American leadership absent globally…
From a Southeast Asia newsletter I follow:
I recently attended a webinar on Southeast Asian responses to the Covid-19 put on by the Singapore-based risk firm Vriens and Partners that ended when the moderator asked representatives of nine countries what offers of help they had received from US officials. Not a single participant could name any response from the US.
In the meantime, China has gone from the target of global outrage over its attempts to cover up the emergence of Covid-19 to mounting intensive efforts to stop it – not without scars – while the United States has completely abdicated almost any role. It is the most recent and most dramatic demonstration of Washington’s loss of global soft-power leadership.
Meanwhile…
China’s attempt to demonstrate soft power in the crisis – a bid to salvage its reputation – is a relatively new phenomenon, and despite its calculated generosity, it is hitting rough spots. Taiwan’s recovery, in the midst of China’s bullying the rebellious island, was hardly flattering. It is not having much success in erasing the fact that the virus originated in China and that it was China’s mishandling of the situation that allowed it to escape, causing tens of thousands of deaths, nor that as much as 40 percent of its test kits are defective.
Good read on China’s actions so far here. The world is changing, I do not want to see the USA abdicate its role.
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