When it comes to coronavirus response, superpowers may need to study smaller nations
The Washington Post / By Adam Taylor and Miriam Berger
May 16, 2020 at 11:13 a.m. EDT
The coronavirus pandemic has upended the international hierarchy. Three of the world’s great powers — the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia — have the largest and most deadly outbreaks. Other major players on the world stage struggled with their initial responses. China is on the defensive, as rivals levy blame for its lack of transparency.
Some smaller countries, however, have gained newfound recognition as the world takes note of their early, and still tentative, successes. Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, put it this way: The largest and most powerful nations will need to study what went right among smaller and less powerful ones.
“I’d like to paraphrase what Leo Tolstoy said, that all successful countries are alike; each unsuccessful country is unsuccessful in its own way,” Huang said.
Here’s a look at six examples.
Georgia
As the coronavirus rages in neighboring Russia, Georgia has emerged as an island of calm. The country of some 3.75 million people has kept confirmed cases below 700, with 12 deaths, earning the World Health Organization’s praise.
Prompt government action, such as required temperature screenings at airports in late January and early restrictions on international travel, appear to have helped beat back the outbreak. With the pace of infections slowing and the country set to reopen for tourism, its ambassador to the United States, David Bakradze, said his office has been fielding travel and business requests from curious Americans.
Georgia’s small geographic size made it alert to inbound travel risks, Bakradze said, and the country had weathered so much since the Soviet Union’s collapse that citizens were willing to make sacrifices, like accepting travel bans and a range of social control measures. “We are used to pulling together in tough times,” he said.
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