhauser and Parkinson 21. (Gabriele Steinhauser writes about politics and economics in southern Africa and beyond and helps manage The Wall Street Journal's reporters on the continent. Joe Parkinson is the Wall Street Journal’s Africa Bureau Chief, leading a team of correspondents chronicling business, policy and geopolitical trends across the continent. “Third Covid Wave Upends Fragile South Africa, a Warning for Developing World,” The Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-pandemic-south-africa-riots-a-warning-for-developing-world-11626711622 TDI
Wave after wave of coronavirus is pummeling South Africa’s fragile economy and its largely unvaccinated population, creating a spiral of death, lockdowns and anger that has fueled the country’s worst rioting since the collapse of white minority rule in 1994. At least 215 people died in the violence across South Africa’s two most populous provinces, and more than 3,400 have been arrested. While the looting had quieted by Monday, the situation remains tense in parts of the country. Saaberie Chishty paramedic Farah Williams said that after weeks of back-to-back calls from patients, the phones went quiet last week during the riots. The violence was initially sparked by the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma earlier this month, and has exacerbated a power struggle within the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party since Nelson Mandela’s election as the country’s first Black president 27 years ago. President Cyril Ramaphosa has said the unrest was an attempted insurrection against South Africa’s democracy and intended to sabotage its economy. The political protest quickly devolved, becoming an outlet for the frustrations of an impoverished majority long shut out of the country’s economy. South Africa is struggling to emerge from a record contraction of 7 last year. Each surge of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns are putting more pressure on the divided nation, where 43 of workers were without a job at the end of March. “We were sitting on a dormant volcano here, where all of us might perish if it erupts,” said Xolani Dube, a political analyst with the Xubera Institute for Research and Development, a nonpartisan think tank in the southeastern city of Durban. “Now the volcano has erupted.” The human and economic dislocation in South Africa, where just 2.8 of people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, shows how difficult it will be for many emerging economies to recover from the pandemic. The violence in South Africa—as well as in countries including Colombia and Sudan—offers a stark example of how diminishing incomes and the rising cost of food are adding to more than a year of pandemic suffering, exacerbating political instability. The World Bank estimates that more than 160 million people will have been pushed into poverty as a result of Covid by the end of 2021, widening the gap between the world’s richest and poorest nations. The pandemic has led 41 million people to the brink of famine, according to the World Food Program.
Africa instability goes nuclear.
Mead 13. (Walter Mead is a James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities, Bard College) “Peace in The Congo? Why the World Should Care,” The American Interest, December 15, 2013. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/12/15/peace-in-the-congo-why-the-world-should-care/
One of the biggest questions of the 21st century is whether this destructive dynamic can be contained, or whether the demand for ethnic, cultural and/or religious homogeneity will continue to convulse world politics, drive new generations of conflict, and create millions more victims. The Congo conflict is a disturbing piece of evidence suggesting that, in Africa at least, there is potential for this kind of conflict. The Congo war (and the long Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighboring countries) is not, unfortunately alone. The secession of South Sudan from Sudan proper, the wars in what remains of that unhappy country, the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia and the rise of Christian-Muslim tension right across Africa (where religious conflict often is fed by and intensifies “tribal”—in Europe we would say “ethnic” or “national”—conflicts) are strong indications that the potential for huge and destructive conflict across Africa is very real. But one must look beyond Africa. The Middle East of course is aflame in religious and ethnic conflict. The old British Raj including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka offers countless examples of ethnic and religious conflict that sometimes is contained, and sometimes boils to the surface in horrendous acts of violence. Beyond that, rival nationalisms in East and Southeast Asia are keeping the world awake at night. The Congo war should be a reminder to us all that the foundations of our world are dynamite, and that the potential for new conflicts on the scale of the horrific wars of the 20th century is very much with us today. The second lesson from this conflict stems from the realization of how much patience and commitment from the international community (which in this case included the Atlantic democracies and a coalition of African states working as individual countries and through various international institutions) it has taken to get this far towards peace. Particularly at a time when many Americans want the US to turn inwards, there are people who make the argument that it is really none of America’s business to invest time and energy in the often thankless task of solving these conflicts. That might be an ugly but defensible position if we didn’t live in such a tinderbox world. Someone could rationally say, yes, it’s terrible that a million plus people are being killed overseas in a horrific conflict, but the war is really very far away and America has urgent needs at home and we should husband the resources we have available for foreign policy on things that have more power to affect us directly. The problem is that these wars spread. They may start in places that we don’t care much about (most Americans didn’t give a rat’s patootie about whether Germany controlled the Sudetenland in 1938 or Danzig in 1939) but they tend to spread to places that we do care very much about. This can be because a revisionist great power like Germany in 1938-39 needs to overturn the balance of power in Europe to achieve its goals, or it can be because instability in a very remote place triggers problems in places that we care about very much. Out of Afghanistan in 2001 came both 9/11 and the waves of insurgency and instability that threaten to rip nuclear-armed Pakistan apart or with trigger wider conflict India. Out of the mess in Syria a witches’ brew of terrorism and religious conflict looks set to complicate the security of our allies in Europe and the Middle East and even the security of the oil supply on which the world economy so profoundly depends. Africa, and the potential for upheaval there, is of more importance to American security than many people may understand. The line between Africa and the Middle East is a soft one. The weak states that straddle the southern approaches of the Sahara are ideal petri dishes for Al Qaeda type groups to form and attract local support. There are networks of funding and religious contact that give groups in these countries potential access to funds, fighters, training and weapons from the Middle East. A war in the eastern Congo might not directly trigger these other conflicts, but it helps to create the swirling underworld of arms trading, money transfers, illegal commerce and the rise of a generation of young men who become experienced fighters—and know no other way to make a living. It destabilizes the environment for neighboring states (like Uganda and Kenya) that play much more direct role in potential crises of greater concern to us.
The plan solves both scenarios and WTO IP rules are a barrier to scaled-up vaccine production.
Pandey 21. (Ashutosh Pandey) “Rich countries block India, South Africa's bid to ban COVID vaccine patents,” DW, April 2, 2021. https://www.dw.com/en/rich-countries-block-india-south-africas-bid-to-ban-covid-vaccine-patents/a-56460175
The World Trade Organization (WTO) talks on a proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily suspend intellectual property (IP) rules related to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments hit a roadblock on Thursday after wealthy countries balked at the idea, Germany's dpa news agency reported. The two developing countries say the IP waiver will allow drugmakers in poor countries to start production of effective vaccines sooner. India and South Africa had approached the global trade body in October, calling on it to waive parts of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The suspension of rights such as patents, industrial designs, copyright and protection of undisclosed information would ensure "timely access to affordable medical products including vaccines and medicines or to scaling-up of research, development, manufacturing and supply of medical products essential to combat COVID-19," they said. The proposal was vehemently opposed by wealthy nations like the US and Britain as well as the European Union, who said that a ban would stifle innovation at pharmaceutical companies by robbing them of the incentive to make huge investments in research and development. This would be especially counterproductive during the current pandemic which needs the drugmakers to remain on their toes to deal with a mutating virus, they argue. The WTO talks are taking place as some wealthy countries face criticism for cornering billions of COVID shots — many times the size of their populations — while leaving poor countries struggling for supplies. Experts say the global scramble for vaccines, or vaccine nationalism, risks prolonging the pandemic. "We have to recognize that this virus knows no boundaries, it travels around the globe and the response to it should also be global. It should be based on international solidarity," said Ellen 't Hoen, the director of Medicines Law and Policy — a nonprofit campaigning for greater access to medicines. "Many of the large-scale vaccine manufacturers are based in developing countries. All the production capacity that exists should be exploited…and that does require the sharing of Not enough production capacity Supporters of the waiver, which include dozens of developing and least-developed countries and NGOs, said the WTO's IP rules were acting as a barrier to urgent scale-up of production of vaccines and other much needed medical equipment in poor countries.