Dear Readers,
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world in ways not seen since the 1918-1920 Spanish Flu. Unfortunately, disinformation campaigns targeting health crisis communication during this pandemic seek to cripple the medical response to the novel coronavirus and instrumentalize the pandemic for political purposes. Vaccination from COVID-19 remains one of the key targets of disinformation but not just that. It is also exploited by autocratic governments as a tool to whitewash their image and pursue their goals on the international arena. For example, propaganda from Russia and other factions has been allegedly increasingly infiltrating public and social media in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government considers the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V to be part of hybrid war in the country, as stated in an interview by Ihor Zhovkva, the Ukrainian President. While governments pursue self serving realpolitik, the scientific, medical and corporate communities, to a large extent, remain country-agnostic. This was on display during the initial race for a vaccine, as researchers, health professionals and other stakeholders shared data and collaborated using open sourced genome sequencing software on the internet. Scientific research was accessible to the entire global commons. Open-sourced AI and powerful machine learning helped produce effective vaccines in less than year an absolute wonder of science and technology. But the Hybrid cold war now in motion has produced contradictions between governments, markets and non state actors, therefore, which will extend beyond vaccines. Affected parties must learn how to navigate through these contradictions. For the benefit of readers, my article titled ‘Hybrid Warfare, Pandemic Style’ is reproduced below:
The Corona pandemic that the world is struggling with for the second year now has brought home to us some important lessons about ourselves. The first thing to realize might be that in a thoroughly interconnected world not only people, goods and ideas travel but so do viruses using people and goods to hitchhike around the world. In the beginning many of us thought that this new challenge will change our world and our behaviour for the better, make us more companionable, more conscious of health, environmental issues and allow us to understand that we are depending on each other for the better or the worse. But over a year later we have to realize that this is really a pipedream. The pandemic has made countries scramble for cover mainly each for themselves. Signs of selfishness and reoccurring nationalism that had been visible before corona had hit strengthened instead of weakening. US President Trump had declared ‘America first’ and acted accordingly.
However when the pandemic hit Trump and his administration, though they acted belatedly they made sure scientists and pharmaceutical companies of the US got together in the rush to develop a vaccine in the shortest possible time. This is was quite an effort given the strong competition from and between companies like Pfizer and Merck in the market. Even though it is not fashionable to give any credit to Trump it was his administration that laid the foundation for an edge in the vaccine development by bringing multiple vaccines into the market and even more important quickly concluding the contracts that allowed the US government to snap up more vaccine supplies than any other country and possible many times more than they will need for their own population.
The EU was unable to handle the UK Brexit demands and never once even asked itself if the Brits might have a point when they criticized the EU statutes and policies. When corona hit Europe it turned out that the EU was all but paralysed, unable to act or even to be on the same page in most questions regarding how to handle the pandemic. Immersed in their little power plays and stuck in bureaucracy they delayed concluding contracts to secure vaccines for the European population, this is the main reason why Europe is behind in its vaccination efforts and has to cope with a rising number of infections. The second largest investor into vaccine research after the US Germany, for instance got punished for waiting for the EU to order vaccines and is behind in its vaccination efforts mainly because of the absence of enough doses. Schools are off because teachers are not inoculated and so are kindergartens. Many of the countries have suffered badly, mainly Italy and Spain.
Moreover the worst thing that happened is the politicization of vaccines. The new cold war that has been launched against an increasingly assertive and economically strong China and a Russia that though economically weaker is heavily relying on its modernized army and its strength in science and development. Both having been declared to be the pariahs of the world by the US and its allies, this new hybrid warfare is dividing the world with the availability of the vaccines. Despite the fact that the Russian vaccine Sputnik V was the first vaccine available in the international market WHO and EU dragged their feet in acknowledging that Sputnik is one of the potent vaccines with an efficiency of 92%, this is close to the Pfizer Biontech one and much superior to Astra Zeneca that seems to have serious side effects, however these are still not fully explored. This has divided the world between the US-produced Pfizer and UK-manufactured AstraZeneca vaccines, used in the US and wealthy European countries, while Chinese and Russian vaccines are used by developing and low-income countries in parts of Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. With many western countries haunted by a strong sentiment of vaccine nationalism and prefer to delay vaccination to wait for western produced vaccines to be delivered instead of ordering Russian or Chinese ones. Western media have joined and played their role in this as well; putting the vaccines into two “camps.” Boasting of their own vaccines, they are questioning the safety and efficacy of Chinese vaccines, they also label China and Russia as the pioneers of the global “vaccine diplomacy” campaign.
The choosing of vaccines by countries has thus become the epitome of global geopolitics. And this is not an empty phrase. The US Department of Health and Human Services admitted that it used “diplomatic relations” in order to force Brazil, one of the worst-hit countries in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic, to reject the Russian Coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V.
And thus the pandemic has changed the world but in the opposite direction as it seems. Despite all so-called values humanitarian aspects have been dropped in this emergency and people in our part of the world will learn once more that ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed’. Even with a strong media campaign against Russian and Chinese vaccines, many countries have adopted these out of the sheer necessity of survival. To quote my article “What is Hybrid Warfare” dated October 4, 2018, “Hybrid Warfare came to prominence in the 21st century, the “Age of Globalization” has opened up many new technical and communication options and shrunk distances. According to Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz “Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.” This new form of warfare, avoiding a clear differentiation between war and peace, soldiers and civilians, is practiced by all sides of the different divides. The US definition characterizes Hybrid Warfare as “Synchronized use of multiple instruments of power tailored to specific vulnerabilities across the full spectrum of societal functions to achieve synergistic effects.” Russian scholar Korybko, on the other hand, says “Hybrid Wars can be defined as “externally provoked identity conflicts, which exploit historical, ethnic, religious, socio-economic, and geographic differences within geostrategic transit states through the phased transition from Color Revolutions to Unconventional Wars in order to disrupt, control, or influence multipolar transnational connective infrastructure projects by means of Regime Tweaking, Regime Change, and/or Regime Reboot.” In this case vaccination against COVID-19, its variants and the hybrid warfare that it has initiated, may cause new geopolitical alliances to emerge.
Hybrid warfare employs means other than conventional military troops, tactics and strategies, to include the employment of irregular military and paramilitary forces like guerrillas, paramilitaries, etc. Islamic State, Hamas and Hizbullah use terrorist acts as a means. Use of non-violent means by civilian institutions include psychological assaults using ethnic, religious or national vulnerabilities, provocateurs operating behind enemy lines, economic assaults through sanctions, boycotts and punitive tariffs so as to weaken the enemy economy, cyber assaults at elections and referendums, use of big data for manipulation of referendums like Brexit and the US elections and a vast selection of propaganda warfare via electronic and social media, TV channels and publications. Diplomacy is as much involved into this new type of warfare as are fake news. With religious elements militating against vaccinations of any kind, all sorts of reasons are being aired not to take the jab.
The Russian military understanding of it as a Western ploy against the new Russia-China axis and use Hybrid Warfare to prevent implementation of Eurasian concept and Russia‘s return as a global power. Sun Tzu more than two thousand years ago wrote “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”
In that sense the pandemic and the fight against it is going to re-enforce the new global power relations that have come up during the last twenty years. In anticipation of the 21st century we were thinking that this might be the century of peace and the end of so many wars, so far it has become the century of shifting centers of development from the former West (US and Europe) to Asia and even Eurasia even if Europe prefers to ignore this for the time being. And this shifting of power relations is not going smoothly; old and new local conflicts are pushed into wars: Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Nagorno Karabakh and others. Vaccination has become something as a new tool of hybrid warfare in this. The process of change is enduring as the pandemic has shown and the new alliances will strengthen, but it certainly will take time.
“The opinions/views expressed in Defence Journal are entirely those of the writers and cannot be construed to reflect the official views of Defence Journal”.
