The Poor Donor and the Rich Recipient. Foreign Aid and Donors’ Competition in the COVID-19 Era
Year: 2021
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Much of the international relations during the COVID-19 period concerned inter-state health aid, ranging from emergency supplies of medical supplies during the virus outbreak phase to the distribution of vaccines during the following phase of immunization campaigns.These were bilateral assistance interventions, with the multilateral dimension effectively absent and unable to act.Motivated by geopolitical logic, they were expressions of the foreign policies of the states involved, re-proposing the pattern of the War of Aid as seen in the main international crises of recent years (from Ukraine to Syria, from Kosovo to Afghanistan).The emblematic case of the emergency phase was that of Italy, the first accessible world pandemic scenario.Alongside a classic competition between donors, won by Russia, there were a series of unprecedented cases, such as that of a Rich Beneficiary, a G7 country with its own strong autonomous spending capacity -assisted by Poor Donors, bearers of symbolic aid.The following phase has seen the clash between a Western Economic Vaccine model, driven by more private and commercial logic, and an Eastern geopolitical vaccine, of public origin and controlled entirely by the States that have used it as an instrument for their foreign policies.The worldwide visible case of the supply of Sputnik V to the micro-Republic of San Marino, the first sovereign country in the world to become COVID-free, has shown that the main importance of the vaccine was in its being an instrument of foreign policy and geopolitical impact.
Author: Igor Pellicciari
Institution: University of Urbino
Language: English
Subfield: Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3215545515