The United Nations and the Coronavirus Crisis
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2020
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The devastating effects of the coronavirus COVID-19 are being felt in nearly every corner of the world, with little regard for national borders or boundaries. In many ways, this makes it the exact sort of transnational threat that the United Nations is supposed to help address, yet the response across various U.N. institutions has been inconsistent at best. To understand how the United Nations is responding to the coronavirus crisis and why, Scott R. Anderson spoke with two people who know it like few others: U.N. Resident Correspondent and CBS News Analyst Pamela Falk, and U.N. Director for the International Crisis Group Richard Gowan.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | There's been a dissonance between the administration's pretty strong focus on limiting Chinese power |
| 0:42.4 | in the UN and other multilateral forums. |
| 0:45.5 | With the fact that overall, it still continues to treat those forums with a high degree of |
| 0:49.8 | dissident, and I think that this crisis is really showing up the inherent contradictions |
| 0:55.4 | in that approach. |
| 0:56.4 | It isn't meaningful for the US to try and marginalize China in the UN system if it's |
| 1:03.5 | not really going to be able to lead in the UN system itself. |
| 1:07.1 | And I think right at the moment, a lot of diplomats in New York are looking at Washington, |
| 1:12.4 | they're looking to US, and they're just seeing a bit of a void. |
| 1:17.8 | In the absence of the US leadership, the French are working very hard to get something |
| 1:22.9 | in the Security Council, even tiny countries like Lichtenstein played an important role |
| 1:29.0 | in pulling together a general assembly resolution. |
| 1:32.2 | But without the US at the center of the UN response, it's not clear how much political |
| 1:38.0 | credibility the whole response can maintain. |
| 1:42.3 | I'm Scott Arr Anderson, and this is the Lawfare Podcast for April 7, 2020. |
| 1:47.9 | The devastating effects of the coronavirus COVID-19 are being felt in nearly every corner |
| 1:52.1 | of the world, with little regard for national borders or boundaries. |
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