The limits of power projection

Power Projection and COVID

COVID is a widely shared failure. Almost no country has succeeded in stopping COVID transmission, or even slowing it to an acceptable degree. losing too many people to COVID is a constant across continents, cultures, and systems of government. 

Some countries, like Sweden, opted for death from the very beginning. The UK stumbled in the face of inconsistent policy and the sheer incompetence of Boris Johnson. Germany put all the WHO recommended policies in place and they’ve still racked up 25,713,917 infections and 137,460 deaths since the start of the pandemic. The US switched presidents from Trump to Biden and yet pandemic policy got only marginally better. 

Australia‘a highly effective anti-COVID policy imploded just before their May elections, shifting abruptly from lockdowns and mask mandates to letting the virus tear through the country. New Zealand loosened COVID restrictions in March 2022 and hit a million cases of COVID by mid-May. Vietnam, another early COVID success story, started reopening in spring 2022 and saw a similar jump in cases. Even China, with its willingness to totally disregard human rights and its all encompassing state power apparatus can’t seem to stop the spread of COVID. 

What the hell is going on?

One guess: we’re looking at the limit of state power projection. COVID response requires more, and more difficult, action from governments than they’re capable of producing. If we’re using this logic, it means that government decision-makers had to loosen COVID restrictions when they realized they no longer had the ability to enforce them. 

There’s a kernel of a valid argument there. I live in Sri Lanka, and it’s pretty clear we gave up on COVID containment when the economy ran out of money. Sri Lanka depends on tourism, and we reached a point where the hotels weren’t going to be capable of reopening if they stayed closed any longer. That would genuinely have destroyed more lives than COVID. So the Island opened up again. Egypt has a similar tourism dependent economy. The Ministry of Health sees their pandemic response as a success because they both minimized infections and minimized economic harm. 

Using that frame, the Biden administration must be doing as much about COVID as they can without losing control of the country. Australia though. Can we make that case for Australia? It’s pretty clear they loosened COVID protocols to win an election. Maybe they had to abandon them anyway and just chose a politically convenient time? That would also mean that Sweden knew from the beginning they couldn’t enforce strict COVID protocols. 

This argument is clearly too generous to governments…but I also think there is some value there. Our leaders are definitely playing politics with Covid. They’re definitely prioritizing their own political success over saving human lives. At the same time a government governs by the will of its people. We pretend our nations into existence.¹ There are exceptions of course: Russia, North Korea, Turkmenistan, China. But as Syria has shown us, even the most autocratic governments are actually dependent on the cooperation of their people. We haven't seen regime change in Syria but we certainly saw the Assad family and the autocratic government of Syria lose power and control.

It really does seem like the governed - the citizens - the populations - want to be done. We’d have more Covid protection if people wanted it. It appears that most people don’t. I am starting to develop some ideas on why most people don’t but I think that this newsletter is long enough already so that’ll be a topic for another day.

1. Yes, Yes, Benedict Anderson. Have an affiliate link.