World leaders including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are calling for a new international treaty to govern responses to future pandemics. It might sound like a good idea, but it’s anything but.
The experience of the World Health Organization and China during the coronavirus pandemic encapsulates the problem.
After all, our global experience has been that of a government that has been and remains unwilling to provide honest assessments or necessary information and of a WHO that has been happy to act as an enabler for these deceptions and obstructions. Consider the WHO’s report, released on Tuesday, into the coronavirus’s origin. It describes the possibility that the virus leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology as highly unlikely. At the same time, however, WHO chief (and China favorite) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus laments that the WHO was unable to get access to raw data. More investigation is needed, he said.
Thanks, Sherlock.
This is absurd stuff. Indeed, it is outrageous. On a matter of immense global consequence, one that has cost the lives of nearly 3 million people, decimated economies, and cost the jobs of millions of people, the WHO has utterly failed in its responsibilities. And China, thus far, has got away free with the chaos it has enabled (even if the virus was born in a wet market, why did China deceive us all in those early and most important containment-potential days?). How on Earth can the WHO claim that a lab leak is highly unlikely when it hasn’t had access to necessary evidence?
The Biden administration has rightly pushed back against China’s effort to see this WHO report as the case-closed finding on the pandemic. It recognizes the U.S. intelligence reporting on the Chinese cover-up that went on at the lab and the need for more questions (read Josh Rogin). Yet, even as Biden addresses concerns, he must be clear-minded about how best to mitigate the risks of a future pandemic. That brings me back to the call for a new treaty governing future outbreaks. I believe there is a significant risk of such a treaty doing more harm than good.
For a start, even those in support of a treaty admit that its enforcement mechanisms would be weak to nonexistent. Speaking to the Associated Press, the WHO’s chief legal officer explained that “specifics about enforcement will be up to member states to decide on.” Put another way, even if China or Russia or Iran or North Korea sign up to a new treaty and then decide to mess around with some new virus variant (perhaps one far deadlier than the coronavirus), which then leaks, we’ll have to take that country at its word when it explains what happened. Actually, it’s worse than that because we’ll face a situation in which a supplicant WHO is happy to lend diplomatic cover to those responsible for the outbreak. Enforcement is critical. Russia has proven as much with its relentless breaches of treaty obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The appropriate response to this pandemic is to increase supervision of risky biological research activities dramatically, to publicize those activities where necessary, and to hold relevant governments accountable.
Let’s start with China.
