David Miliband on the Crisis
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We talk with David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, about the impact of the pandemic on the world's poorest countries. What happens in places where social distancing is not possible? Plus we discuss the long-term implications of the crisis for the future global co-operation and global conflict. Is this the moment for social democracy? More details of the work of the IRC can be found here: https://www.rescue-uk.org/
Talking Points:
By fluke or demography, the virus has not hit places such as the Middle East or sub-Saharan Africa yet in full force.
- In places with rampant extreme poverty, the story will be different. It’s not a tradeoff between health and economic well-being in the same way.
- The crisis demonstrates the holes in the global safety net.
There are parts of the world where social distancing is impossible.
- Population density heaps danger on insecurity.
- You’re only as strong as the weakest link in the chain—look at Singapore. They had the disease under control but it came back among migrant labour communities.
Right now, there is more myopia than global thinking.
- Conversations about easing lockdowns are centered on what happens within the state, or maybe groups of states.
- There is a vacuum of global leadership.
- Is it possible to have institutions that can manage this kind of interconnectivity?
The politics of the WHO are part of its problem.
- How much executive power do you want to vest in international institutions?
- For legitimacy, they depend on the support of nation states, but for efficacy, they depend on their ability to stand independent of nation states.
Right now America is a flagship for dysfunction.
- The frailties that have been exposed have big implications.
- In the UK, the so-called populist attack on elite or establishment institutions seems to have been reversed in this crisis. Not in the US. What does this say about social trust?
New inequalities in the service economy have been brought to the surface.
- Holes in the global safety net have also been exposed.
- The scale of the economic response means that issues of economic security will probably remain present.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Further Learning:
- The IRC report on corona in vulnerable states
- More on privacy and coronavirus tracing apps
- Coronavirus in an age of inequality
And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. Today we're talking to David Miliband, |
| 0:09.2 | who is currently head of the International Rescue Committee, and we're talking about this crisis |
| 0:14.8 | in the poorest parts of the world, but also what it means for the future of the world order. |
| 0:23.1 | Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, |
| 0:27.2 | Europe's leading magazine of culture and ideas. Improve the quality of your solitude |
| 0:33.2 | with a subscription to the LRB. They'll send you exceptional analysis of the politics, |
| 0:39.2 | economics, sociology and science behind the crisis, and reportage from around the world. |
| 0:46.1 | But also, gloriously unrelated, richly immersive distraction from the world's best authors and critics, |
| 0:53.1 | writing about history and philosophy, art and technology, fiction and poetry. Just go to |
| 0:59.6 | lrb.me slash talk and get your first 12 issues for just 12 pounds. That's lrb.me slash talk. |
| 1:13.9 | We recorded this conversation on QStay afternoon UK time, Tuesday morning US time. |
| 1:20.4 | David is, as you might imagine, a very busy man, so you'll occasionally get the bleep |
| 1:25.2 | of a new email arriving on his computer. So David, we're going to get on to some of the wider |
| 1:31.2 | questions coming out of this crisis about globalization and the international order, but to start with |
| 1:36.4 | just to get your sense of how it looks from your perspective as the head of the International Rescue |
| 1:42.3 | Committee. This is a global crisis, but it's having very different effects in different places. |
| 1:48.3 | We're focused at the moment on its effects in the richest countries in the world, but how does it |
| 1:52.4 | look in the poorest? Thanks for asking, because too few people are asking that question. |
| 1:59.3 | By fluke or by demography given the youthfulness of the populations in the countries that we work, |
| 2:06.5 | places in the Middle East, places in Sub-Saharan Africa, in South Asia, the disease has not yet |
| 2:13.3 | hit with full force, but everything that our health team know, everything that our teams on the |
| 2:19.0 | ground know, I've just been on the call with our teams in Tanzania and in Somalia. Everything they |
... |
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