By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, April 02, 2020
A current global myth alleges that America under the
Trump administration is not leading the world fight against the coronavirus in
its accustomed role as the post-war global leader.
Yet the U.S. was the first major nation to issue a travel
ban on flights from China, with Donald Trump making that announcement on
January 31. That was a bold act. It likely saved thousands endangered by
Chinese perfidy and soon became a global model. None of the ban’s loud critics
are today demanding it be rescinded.
In typically American fashion, as we have seen in crises
from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, after initial shock and unpreparedness, the U.S.
economic and scientific juggernaut is kicking into action.
Already the U.S. is transitioning from a long, disastrous
reliance on Chinese medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. In ad hoc fashion,
companies are gearing up massive production of masks, ventilators, and key
anti-viral supplies.
The number of known deaths from the virus — for now the
only reliable data available — shows a fatality rate of about 7–8 per million
people in the United States. That per capita toll is analogous to Germany’s and
one of the lowest in the world among larger nations.
The U.S. economy in 2019 — with its near-record-low
unemployment, inflation, and interest rates — was the most robust in the world.
It will soon be the key to rebooting global production and trade.
Confronting China over patent and copyright theft,
technological appropriation, dumping, and currency manipulation was not just in
the U.S. interest, but for the global good.
A reckless and disingenuous China poses an existential
threat to countries across the globe. The only world bulwark against Chinese
propaganda and bullying remains U.S. economic and military power.
Despite accusations of growing isolationism at a time of
a worldwide pandemic, the U.S. still stations 200,000–250,000 troops abroad.
Those assets ensure that no hostile power in the present crisis will
opportunistically threaten European and Asian democracies.
Record U.S. natural gas and oil production have helped
lower global home heating and transportation costs. Among the biggest
beneficiaries are Europe and Japan, the largest customers for Russia and the
Middle East’s unreliable energy production.
The radical increase in American natural gas productions
helps explain why the U.S. has made more progress in reducing carbon emissions
than the signatories of the Paris climate accord. That voluntary agreement has
had little success in curbing the planet’s largest carbon emitters. Even as the
U.S. registered robust economic growth of nearly 2.5 percent, it nonetheless
reduced its carbon emissions by 0.5 percent in 2017 (the latest year for which
data is available), which was the largest reduction in the world.
The truth is that the free world would be a safer and
more secure place if Europe, not the U.S., acted more responsibly. Individual
European Union countries have junked their utopian EU brotherhood and are
reverting to nationalist self-interests.
Fracking natural gas, with less reliance of coal-fired
power plants, might have allowed European nations to meet their Paris
climate-accord promises.
Italy and other European countries have been especially
vulnerable to Chinese mercantile pressure and have mortgaged their economic
futures to Beijing, with disastrous results.
If the European Union produced more of its own gas and
oil, it would not empower Moscow and the Middle East through its colossal
importation of their energy.
And if NATO countries just met their obligation to spend
2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, then the West would not
be so vulnerable in such times of crisis. NATO nations could more effectively
draw on their military and health resources to fight the virus.
Nor has the United Nations been much help. Its World
Health Organization simply parroted Chinese propaganda in the key initial weeks
of the virus. WHO claimed in mid-January that there was no human-to-human
transmission, then suggested weeks later that a travel ban on Chinse flights
would have little value in combatting the spread of the virus. Both were lies
but were welcomed by the Chinese government.
Where the West is deficient is in the current lack of
imagination of its most hallowed institutions. Universities in the United
States and Europe are in suspension. They currently have hundreds of thousands
of empty dorm rooms. Why not offer them as temporary refuges to the vulnerable
homeless and poor?
Given the epidemic of misinformation, millions need accurate
data. But poor readers are barricaded from major news websites by expensive
firewalls. Required subscriptions to the New York Times and Washington
Post, for example, could be temporarily waived — at least for any articles
that offer key information concerning the coronavirus.
Throughout the outbreak, the media have promulgated
sensationalism and helped fan the hysteria. It could better use its muckraking
journalists to police itself.
Any laxity in fighting the virus is not to be found with
the U.S., but rather with its loudest and most opportunistic critics.
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