As effective COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in the early months of 2021, the vaccine rollouts of various countries and regions have been closely watched. The U.K and Israel jumped out to impressive early leads. The U.S has made steady progress all year long. India and parts of East Asia lagged behind, while the E.U got its act together and blazed forwards. Each country’s vaccine program has faced hurdles and setbacks, and each country has chosen its own mix of strategies to maximize vaccination.
African vaccination rates, however, have remained tragically low. The main reason for this shortfall is that richer countries, particularly in North America and Western Europe, have bought up most vaccine supplies well into the future. As a result, despite making up about 16% of the world’s population, Africa has received a tiny sliver of the world’s vaccine doses.
In the face of this humanitarian and epidemiological disaster, many have called on richer Western countries to do more to facilitate vaccinations in Africa. And there has been some effort to do so. Through Covax, a global charity effort led and financed by the Gates Foundation, hundreds of millions of doses have been donated to poorer countries. These doses have not exclusively gone to Africa, however, and what doses do arrive on the continent offer spoil in warehouses before transport and medical infrastructure can get them into arms. Moreover, Western countries have stockpiled far more vaccines than they actually require to fully vaccinate. This has left world health officials, NGO activists, and African politicians simmering with frustration.
Now, those same officials, activists, and politicians are throwing their hands up, as countries like the U.S and Germany are planning to give their older citizens a third booster shot, before many in Africa have had their first. Western politicians, in turn, get defensive; they point out that their first responsibility is to their own citizens, and that there is growing medical evidence that a third vaccine substantially improves immunity.
Most everyone would acknowledge the great capacity of Western countries to improve the vaccine situation in Africa. With the right political will and logistical sophistication, countries like the U.S could do much more both on the ground and through Covax. Surely we could do much more just about anywhere, for poverty or disease prevention, if we put our minds to it.
Or maybe we couldn’t?
This week, as everyone and their grandmother knows, the United States and its NATO allies have formally exited Afghanistan. This exit was preceded by two weeks of chaotic evacuation, sporadic violence, and terrorism. Western countries tried to get ‘their people,’ meaning Afghans who had cooperated or worked with allied forces, out of the country. They succeeded in evacuating about 150,000, which is an admirable triumph given the outlook on August 15th (the day Kabul fell). But this still means that many hundreds of thousands were left behind – abandoned to the Taliban.
In the wake of this debacle and the broader failures of the Forever War, analysts, columnists, and ordinary citizens everywhere have come to similar conclusions: the West cannot nation-build in foreign countries, we must not delude ourselves on our righteous might any longer, we need to leave other countries alone to solve their own problems. Some might argue that we went in for the right reasons – eliminate Al-Qaeda, make sure the country never again becomes a terrorist haven – but quickly lost sight and focus. The war became its own thing, a never-ending mission in a hostile environment.
The two crises – Africa’s dearth of vaccines and Afghanistan’s abandonment – pose difficult questions about the West’s role on the world stage. Western leaders simultaneously find themselves doing too much and not enough. We want to help, we just can’t seem to figure out how. Our citizens are told all of the failures, but seemingly few successes.
The cynical reader might scoff at comparing the two crises: ‘It’s obvious what the West has to do! Just don’t send in tanks and drones! Send money and supplies!’ This reasonable question, however, obscures the immense challenge of utilizing money and supplies in an efficient, cost-effective way. The African vaccine shortage alone shows that donations alone don’t cut it – you have to make sure there are paid truck drivers, and refrigerated warehouses, and a million other things in place.
And without any military presence, is long-lasting structural change feasible? If they didn’t bring tanks and drones, would the U.S have succeeded in putting any Afghan girls in school?
Maybe we just have to be more conscious of on-the-ground needs. Maybe, if we talked to more ordinary people and respected the places we try to change, then humanitarian nation-building would be possible?
I don’t have answers to these questions, but I know they are worth asking. I suspect most have been reading the Afghanistan story and Covax developments as if they were totally separate; I don’t think they are. I think all of these international movements are part of a broader reconfiguration in Western foreign policy. Clearly, the West, as a whole, doesn’t really know what to do overseas. Caught between the threats of China and Russia, terrorism and COVID; committed to human rights and dignity as well as the sovereignty of all nations; eager to help and scared to overstep; it is unclear where we go from here.
And the failure of Afghanistan gnaws on us all. Did we not, after all, go in to educate girls and spread democracy? Did we not pour endless resources into the effort? Did we not fail all the same?
Let’s see what path we choose when the next crisis comes.
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