The strategic responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have made many countries, including leading nations look vulnerable, including the US, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and several western European countries.
By
Andi Widjajanto
·6 minutes read
AFP/PIERO CRUCIATTI
Member of the medical staff take care of a patient infected by the novel coronavirus, at the COVID-19 division at the ASST Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, on April 3, 2020. - Italy\'s three-week lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended through at least mid-April and its economy is expected to suffer its biggest peacetime shock since World War II.
The strategic responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have made many countries, including leading nations look vulnerable, including the US, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and several western European countries.
The number of global citizens infected with the Covid-19 virus has reached 2,072,228, with a death toll of 137,666 (16 April). Many analyses have been made to discover the roots of this high susceptibility.
One perspective offers an institutional approach highlighting organizational traps, when countries are mired in a multi-layered bureaucracy that cannot act swiftly in times of crisis. Another perspective offers a leadership approach that highlights a political elite that falters when a major crisis occurs. The third perspective looks at the failure of the world to come together in a spirit of global solidarity to overcome the global crisis.
Other perspectives are doctrinal and attempt to explain the weakness in the doctrine on early warning and prevention, which is characterized primarily by the absence of policies to stockpile national reserves to anticipate large-scale crises.
This writing offers a quadrantal view that combines the various perspectives on mitigation strategies for the Covid-19 pandemic. This view considers four variables, namely: (a) institutional capacity and state leadership; (b) global solidarity to overcome the crisis; (c) doctrinal readiness to form an emergency response system; and (d) trajectory of global economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Coronavirus quadrant I is global partnership. This is the best quadrant, and is formed when institutional capacity and state leadership in the world is strong. Countries have in place doctrines on emergency response that enable governments to employ special authorities to move quickly to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic. This quadrant is also formed upon signs of global economic recovery, when the previous economic decline rises suddenly to form a V-shape.
At present, the world is in coronavirus quadrant II. In this quadrant, the hope of V-shaped recovery still prevails, but the world’s countries have adopted a protectionist strategy that prioritizes the safety of their own citizens. Quadrant II is marked by a struggle for limited health resources, which makes it difficult for poor countries to access the medical equipment they need to fight the coronavirus.
The primary task now is to prevent slipping into coronavirus quadrant III. This quadrant is the worst-case scenario, characterized by a prolonged multidimensional crisis. This quadrant will form when countries become failed states, which do not have the capacity for a sustained emergency response to overcome the pandemic. The emergence of failed states is exacerbated by competition among nations, even conflict, fighting over increasingly limited health resources to overcome the pandemic.
If this happens, V-shaped recovery does not occur, and instead sinks the world economy into the abyss of deep recession. Current economic projections indicate a deep and prolonged economic recession due to the combination of negative pressures, such as the US-China trade war, Saudi Arabia-Russia price war over oil, shocks to the global value chain as a result of social restrictions and localized quarantines in almost all countries, as well as shocks to the global financial market.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (Top-R) is seen on a screen attending a videoconference with G20 leaders to discuss the COVID-19 coronavirus, at the Parliament House in Canberra on March 26, 2020. - Leaders of the G20 major economies are holding an online summit on March 26, in a bid to fend off a coronavirus-triggered recession, after criticism the group has been slow to address the crisis.
Coronavirus alliance
To prevent slipping into the worst quadrant, world leaders must first show strong leadership that aims to encourage the formation of a global alliance against the coronavirus. This alliance is tactical and carries the short-term goal to act concretely and immediately to save the lives of the world’s citizens. This alliance cannot make the structural changes that are to be made only once the Covid-19 pandemic has ended.
If this anti-coronavirus alliance can be formed, the world will emerge from the worst quadrant and move into coronavirus quadrant IV. In this quadrant, world leaders have a shared commitment to move quickly to ensure the rapid restoration of the global supply chain to support the war against Covid-19. Countries that have wide fiscal space can allocate significant fiscal stimulus of up to 10 percent of gross domestic product, and even up to 20 percent of GDP.
However, a global humanitarian assistance strategy for poor countries must be designed to improve these countries’ emergency response capabilities. This strategy can also be supported by fiscal stimulus from global financial institutions to: (1) support the most vulnerable groups of the world population; (2) strengthen the countries\' health intervention capacities against the pandemic; (3) ensure the continuance of economic activities that sustains the lives of many people; and (4) buoy macroeconomic stability to reduce the impacts of the global recession.
KOMPAS/ERIKA KURNIA
A line of dozens of drivers, street vendors, workers at Depok Terminal to receive lunch assistance on Wednesday (15/4/2020). Assistance is provided by the social organization Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT) and the Indonesian Volunteer Society.
Indonesia
This quadrant-bases analysis can also be applied to the situation in Indonesia. As with the global trend, the Indonesia initial coronavirus quadrant for is quadrant II, in which the government has appeared unprepared to anticipate a strategic response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and has even seemed to have no unified approach to fighting the coronavirus. To the end of March 2020, the Jokowi administration was under public pressure to immediately prove the political maxim of “the presence of the state”. It immediately responded to this pressure by formulating three main approaches against the outbreak: (1) declaring a state of health emergency and placing its management under the Covid-19 rapid response task force; (2) enacting the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) policy; (3) issuing a special “coronavirus budget” to widen the country\'s fiscal capacity.
The implementation of these three formulas can be deemed a success by looking the movements of three indicators. First, the health system’s capacity to treat confirmed cases has increased sharply. This is seen in technical indicators, such as the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals, running mass Covid-19 testing, and much later, the government\'s ability to quickly distribute the Covid-19 vaccine once it has been developed.
Second is that the cumulative national tally of confirmed cases eventually becomes horizontal to drop close to zero. Third is that the negative pressure on the economy has been overcome as shown in the indicators of macroeconomic stability.
If these three indicators all move positively, Indonesia will not enter the worst-case quadrant of a failed state – an absent state that has failed to ensure the safety of the country, which then enters the brink of a recession. To ensure that Indonesia does not slip into coronavirus quadrant III, we must refer to the principle that we will not be able to do much about the national economy as long as we cannot bring the Covid-19 outbreak under control.
TOK
Andi Widjajanto
The safety of the citizens must be the first and topmost priority, an approach that requires the economy to be used as an instrument in protecting the health and safety of its citizens.
Andi Widjajanto, International Relations Analyst, Jakarta.
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