It’s hard to imagine that 97 percent of Americans could agree on anything right now. But that is how many told Pew Research they either strongly (86 percent) or somewhat (11 percent) support international cooperation to fight infectious disease.
The public is on to something: Whether coordinating to speed up clinical trials of possible treatments or using personal ties to track down protective equipment, plenty of U.S. institutions are partnering across borders quietly, even as nation-states squabble publicly.
Yet not one of the half-dozen “reopening” plans put forward in recent weeks (Rockefeller Foundation, Harvard Safra Center, American Enterprise Institute, Center for American Progress, Johns Hopkins/Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, AFL-CIO, Duke University, plus a number of state and federal plans) proposes a role for international cooperation in ramping up testing and restarting economic and social life in U.S. states and cities.
It’s not that the plans excluded international experts. Contributors include prominent global health scholars, diplomats and at least one former cabinet member with significant international responsibilities. Several of them referenced international experience in implementing test-and-trace schemes or taking tentative steps to end lockdowns. Only one — the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute — mentioned support for fighting the disease abroad as a long-term necessity to sustain health at home.
But none seemed to think local and national officials could gain anything from foreign counterparts in real time.
That blind spot reflects a larger failing in how American thinkers and institutions continue to divide the world between home and abroad, against all evidence that such walls are either porous or illusory.
As much as 80 percent of the key ingredients in American pharmaceuticals come from abroad. Almost half of the U.S. face-mask supply comes from China alone. The Food and Drug Administration says that 15 percent of the U.S. food supply is imported — but that includes almost 95 percent of our seafood, more than half our fruit and one-third of our vegetables.
In our daily lives, we benefit from — but do not see — a web of international cooperation on everything from mail to air traffic to entertainment, not to mention disease surveillance. The international economy, in particular, we view as an immutable force of nature, rather than an environment we can shape with policy or consumer choices.
We are reminded of how the world links up with us when those links fail — pesticides in imported foods, for example — and especially when national security is invoked. Many more Americans will have seen U.S. soldiers conducting counterterrorism operations in West Africa than will have seen U.S. health workers supporting contact tracing there. TV news consumers will know much more about U.S. support for the drug war in Colombia than they do about pioneering efforts that let citizens help shape local government budgets in Brazil.
Yet the latter two efforts might be much more helpful to rebuilding health infrastructure and trust in local governments here at home.
Offscreen, too, rigid divides between domestic and international policy persist across the academy and the professions. It remains not only possible, but preferred, to get a doctorate in U.S. politics or public health without taking an “international” class — or to study “international” economics, development or politics without ever learning the U.S. system deeply enough to compare.
Career incentives are similarly bifurcated. If you want tenure or a top think tank gig in international affairs, don’t spend too much time visibly thinking or writing about domestic issues. Top performers in domestic health, politics and law often had significant early-career international experience — which they talk about nostalgically when the cameras are turned off.
Now, some U.S. cities and states are already working with international partners and drawing on international experience. Local leaders’ international connections have been a key to their successes in sourcing medical equipment and supplies. Massachusetts is partnering with an NGO best known for its health work in Haiti, Partners in Health, to trace the contacts of everyone who tests positive for the virus.
Those efforts will be central to recovery. Whether federal authorities step up or the responsibility remains local, massive amounts of equipment and supplies from abroad will be needed as plans to test everyone, offer antibody therapy and care for more sick people in isolated clinical settings come on line.
Opportunities to ease the pain on other challenges abound. As parents agonize about backsliding in both education and equity, they might want to know that even much-envied national systems like South Korea’s are struggling with online lesson plans, device distribution and the peculiarities of Zoom. Cities will want to know what happens when small shops reopen, as in Austria.
Some governors and mayors already have experienced and well-connected advisers for international affairs who have led and coordinated such efforts, like Nina Hachigian, the deputy mayor of international affairs in Los Angeles. A thoughtful plan for reopening might urge every state or region to upgrade what is often an office for planning trade missions into a hub for connecting to experience and resources worldwide.
Taken together, those steps will help U.S. communities recover faster and more sustainably from the pandemic. They will also do something much larger — point the way toward a new kind of internationalism, in which the high politics and geostrategy of the Cold War are replaced by practical, local-led cooperation. International diplomacy, rather than being a specialty practiced by a dwindling and underfunded corps of State Department officials in Washington, would be understood as a critical component of leadership in many walks of American life.
We’ve already seen what this looks like in two fields often seen as archrivals — international business and global climate policy. At the highest levels in industry, tech and finance, some international experience and connections are a career necessity rather than a detriment. In climate advocacy, global coalitions connect U.S. cities and states directly to foreign governments and international organizations. When governments won’t, climate NGOs collaborate across borders to develop shared agendas.
The system of state-led international cooperation we’re used to began 75 years ago, with a group of leaders building processes where they thought the need was greatest. Some of them were experts in international affairs; but some of cooperation’s greatest champions, like Eleanor Roosevelt, were not. It would be a significant silver lining if the coronavirus, which has shattered science’s expectations about how viruses should behave, could also shatter a stale set of post-Cold War expectations about how international relations serve Americans in our daily lives.
Heather Hurlburt (@natsecHeather) directs New Models of Policy Change at New America.
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