In the wake of the pandemics, the national security implications of health policy come to the fore. The World Health Organization, a multilateral agency that Anglo-American intelligence agencies never considered integral to national security policy, is now the subject of great power rivalry.
In an interview with the BBC, John Sawers, the former chief of British intelligence suggests China bears responsibility for “the origin of the virus,” raising again to the question of whether the virus originated in China’s biowarfare laboratory in Wuhan. (The U.S. military says it sees no evidence of that.)
Sawers says there is “great anger” in America at China, which is a stretch. The sense of anger at China is most acute among Republicans and Fox News hosts who spent the month of February downplaying and dismissing the threat of pandemic. In late January, President Trump was tweeting the praises of President Xi.
Trump’s belated “anger” at the actions of the Chinese government is a way of changing the subject from the unforgivable folly of announcing “It will all work out well” as COVID19 began killing thousands of Americans
Sawer is not a MAGA man by any stretch. So what’s his game?
Authoritarian leaders and intelligence agencies thrive on enemies, and the pandemic has rearranged popular understanding of threats. The threat of terrorism that Western government have relied on for twenty years to maximize power and budgets isn’t working any more. Intelligence agencies need a new definition of threat to justify their mission.
Sawer has one. The problem isn’t the disease itself, he says. It isn’t our militarized conception of “national security.” The problem isn’t our privatized medical system and shredded social safety net that leaves so many to die in Britain and America. The problem, is “them,” some group of foreigners who can be demonized for the catastrophe we are suffering.
Sawers is playing the more sophisticated version of Trump’s blame game. He’s not trying to save Trump’s presidency. He’s trying to justify a new mission for MI6: battling China.
Sir Robert John Sawers, who was chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, from 2009 through 2014, told BBC Radio on Wednesday the Chinese Communist Party is “evading” its responsibility for the current global pandemic. He also said the WHO has “serious questions to answer.” Sawers, who was also the former British permanent representative to the United Nations from 2007 through 2009, warned that China has been moving toward becoming a surveillance state for years, especially under the half-decade of leadership of Xi Jinping, and that it has increased its influence over the United Nations.
“There is deep anger in America at what they see as having been inflicted on us all by China, and China is evading a good deal of responsibility for the origin of the virus and for failing to deal with it originally, initially,” Sawers said, adding: “It’s going to be a complicated, complex set of issues we’re going to have to deal with, and the world will not be the same after the virus as it was before.”
Sawers is right about his last point. Intelligence agencies know that the world’s collective security arrangements will be forever changed by the pandemic. The doctrine of “national security” is defunct and intelligence agencies are scrambling to replace it.
Source: Former British spy chief says China and WHO bear responsibility for flawed coronavirus response
