Taiwan's Vax Problem is Our Nat'l Security Problem

On May 31^st, the Taiwanese Central Epidemic Command Center, a crisis cell designed to respond to pandemics, reiterated the country’s commitment to purchasing 20 million doses of its domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has not yet completed clinical trials. But Taiwan is barred from the World Health Organization (WHO), while Beijing’s pressure has prevented Taipei from purchasing Western vaccines like AstraZeneca, Pfizer, or Johnson and Johnson. As of June 4^th, Japan delivered 1.24 million doses of its AstraZeneca surplus to Taiwan to accelerate its vaccination program. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen was understandably grateful.

Particularly in the Western world, the COVID-19 pandemic has been viewed as a transformative event, the effects of which are sufficiently outsized to abrogate traditional politics. Perhaps. Still, fears exist that national and local governments have used the pandemic to expand their authority.   Fortunately, public pressure and simple political common-sense have limited egregious excesses.  Rather than executing transformative power grabs, national and local governments have been embarrassed as major policymakers flout their own COVID-19 restrictions.

Traditional politics, however, is not only domestic. It is also international. In the international arena, strategic competition – that is, political-military rivalry between actors with distinct interests – is standard, not exceptional. This strategic competition only intensified during COVID-19.