Natural for governments to engage in vaccine nationalism

The recent success of several vaccines is bringing hope that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic will end, but it is clear that wealthier countries will benefit first. The pandemic has renewed criticisms of “vaccine nationalism,” which occurs when countries prioritize providing vaccines to their own citizens.

For the three vaccines that are furthest along in trials and have proven most effective, much of their potential supply for 2021 has already been pre-ordered by the EU and other wealthy countries. According to an article in Nature, Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, and the EU lead the world in ordering the most doses per person. This reflects several factors, including wealthy countries’ resources for purchasing vaccines and the reality that the companies developing those vaccines are American and European.

Some experts, activists and UN officials have criticized these countries for engaging in vaccine nationalism. These critics argue that, when wealthy countries purchase a lot of limited vaccine supplies, there is little left for the rest of the world. They also argue that, as long as COVID-19 is endemic in some parts of the world, it poses a threat to everyone. They add that the global economy will suffer as long as the pandemic rages, which hurts all countries. They argue that wealthy countries have a moral responsibility to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines.

Critics of vaccine nationalism also say that vaccines should go to the most high-risk people around the world, regardless of their nationality; or, at least, they say that distribution should be equitable among countries. They advocate for a multilateral approach that pools the resources of multiple states, reduces competition, which could drive up prices, and equitably shares vaccines among countries. Covax is an international alliance, including the World Health Organization, designed to help countries pool their resources to buy vaccines, with the initial idea being that each participating middle and low-income country would receive enough doses for 20 percent of its population.

While critics of vaccine nationalism raise important points, those asking wealthy countries to forego vaccines for their own citizens while providing them to other countries are making unrealistic demands. For better or for worse, the global system is based on sovereign states with governments whose primary responsibility is to protect their citizens. It is not reasonable to ask a government with the resources to provide vaccines for most of its citizens to vaccinate only 20 percent or so and then wait for the rest. Many of their citizens would be furious. Very few governments in the world would agree to such terms if they had the resources to buy more doses.

There are other challenges to the criticisms of vaccine nationalism. It is natural that countries that invested heavily in vaccine research and development and that fostered the companies that developed the vaccines should expect to benefit first from that investment. Intensive government support for multiple potential vaccines and ramped-up production efforts are major reasons why COVID-19 vaccines have been developed within a historically fast timeline. Critics say that some wealthy countries bought more doses than they need, but they did so because they did not know which vaccines would work.

The criticisms of vaccine nationalism would be more persuasive with a disease that hit the developing world harder than the developed world. If developing states were suffering badly from a disease that posed minimal threat to the wealthier states, vaccine nationalism would be less defensible. However, COVID-19 has hit many of the world’s wealthy states especially hard. While COVID-19 is causing suffering around the world, including in the Middle East and South America, the US and Europe have had particularly high infection and death rates.

Critics of vaccine nationalism are unlikely to persuade wealthy states to forego the opportunity to vaccinate most of their population as quickly as possible. However, there is a more persuasive argument to make that, after wealthy countries have vaccinated their own populations, they should actively assist in providing vaccines to the rest of the world. The pandemic will not end, and the global economy will not fully recover, until people around the world are vaccinated. That is a very good investment for wealthy countries to make.

Some countries have said that they plan to donate any excess doses to other nations, which is a good start. Many wealthy countries should help fund vaccine distribution globally. China is engaging in vaccine diplomacy — offering to sell its vaccines to countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. If its vaccines prove effective, it would help to mitigate the damage that COVID-19 has done to China’s reputation. 

COVID-19 will not be the world’s last pandemic. In the future, vaccine distribution might be more equitable if more countries were capable of conducting their own research and development and had manufacturing capacity. Global and national efforts to help more countries develop these abilities could improve future pandemic responses. Covax has struggled to achieve its objectives, partly because many of the wealthy countries that joined its alliance also pursued their own deals with vaccine producers. However, Covax provides experience in pooling resources, which might offer a model for the future to allow middle and lower-income states to work together to purchase vaccines.

In a global system based on sovereign states, governments will naturally protect their citizens first. However, there are opportunities for multilateral cooperation to eventually provide vaccines to more countries and to better prepare for future pandemics.

• Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 16 years of experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risk. Her previous positions include deputy director for advisory with Oxford Analytica and managing editor of Arms Control Today. Twitter: @KBAresearch