Phil Mullan - Beyond Confrontation

Covid-19 was a truly global phenomenon. It started in one country and within weeks had spread all around the planet. Long distance air travel that epitomises the connectedness of our globalised world hastened the diffusion of the virus. The equally emblematic international communication systems instantly disseminated awareness of how governments and people were responding, encouraging the replication of actions and behaviours. The sense of a global community, were all in this together, had probably never been stronger.

Such extraordinary human crises, like major wars, are thought to bring people together. Certainly there were many, many uplifting instances all around the world of ordinary people supporting their fellow humans during this pandemic. However, at a political level, conflicts and discord were mostly aggravated, not eased, by the impact of Covid-19. Within governing elites, prior political divisions in and between nations intensified.

Illustrating a core premise of this book, the twosome of globalist and insular nationalist politicians found more to attack each other for. For instance, US President Donald Trumps suspension of financing for the World Health Organization (WHO) followed his long-running script against globalist multilateralism. No doubt there was also a large element of blame shifting by making the funding announcement at that particular time.

The attack on Trump from other Western governments was similarly consistent with their pre-existing globalist playbook. European Union (EU) and other globalist-leaning leaders condemned his act as destructive economic nationalism. Their admonishment happened even though the WHO was being widely criticised for its performance by others, including from themselves, far beyond the White House.

This shared censure of the WHO pointed to another feature of the contemporary political climate described in this book. There is often less division between these two political stances than it can appear. Trumps decision itself was not that much of a break from previous official US attitudes to the UN agency. The indifference to its proceedings from his two preceding Oval Office occupants had been well indicated.

On conceptual grounds too, commentators from both globalist and isolationist outlooks drew on the pandemic. Globalists called attention to the ease with which Covid-19 moved from one country to another as confirmation that national borders are moribund in our smaller world. Fighting such a global disease highlighted for them the limitations of the traditional nation state in dealing with it. The mantra was global problems require global solutions.