U.S. Foreign Policy After the Pandemic Four challenges that will need to be addressed by JESSICA TRISKO DARDEN The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed previously unrealized security challenges, ranging from food insecurity to vulnerable supply chains. The pandemic also provides an opportunity to address existing gaps to help ensure that future crises remain under control. With this in mind, U.S. foreign policy needs to better reflect the interconnected nature of the big issues facing the world and respond to challenges posed by future pandemics, technology gaps, migration, climate adaptation and armed conflict.
challenging even here in the United States, 600 million people lack access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa and just 28% have regular internet access. Globally, only one in three students are expected to return to classrooms this fall. Because of technology gaps, millions of children are losing out on key skills, including digital literacy, that they need to reach their fullest human potential. This will have a long-term social and economic impact in developing countries. Foreign assistance, particularly technical assistance and support for private investment, remains essential in extending access to broadband internet, cellular telecommunications, and clean energy to the world’s poorest and most remote regions. Attention to how technology gaps affect service delivery and outcomes should be a key part of U.S. foreign assistance programming.
Global response to pandemics Despite the United States’ effective response to public health crises such as HIV/AIDS and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, COVID-19 has provided ample evidence that the United States is highly vulnerable to viruses that emerge abroad. The United States needs to tackle public health challenges when and where they emerge to protect the health and Jessica Trisko Darden Migration security of its citizens. India’s lockdown in Foreign assistance programs response to the COVID-19 can help other countries prepare U.S. foreign policy pandemic saw an estimated 40 for future pandemics by improving needs to better reflect the million migrant workers return the detection of outbreaks and to their home villages in the bolstering public health responses interconnected nature of Indian countryside. Many were in countries with weak healthcare the big issues facing the forced to crowd on trains or infrastructure. This helps protect world. walk for days, only to be turned Americans. As the re-emergence away from villages weary of of previously eradicated diseases the virus’s transmission. such as polio and measles shows, no one is safe until Mass migration prompted by disease outbreaks or everyone is safe. natural disasters add greater complexity to a refugee system that was designed to deal with persons displaced Overcoming technology gaps The COVID-19 pandemic prompted lockdowns around by armed conflict. Migration is also a problem that is the world which demonstrated how access to technology likely to worsen if the underlying challenges, including shapes a range of outcomes, from business adaptability to physical and economic insecurity, are not proactively healthcare delivery. The impact of technology gaps is far addressed. reaching, particularly when it comes to education. At its peak, the pandemic forced 1.6 billion children Climate adaptation and conflict prevention While we can hope that climate scientists’ worstout of the classroom. While distance-learning proved 28
RIPON FORUM October 2020
