By: Wenhan Tang
While the coronavirus pandemic is threatening the lives of the global population, it has also caused a serious impact on relations between nations and citizens. In order to reform those broken relationships and accelerate the coronavirus treatment development process, Journalists Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukuyama, and Arundhati Roy all analyzed a common question: During the COVID-19 pandemic, how should competent leaders build cooperative relationships with citizens or with other countries?
All three authors agreed that cooperation between countries and citizens is the key to promote viral treatments, and a capable leader is an essential factor to achieve cooperation locally and internationally. Zakaria demonstrated that high-capacity countries need competent leaders to make decisions to cooperate with other countries, thereby speeding up research on virus treatments and strengthening relations between countries. However, according to Fukuyama, countries are often unwilling to cooperate with other nations during the pandemic due to the chaotic domestic situation. Likewise, countries such as India that lack domestic control are usually managed by incompetent leaders, as demonstrated by Roy. Together, all three authors concluded that capable leaders can strengthen local and international relations to accelerate the development of the virus treatment process.
Fareed Zakaria in his article "The Pandemic Upended the Present" asserted that leaders of high-capacity countries should look outward and seek better cooperation relationships with countries to promote virus treatment development during the pandemic. As Zakaria points out, the pandemic shock waves, including the economic crisis, social turmoil, and resource shortage, left leaders with no time to respond and put great pressure on countries. As leaders shifted their focus away from international interaction and began to blame other leaders to protect their national interests, Zakaria noticed that “the pandemic is leading countries to look inward” (Zakaria 3). However, as the entire world is facing the same problem, Zakaria argues that the current challenging situation is what makes the pandemic a catalyst for long-term cooperation between countries. He stated that “enlightened leaders will recognize that the only real solution to problems such as pandemics — and climate change and cyberwar — is to look outward, toward better cooperation” (Zakaria 6). Zakaria supported his own statement in his article using a historical event in which the Soviet Union and the World Health Organization successfully eradicated smallpox through collaboration during the cold war (Zakaria 7). Zakaria believes the same method should be adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. He implies that international cooperation between high-capacity countries can significantly accelerate the development of treatment methods for viruses.
Zakaria’s assertion that international cooperation will speed up research on viral treatments is elaborated on by Fukuyama. He highlights that having a capable leader who can promote local cooperation between people and governments is the foundation for successful international cooperation. Fukuyama stated that poor local relationships, like the relationship between the Indian citizens and the Indian government, during the pandemic can lead to domestic unrest. As Roy described during the pandemic, the consequences of India’s management by incompetent leaders have led citizens, especially the working-class people who have lost their jobs, to walk back to their hometown at the risk of being infected by the coronavirus. Under the control of incompetent leaders, people’s hostility to authority will cause chaos in the country and prevent leaders from concentrating on promoting the development of virus treatment and establishing partnerships with other countries. Thus, a capable leader needs to establish local cooperation in order to take a step toward international cooperation.