Supporting America’s allies during COVID-19 pandemic

OPINION:

Facing the current public health crisis, the federal government has a primary responsibility to ensure sufficient supplies — masks, ventilators, protective medical clothing — for the protection of the public, health care workers and of course members of the armed services.

Yet, Washington’s responsibilities do not end there. The crying demand for medical gear also has a salient foreign policy dimension, vital to the pursuit of the national interest. The importance of supporting our allies and countering our enemies has not ended, despite the priority of the domestic focus on the Wuhan virus.

The United States cannot solve the health emergencies in every country, but it is wrong to conclude that we should do little or nothing overseas. In particular, in those hard-hit countries that host significant American military bases such as Italy and Spain, we should offer help. Where we have a surplus of stored supplies, we can act as a good neighbor and lend a helping hand. The same holds for Germany which faces shortages, despite its relative prosperity. American support especially in the immediate vicinity of our installations could mitigate some of the anti-American sentiment intentionally promoted by our enemies. 

There are also countries along the eastern flank of the European Union, from the Baltics to Bulgaria, where we have important partnerships. These are not wealthy countries and would benefit significantly from American support in their hour of need. The symbolism of such generosity would strengthen our trans-Atlantic friendships.

A competitive medical diplomacy is under way. Our adversaries, China and Russia, are using the COVID-19 crisis to try to undermine the American presence in Europe. They are promoting themselves, claiming to ride to the rescue with scarce supplies, and they boast of these shipments as gifts when in fact many turn out to be hard-nosed sales. Moreover, there are accounts that some of the Chinese masks are so poorly made that they are dysfunctional. We need accurate intelligence on these matters, but we also need articulate and systematic rebuttals from the State Department to counter the self-promotion from Moscow and Beijing.

The propaganda around medical equipment is bitter. Anti-American assertions, promoted through disinformation campaigns, circulate in the European press and, as usual, especially in Germany. Russian fake news is at work, alleging that the United States is illicitly seizing shipments of supplies intended for Germany. Here, too, it is urgent that Washington nail down the facts on each of these stories and correct misrepresentations promptly and forcefully. If we fail to do so, the coherence of our alliance structure will suffer, which is precisely what our adversaries want to achieve.

Fortunately, President Trump has acted decisively, for example in his early restriction on flights from China. Unfortunately, the State Department lags behind in the information competition. Naively globalist administrations of both parties have saddled it with an insufficient ability to engage in the international competition of narratives. The Russians and the Chinese spread lies and find cooperative mouthpieces in the West, while the United States lacks an effective response structure to communicate a rebuttal effectively. This is war. It is high time to decide whether we are committed to winning it.

• Russell A. Berman is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. He formerly served as senior adviser in the policy planning staff of the State Department.