The Geopolitical Logic of Humanitarian Aid Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic – The Diplomat

In March 2020, soon after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, China and Russia dispatched aid to Italy as the country’s dire outbreak horrified the world, a portent of what was to come. The shipments of medical supplies and dispatching of virologists kicked off a debate over the motives for Beijing’s and Moscow’s humanitarian aid. As the pandemic grew and spread around the world, discussions of heath diplomacy and vaccine nationalism followed.

As Dr. Mariya Y. Omelicheva and Dr. Brittnee Carter examine in their book “COVID-19 ‘Humanitarianism’: Geopolitical Logics of Chinese, American, and Russian Assistance” the nexus between geopolitics and humanitarianism deserves closer examination. Besides being a pandemic – by definition a global event – COVID-19 can also be conceptualized as a geopolitical event. 

In the following interview with The Diplomat’s Managing Editor Catherine Putz, Omelicheva – a professor of strategy at the National War College, National Defense University, Washington, D.C. – outlines the motivations for humanitarian aid, the role of geopolitical logic, and unpacks some of their finding regarding the patterns noted amid humanitarian aid efforts carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic  by the U.S.. China and Russia.

What motivates countries to provide humanitarian assistance?

To understand countries’ motives for humanitarian aid, let me underscore an important distinction between humanitarian and other types of foreign assistance. Humanitarian aid is distinguished from development and security assistance by its universal character. It should be motivated by the universal concern over the safety and dignity of all individuals and informed by the principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence. These principles are enshrined in international law.

According to these ethical foundations, any society in need is entitled to humanitarian aid. The greater the human suffering, the more humanitarian aid is expected to flow to alleviate it. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, countries suffering the highest death rates from coronavirus due to the shortages of medical supplies, broken health care systems, and limited state capacity should have been prioritized as recipients of humanitarian assistance.

In practice, there has always been a tension between humanitarian aid’s universal pretensions and the contexts in which it is carried out. State-donors have instrumentalized humanitarian aid for advancing their interests. The U.S., for example, prioritized its allies and partners in the COVID-19 aid allocations, while Russia deployed aid to get favorable United Nations votes on resolutions condemning Moscow’s aggressive foreign policy. China has often blurred the lines between saving lives and pursuing the broader issues of development by channeling COVID-19 aid to countries, which have partnered with Beijing under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

In short, countries’ motives for humanitarian aid can include a confluence of economic, political, security, and normative concerns. For countries like the U.S., China, and Russia, the motives for humanitarian assistance have been further wrapped in the global power relations and these countries’ aspirations for leadership. 

Why is it important to examine the geopolitical logic behind aid provision?

“Geopolitical logic” describes states’ foundational beliefs about themselves and the world. These beliefs emerge in specific historical contexts and can evolve based on states’ experiences and relations with other actors. Once these beliefs are integrated into a country’s institutional makeup and political discourse, they set parameters for the country’s policies in the field of humanitarian action. 

Understanding geopolitical logics is important because they shape countries’ goals and motives in the humanitarian realm. Those motives cannot be reduced to simple categories of “interest” and “need.” It is by focusing on countries’ geopolitical logics that we can learn how they justify certain geographic direction of their foreign policy and concentrate their limited resources on those spaces. 

Let me illustrate this point. Liberal ideas that recognize inherent moral value of all individuals have historically informed Washington’s principled approach to humanitarian aid. Confronted with the novel security challenges in the post-Cold War era and shifts in global power distribution, the U.S. wrestled to reconcile its beliefs in the shared responsibility toward those in need with economic and security imperatives. In the end, beliefs in the virtues of democracies and an economic order featuring interdependence of capitalist economies have colored U.S. reasoning about humanitarian assistance. Subsequently, it channeled more COVID-19 aid to countries with a promise of political reform and potential for economic growth. Beijing has justified its decisions about COVID-19 allocations by emphasizing political neutrality, a state-led development model, and “win-win” cooperation with the recipient countries. Russia ‘s approach to aid has been shaped by ways it has conceived of its great power identity.

How does China’s ideological preference for state-centric solutions affect how and when it provides aid?

In the early 21st century, China has successfully transformed itself from being an aid recipient to a donor. However, China’s meteoric rise in the field of foreign assistance has not translated into Beijing’s acceptance of the rules guiding traditional donors’ aid giving. In fact, the Chinese government refrains from calling its donations “foreign aid” and eschews using the language of “donors” and “recipients” of assistance. 

Foundational to China’s approach to humanitarian aid is Beijing’s belief in the primacy of the state, the legitimacy of which hinges on successful economic performance through development projects at home and abroad. Since the state is a political actor, politics is integral to any humanitarian project. Humanitarian aid can be used as another foreign policy tool in support of the broader development objectives. China, therefore, has tied its humanitarian aid to development assistance bundled in the packages of “aid-investment-trade.” Consistent with this view, Beijing has added a humanitarian and health cooperation component to its already ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it supplied more coronavirus aid to the countries with BRI projects.

Another important implication of the state-centric approach to assistance is that the state and its various agencies are the major actors in the Chinese system of emergency relief. China’s aid giving follows the pattern of mostly bilateral (state-to-state) in-kind assistance.

Lastly, China’s state-centric views imbue the state with civilizational qualities and put the state in the center of a global order. The government of Xi Jinping began propagating these Sino-centric views under the rubric of the “community of common destiny for mankind.” Humanitarian aid has been integral to this outward expression of the Chinese worldview.

For the U.S., China’s effort to re-shape the international order in its own image poses a threat. For Beijing, the U.S. is the biggest impediment to its national rejuvenation. China has used humanitarian assistance to counter American global influence by sending medical supplies, equipment, and doctors to the countries that received humanitarian assistance from the U.S.

How does Russia’s self-perception as a great power influence its humanitarian aid strategies?

Like China’s perspective on aid, Russia’s approach to humanitarian assistance has been anchored in state-centric beliefs. Yet, if China’s aid policies have been linked to its goal of global leadership through contributions to development, Russia’s humanitarian actions have been driven by concerns with projecting and defending its great power position. 

According to the Russian government, great power status comes with certain rights and responsibilities, including playing a bigger role in shaping global and regional processes, reducing global poverty, and alleviating the consequences of natural disasters. This mix of aspirations, claims, and entitlements reflects a tension between Russia’s desire to be viewed as a responsible member of the exclusive club of Western donors committed to helping the people in need and its penchant for acting in self-interest.

Between 2005 and 2014, Moscow sought to integrate into the dominant humanitarian regime and portray itself as a constructive player in global politics. Following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia’s integration into international humanitarian agencies was brought to a halt. The Kremlin began overtly deploying humanitarian aid in support of its foreign policy priorities, such as countering American influence. 

Russia’s allocations of COVID-19 assistance followed this trend. While some of its vaccine and medical supplies distributions followed the humanitarian prerogatives, Russia also used coronavirus aid in support of diverse political objectives. Countries in Russia’s proximity that are members of Moscow-led regional organizations, and those supporting or remaining neutral in the face of Russia’s aggressive foreign policy (as represented by their United Nations’ roll call votes) received more COVID-19 aid and Sputnik vaccines. Furthermore, to subvert the liberal foundations of the global order spearheaded by the U.S., Moscow prioritized countries governed by non-democratic governments in its aid-giving. 

To what extent did domestic U.S. politics interfere with the provisions of humanitarian aid abroad? Do you think this affected how global audiences viewed U.S. aid?

Let me begin by acknowledging that the U.S. has been the top donor of humanitarian aid in the post-Cold War period. It has also led the humanitarian response to COVID-19 based on the dollar amount of coronavirus assistance. Successive U.S. governments have justified this level of assistance by the moral imperative of helping others in need.

In practice, Washington has had to reconcile this moral imperative with perceived threats and opportunities for U.S. national interests. In the post-World War II context, for example, the U.S. deployed foreign aid for containing the spread of communism. After the fall of the Soviet Union, U.S. humanitarian assistance became intertwined with its development projects designed to integrate developing and newly independent countries into the flows and institutions of neoliberal globalization. During the era of the “global war on terror,” the U.S. government believed that poverty and authoritarianism were responsible for terrorism and violent conflict. Thus, in the 21st century, U.S. interventions in disasters and crisis have been driven by the confluence of humanitarian prerogatives and the U.S. government’s concerns with the consequences of persistent underdevelopment and state failure. 

In addition to these broader trends, the politics of individual U.S. governments have also affected the flows of humanitarian assistance. The Trump administration, for example, bore a distrust of international institutions and alliances, and espoused a transactional approach to partnerships. It halted U.S. membership in the World Health Organization and suspended contributions to Pan-American Health Organization. President Donald Trump was reluctant to institute appropriate public health measures at home and engaged in the spread of misinformation about the efficacy masks and the seriousness of the disease. His administration’s policies contributed to the public impression that the U.S. detested international cooperation and retrenched from a position of global leadership. This perception hindered coordination of a global response to COVID-19 and was exploited by China and Russia.

You note in your analysis that the more aid a state received from the United States, the more likely it was to receive vaccine assistance from China. But the reverse was not true. What explains this pattern?

This pattern can be accounted for by the strategic priorities of the Trump and Xi administrations as well as the institutional foundations of the American and Chinese foreign aid. Recognizing the consequences of the trumped-up blame for the emergence of the coronavirus to China’s global image, the Xi government went on a charm offensive. It promptly delivered an unprecedented (for China) amount of COVID-19 aid to dozens of countries to shore up its global reputation and denigrate global leadership of the U.S. The Trump administration, on the other hand, engaged in relentless rhetorical censorship of China’s handling of coronavirus outbreak and sought to pull back from its international commitments. 

Furthermore, the American institutional apparatus for humanitarian assistance has been designed to withstand the pressure of political expediency. Since its establishment in the late 1960s-1970s, the Office of the U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) enjoyed fiscal independence and freedom from political and bureaucratic interference. Until recent reforms, the OFDA was a leading agency that coordinated the U.S. government’s humanitarian assistance overseas. Housed in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the OFDA leveraged USAID’s extensive field presence for delivering humanitarian assistance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, humanitarian aid flew through established development assistance channels, regardless of the destinations of Chinese aid.

China’s humanitarian aid infrastructure is still evolving. It was only in 2018 that the Chinese government consolidated its diverse foreign aid programs in the new China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA). Directed by the State Council, CIDCA can shift the aid flows promptly in response to China’s national priorities.  

This is not to say that Washington’s policies have been independent of China’s activities. To counter China’s BRI, the Trump administration instituted the U.S. International Development Corporation as an alternative to Beijing’s’ Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It concluded multiple economic and security initiatives with governments around the world with the goal of thwarting China’s advances.

What do you think is missing from contemporary discussions about aid – both in the West and elsewhere?

The punchline of our book is that the act of aid-giving is not independent of the institutionalized beliefs that contain ethical rationales for assistance. The dominant ethical rationalizations for humanitarian aid are the offshoots of neoliberal ideas. Yet, the calls for a reform of the humanitarian system that is unable to meet the rising demand for aid are voiced in isolation from meaningful discussion of the contradictions in the neoliberal foundations of the humanitarian regime and the broader international order with the U.S. at its helm. 

Neoliberalism emphasizes efficiency, deregulation, globalization, and state withdrawal from the main areas of social provisions. Policies that are based on these principles can exacerbate social inequality and cripple social safety nets, including health care. In the U.S., for example, the Trump administration sought to curtail government participation in the public sector. It quietly shut down the PREDICT program established to track and research zoonotic diseases and serve as an early warning mechanism. With the dismantling of the PREDICT program, the related efforts at pandemic preparedness and dissemination of best practices nationally and globally were downscaled. 

The neoliberal emphasis on unchecked individualism can tear up social solidarity, thus undermining collective responses to a humanitarian crisis that demands collective solutions. Neoliberal development, which has been envisioned as a solution to the root causes of humanitarian maladies, depends on the continued exploitation of resources and itself contributes to the climate, ecological, and social emergencies. 

I proffer that humanitarian crises need to be viewed as not only medical or ecological emergencies but also political and ideological inflection points inviting critical reflection on how the neoliberal foundations of the current global order and humanitarian regime can be at odds with the goal of a more just, safe, and sustainable environment. 

This is not to say that the worldview espoused by China offers a more constructive alternative. China’s approach is not egalitarian and is fundamentally different from the neoliberal ideas. Still, these differences that are exacerbated by the geopolitical rivalry between Beijing and Washington shouldn’t inhibit collaboration in the critically important areas of humanitarian regimes. I invite discussion of Beijing’s extensive experiences in disasters’ early warning and response that can be turned into small but practical steps for collaboration with other donors.