The Covid-19 pandemic will weaken the United Nations

The argument

This argument holds that the pandemic weakens the United Nations indirectly, by changing the kind of state that the UN has to work with. The virus has led to draconian measures being introduced to combat it, ranging from enhanced surveillance to total lockdowns and the arrest of people seen on the streets without a good reason. What matters is not any single measure but that they have been adopted almost everywhere and accepted almost everywhere, so that authoritarianism — a term long associated with only the most brutal of political regimes — now looms over every continent. As Andy Gregory writes of this new social order: "At the advice of health experts, even countries regarded as the world's most liberal democracies have enforced quarantine measures thought unthinkable mere weeks ago." The significance, on this argument, is precedent: powers exercised once have been shown to be available, and the objection that a democracy simply does not do such things no longer holds. That shift bears directly on international institutions, because of what they run on. Organisations such as the UN rely on openness and cooperation amongst their members — they have no army and no revenue of their own, and act only through what states agree to disclose and to do. A government that has grown used to acting unilaterally at home, and to treating emergency as the normal mode of governing, has less reason to submit its conduct to outside scrutiny. Without that openness, the opportunity for centralised power grows and the role of these bodies diminishes. If this continues, the argument concludes, the UN will become increasingly redundant in the eyes of political leaders — not formally abolished, but consulted less and complied with less until it no longer constrains anyone.

Context

On 30 March 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres explained how the impact of the virus would be much more profound than we had yet realised. The crisis is about far more than health. “The new coronavirus disease is attacking societies at their core, claiming lives and people’s livelihoods". Guterres went on to say "Covid-19 is the greatest test that we have faced together since the formation of the United Nations...[we need] an immediate co-ordinated health response to suppress transmission and end the pandemic". The urgency of his petition was clear: as nations grapple to protect their own and politics becomes increasingly inward-looking, the UN is under threat.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The UN is more important now than ever before. It is vital that we listen to its recommendations for limiting the difficult side-effects of this crisis. The body has already announced that it is establishing a coronavirus fund. This will be a vital resources for developing countries without the health infrastructure to care for its people, as well as for developed countries in overcoming the protracted outcomes of the pandemic.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] It is too early to tell whether the coronavirus is destroying liberal societies