By Emily Guan
Summary
After looking at the actors who played major roles, as well as the defining motives behind the actors’ actions during covid, we will come to the conclusion that Realism and Marxism are the ideologies that successfully explain the past 2 years.
Introduction
International relations theories, or IR theories, are lenses that we could see through in order to understand international events in a clearer matter. And — this surely isn’t news to any of us — the Covid-19 pandemic has been the greatest international event that ever took place over the past several decades. The event has made our lives so peculiar, that while Covid is already celebrating its second birthday, lots of us (me) are still stuck in its aftermath wondering “well, what in the world was that?” Thus, as one of the billions of people influenced by the pandemic and an unofficial IR student, in this essay, I will evaluate and apply three IR theories, namely Realism, Liberalism and Marxism, to Covid-19 times, and try to find out who saw everything (except the outbreak itself) coming. After looking at the actors who played major roles, as well as the defining motives behind the actors’ actions during covid, we will come to the conclusion that Realism and Marxism are the ideologies that successfully explain the past 2 years.
In this essay, I will evaluate and apply three IR theories, namely Realism, Liberalism and Marxism.
For any concrete evaluation of the applicability of IR theories to exist, we must first define the theories themselves. In this essay, I will be asking questions that the theories would give different answers to, and addressing the relevance of those answers during Covid times. The two questions that will be asked in this essay is “who were the actors”, assessing the contributors on the international stage, and “what was happening”, accessing the defining motive behind the main actors’ interactions. If states were the only actors during Covid, Realism got it right; if a large amount of cooperation was happening during Covid, Liberalism gets a point, and so on.
Who were the main actors: states, states and others, or classes?
We could surely agree on the fact that states were relatively, if not extremely, significant players during the pandemic. While we were stuck in our houses, cities and states operated under the order of individual governments. Therefore, to distinguish the “winner of accuracy” between Realism and Liberalism, we must look at the contributions made by non-state actors. Some examples of non-state actors would be the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations (UN), as well as the European Union (EU). Unfortunately, none of them played overwhelmingly major roles during Covid. According to Gorana Grgic, a lecturer at the University of Sydney: “amidst all the handwringing about relative public relations victories for Russia and China and botched responses in Europe and the United States, there are only cursory concerns about the fact that the poorest countries are nowhere near the front of distribution chains. These usually come as warnings from the top officials at intergovernmental organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the United Nations, but they are seemingly falling on deaf ears” (Grgic). No government really had time to pay attention to the WHO and the UN in the mist of the pandemic. Although medical laboratory organisations like the WHO do publish important studies on the disease itself, it is ultimately up to governments how, where and when to treat their nation’s patients. To examine another example, the EU didn’t make a significant contribution to combating the pandemic, either. Sir Michael Leigh points out in his article published on European Politics and Policy, that “EU members responded to the epidemic in disarray, each determining its own strategy, without a thought for fellow-Europeans…Countries and regions adopted their own lockdown rules, their own border closures, their own easing of restrictions over the summer, their own second wave restrictions, and their own rules for the 2020/2021 winter holidays, with little effective coordination or exchange of best practice” (Leigh). Neither the WHO, the UN nor the EU, were important players during the pandemic. This makes clear that Liberalism, claiming that non-state actors are just as powerful as states, might’ve made a much weaker argument than Realism.
Some examples of non-state actors would be the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations (UN), as well as the European Union (EU). Unfortunately, none of them played overwhelmingly major roles during Covid.
On the other hand, a Marxist answer to the question “who are the main actors on the international stage?” would be classes, and to what extent is that true during Covid times? Some might argue that Marxism’s relevance to the modern world is undermined by the ever so complex society. According to professor Fiona Devine(of sociology at the University of Manchester), modern classes include the precariat, the traditional working class, emergent service workers, new affluent workers, the technical middle class, the established middle class, etcetera. Although this might seem to undermine the Marxist argument on the importance of classes which consists of only three groups — the proletariats, the bourgeois, and the landowners — everything is changed by the pandemic. Just as how Marx could look at society during the industrial revolution and identify three groups, one could also look at society during the pandemic and see 2 distinct groups of people: those who could work from home (workers like teachers, as well as middle classes like office managers, law clerks), and those who couldn’t (medical workers, drivers, cleaners, delivery people, hotel managers, the tourism sector, etcetera, all belonging to the frontline workers category, as well as the proletariat category). The misplaced frontline workers lost everything in the blink of an eye. “In the USA, with a highly ‘flexible’ economy and an even more supple job market, tens of millions of workers were thrown into the scrapheap almost instantaneously,” says Alfredo Saad-Filho from King’s College London. If you are a worker, no matter what industry you work for, there is a much higher chance that you might lose your job, either because you cannot work from home under lockdowns, or because your company has to lay off employees on the edge of its bankruptcy. Classes became a significant element of people’s identities once more, because a person’s class determined their livelihood during the pandemic. To conclude, states were the most important characters internationally, and classes were significant within individual nations. Realism and Marxism together, form a competent answer to the question “who were the main actors during Covid times”.
Just as how Marx could look at society during the industrial revolution and identify three groups, one could also look at society during the pandemic and see 2 distinct groups of people: those who could work from home and those who couldn’t.
What was happening: conflict, cooperation, or exploitation?
In order to further examine the world during Covid, one would need to look at the primary mode of interaction between global actors. A one word summary of the Realist opinion on this would be “conflict”, the word for Liberalism is “cooperation”, and for Marxism, it is “exploitation”. The question then is: which of these were true during Covid times?
A one word summary of the Realist opinion on this would be “conflict”, the word for Liberalism is “cooperation”, and for Marxism, it is “exploitation”.
Firstly, states, organisations and people were not cooperating, or at least not as much as during pre-pandemic times. “Demonstration bans, curfews and travel bans [were] introduced in many countries” (Zuk and Zuk), “long supply chains, that were previously the only ‘rational’ way to organize production, collapsed and hard borders returned; trade declined drastically; and international travel was severely constrained” (Saad-Filho). The normal Liberalist mode of action was no longer applicable during the pandemic with the decrease in opportunities of cooperation. The entire world was facing the same virus, but nations each developed their own response. Well then, some might ask, if interactions between countries declined altogether, were they still able to be in conflict and compete with each other? Unfortunately, the answer would be yes. “China has been offering aid to European partners. More than 10 flights containing millions of masks will be heading to the Czech Republic this week; Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pledged medical supplies and resources for countries ranging from Serbia to Italy…while Xi acknowledged France and Germany, given their strategic prominence and hegemonic positions within the EU, he tactically opted to engage Spain and Serbia” (Wong), wrote an article published on the Diplomat. Just as how China is engaged in gaining “soft power” with sending medical aid to countries in need, Russia is doing the same. This “mask diplomacy” looks like nations helping each other, but in fact is a proof that nations are in competition for power even during a world wide pandemic, and that aids sent between nations are seldom sent out of pure good will. Realism, again, wins a point for its accuracy.
This “mask diplomacy” looks like nations helping each other, but in fact is a proof that nations are in competition for power even during a world wide pandemic, and that aids sent between nations are seldom sent out of pure good will.
While nations were competing for power, exploitation based off the hierarchy of wealth was also happening in the background. For example, corporations were exploiting weaker and poorer countries. “According to government officials in Argentina and the unnamed country, Pfizer asked for liability protection not only against civil claims from citizens who suffer serious adverse events after being vaccinated, but also for cases brought due to Pfizer’s own negligence, fraud or malice…as a result of these demands, neither Argentina nor Brazil signed a vaccine supply deal with Pfizer” (Nawat). Pfizer was a multinational corporation. It did not have an army, but it was still able to use its power to limit vaccines in low and middle income countries, consisting of lower and middle class people. Marxism would say that it is predictable that a large corporation like Pfizer would exploit the weakness and poverty of these states for profit. Moreover, Marxism successfully predicts the state’s exploitation of individuals from the working class. Ever since the start of the pandemic, the importance of frontline workers (nurses and paramedics) has been emphasised very extremely, to the point where “personal sacrifice to the economy and other institutions comes to be expected as the only rational option [to over come the crisis]” (Lohmeyer and Taylor). “Any collective solutions, the need for structural change and changes in public sector policy are covered by stories of individual efforts which are said to be sufficient to deal with the ongoing adversities” (Zuk and Zuk). Marxism believes that the entire society is constructed to benefit the rich, that the rich middle and upper classes control the media, the politics, the religions, and make sure that workers, who are the majority of people, are “brainwashed” into believing that inequality is normal in societies. And thus, Marxism would be able to explain why the media would be filled with stories of individual “heroes”: they are to distract us from the inequalities and flaws within the capitalist system, that Covid-19 has helped reveal. To summarise, the danger of conflict has always been lurking in the background even during the pandemic, and exploitation between multiple parties and classes has only became worse. Realism and Marxism, again, illustrate a clear image of how the world operated during Covid-19.
And thus, Marxism would be able to explain why the media would be filled with stories of individual “heroes”: they are to distract us from the inequalities and flaws within the capitalist system, that Covid-19 has helped reveal.
What can we take away?
“Outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional,” says Larry Brilliant. We might now have ideologies that could accurately explain the covid-19 pandemic, but the picture that we saw on the international stage in the last two years was a rather grim one. After answering the questions “who were on the stage” and “what was happening”, perhaps the next step is to find out the solutions to “next time, how can we contain an outbreak and prevent a pandemic?” After all, there are many more global issues that will be waiting to trip us on our way to the future, and cooperation is our only hope.
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