Opinions

This virus should be forever linked to the regime that facilitated its spread

Ruth Flavelle wears a mask and gloves as she enters a grocery store after waiting in line with more than 150 people on Tuesday 17 in Spring, Tex. (David J. Phillip/AP)

By 

Marc A. Thiessen 

Columnist

March 17, 2020 at 5:47 p.m. GMT

Want to know why the U.S. economy is in free fall? Why restaurants and bars are closing, putting millions out of work, and why the airline industry is facing possible bankruptcy? Why schools across the nation are shutting down, leaving students to fall behind and parents without safe places to send their children everyday? Why the stock market is plummeting, wiping out the retirement and college savings of millions of Americans? Why the elderly are isolated in nursing homes and tens of millions who don’t have the option of teleworking have no idea how they will pay their bills?

Answer: Because China is a brutal totalitarian dictatorship.

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We are in the midst of a pandemic lockdown today because the Chinese Communist regime cared more about suppressing information than suppressing a virus. Doctors in Wuhan knew in December that the coronavirus was capable of human-to-human transmission because medical workers were getting sick. But as late as Jan. 15, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared on state television that “the risk of human-to-human transmission is low.” On Jan. 18, weeks after President Xi Jinping had taken charge of the response, authorities allowed a Lunar New Year banquet to go forward in Wuhan where tens of thousands of families shared food — and then let millions travel out of Wuhan, allowing the disease to spread across the world. It was not until Jan. 23 that the Chinese government enacted a quarantine in Wuhan.

If the regime had taken action as soon as human-to-human transmission was detected, it might have contained the virus and prevented a global pandemic. Instead, Chinese officials punished doctors for trying to warn the public and suppressed information that might have saved lives. According to the Times of London, Chinese doctors who had identified the pathogen in early December received a gag order from China’s National Health Commission with instructions to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news.

This is what totalitarian regimes do. First, they lie to themselves, and then, they lie to the world. The system creates such fear that people are terrified to report bad news up the chain, causing “authoritarian blindness.” Then, when those at the top finally discover the truth, they try to cover it up — because leaders who abuse their people are less concerned with saving lives than making sure the world does not discover the deadly inefficiency of their system.

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The ongoing pandemic should serve as a reminder of the lesson that President George W. Bush tried to teach us after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: What happens thousands of miles away in a foreign land can affect us here at home. Both viruses and virulent ideologies fester in the fever swamps of totalitarianism and then emerge to kill us in our cities and our streets. Two decades ago, it was a terrorist attack; today, it is a once-in-a-generation pathogen. But in both cases, the lack of freedom in a distant land created conditions that allowed an unprecedented threat to grow, bringing death and destruction to our country.

What Bush called the “freedom agenda” is out of vogue today. But we can now see that caring about freedom is putting America first, because how China treats its people affects the health and security of the American people. The same totalitarian system that lied about putting 1 million Uighurs in concentration camps lied about the outbreak of this virus, creating a global pandemic. If China were an open and transparent society, with an accountable government, Americans might not be on lockdown today.

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What can we do about it? We obviously can’t turn China into a democracy. But we can hold China accountable for its behavior and put a price on its lies and oppression. We can reaffirm that the advance of freedom, transparency and rule of law are central objectives of U.S. foreign policy, because the lives and safety of our citizens depend on it. And we can lay the blame for this crisis where it belongs: at the feet of the Chinese Communist Party. Once the crisis has passed, President Trump should calculate the damage and demand that Beijing pay for the death and destruction it unleashed on the United States and the world.

Some have suggested that calling this pathogen the “Wuhan virus” — or as President Trump recently called it, the “Chinese virus” — is racist. That is absurd. MERS is called the “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” because that is where it originated. Moreover, the Chinese regime continues to lie, spreading a conspiracy theory that the source of the virus is really the U.S. Army.

It is important this virus be forever linked to the brutal regime that facilitated its spread. The virus grew in the cesspool of Chinese Communist tyranny. It’s time to drain the swamp.

During a pandemic, Isaac Newton had to work from home, too. He used the time wisely.

A later portrait of Sir Isaac Newton by Samuel Freeman. (British Library/National Endowment for the Humanities)

By 

Gillian Brockell 

March 12, 2020 at 6:18 p.m. GMT

Isaac Newton was in his early 20s when the Great Plague of London hit. He wasn’t a “Sir” yet, didn’t have that big formal wig. He was just another college student at Trinity College, Cambridge.

It would be another 200 years before scientists discovered the bacteria that causes plague, but even without knowing exactly why, folks back then still practiced some of the same things we do to avoid illness.

In 1665, it was a version of “social distancing” — a public health tool making a comeback this week as governments, schools and many businesses, including The Washington Post, send people home to try to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Cambridge sent students home to continue their studies. For Newton, that meant Woolsthorpe Manor, the family estate about 60 miles northwest of Cambridge.

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Without his professors to guide him, Newton apparently thrived. The year-plus he spent away was later referred to as his annus mirabilis, the “year of wonders.”

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First, he continued to work on mathematical problems he had begun at Cambridge; the papers he wrote on this became early calculus.

Next, he acquired a few prisms and experimented with them in his bedroom, even going so far as to bore a hole in his shutters so only a small beam could come through. From this sprung his theories on optics.

And right outside his window at Woolsthorpe, there was an apple tree. That apple tree.

A descendant of the apple tree whose fruit helped Isaac Newton discover gravity grows on the campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md. (Calla Kessler/The Washington Post)

The story of how Newton sat under the tree, was bonked on the head by an apple and suddenly understood theories of gravity and motion, is largely apocryphal. But according to his assistant, John Conduitt, there’s an element of truth. Here’s how Conduitt later explained it:

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“ … Whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the same power of gravity (which made an apple fall from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but must extend much farther than was usually thought. ‘Why not as high as the Moon?’ said he to himself..”

In London, a quarter of the population would die of plague from 1665 to 1666. It was one of the last major outbreaks in the 400 years that the Black Death ravaged Europe.

Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667, theories in hand. Within six months, he was made a fellow; two years later, a professor.

So if you’re working or studying from home over the next few weeks, perhaps remember the example Newton set. Having time to muse and experiment in unstructured comfort proved life-changing for him — and no one remembers whether he made it out of his pajamas before noon.

Mời mọi người ký tên thư yêu cầu chính quyền Vương quốc Anh khẩn cấp và rộng rãi công bố các bằng chứng khoa học, dữ liệu và mô hình dẫn đến chính sách hiện giờ của họ đối phó với Covid-19.

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MALAYSIA SHOULD EMBRACE COMPLIANCE ON ITS OVERLAPPING CONTINENTAL SHELF CLAIM

BY VU HAI DANG | MARCH 11, 2020
AMTI UPDATE

Recently, international observers have been puzzled to see Malaysia undertaking oil and gas operations in the overlapping extended continental shelf area defined by its 2009 joint submission with Vietnam to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). As reported by AMTI, the West Capella, a drillship contracted by Malaysian national oil and gas company Petronas, entered and began operations within the “Joint Defined Area” on December 21, 2019. This move has provoked a three-way standoff between Malaysia, China, and Vietnam involving warships, coastguard, militia, and civilian vessels. Why would Malaysia choose to ignore its 2009 joint submission with Vietnam and undermine ASEAN solidarity?

Whatever its motivations, Malaysia should err on the side of caution. Instead of venturing into undertakings in the Joint Defined Area which may not be lawful, Malaysia should consider doing what is certain to be consistent with international law.

Unilateral Exploration May Be Unlawful

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Joint Defined Area between Malaysia and Vietnam should be considered as having “pending status” on two fronts. First, it is a continental shelf pending delimitation between states with opposite or adjacent coasts. And second, it is an extended continental shelf claim beyond 200 nautical miles which is still awaiting recommendations from the CLCS.

Concerning the first category, UNCLOS requires relevant states not to jeopardize or hamper the reaching of a final agreement on delimitation. International tribunals have recognized this as an obligation to avoid unilateral invasive activities in undelimited areas. In the Guyana/Suriname case in 2007, the arbitral tribunal stated that unilateral exploratory drilling in an undelimited or disputed area which causes physical change to the marine environment may jeopardize or hamper the reaching of a final agreement on delimitation. The arbitral tribunal found that less invasive exploratory activity in a disputed area, such as seismic surveying, could be permissible.

In the more recent Ghana/Côte d’Ivoire case, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) allowed preexisting unilateral operations to continue in disputed areas pending the judgement of the tribunal, but prohibited new drilling. The tribunal found in its 2017 judgement that drilling undertaken by Ghana had not prejudiced Côte d’Ivoire’s sovereign rights, but only because the area in question was ultimately attributed to Ghana, which had acted in good faith on that assumption. If the tribunal had delimited the maritime boundary in favor of Côte d’Ivoire, then Ghana’s unilateral operations would have indeed prejudiced Côte d’Ivoire’s sovereign rights.

Given that the West Capella is a drillship, it can be assumed that Malaysia is engaged in unilateral drilling, not just less invasive surveys. Malaysia might be assuming in good faith that the part of the Joint Defined Area in question would be awarded to it in any eventual delimitation. But it also recognized that the area is disputed when it made the joint submission to the CLCS in 2009, so undertaking new drilling in the area now falls short of the precedent set by Ghana/Côte d’Ivoire.

Regarding extended continental shelf areas beyond 200 nautical miles, UNCLOS remains silent on what rights and obligations coastal states have while their claims are still pending recommendations from the CLCS. International tribunals have so far only provided very general guidance on that subject, finding that activities should not prejudice the rights of third parties or the international community. Given that the Joint Defined Area lies in disputed waters and has not received a recommendation from the CLCS, would unilateral exploration be considered an activity that prejudices those rights? The answer may again depend on whether the operation causes physical change to the marine environment. In the case of drilling, the answer would certainly be yes.

Delimitation: The Safer Course

A closer look at judgments and awards from international tribunals relating to extended continental shelf claims that are awaiting recommendations from the CLCS shows that one activity that is surely consistent with international law is the delimitation of this area between the states involved. Various tribunals have stated that delimitation does not prejudice the rights and interests of third-party states or the international community. Nor can it be seen as encroaching on the function of the CLCS because the commission’s role in delineating the outer limits of the continental shelf is distinct from delimiting its lateral limits between two states. ITLOS was clear on the matter in its judgement in Bangladesh/Myanmar: “There is nothing in the Convention [i.e. UNCLOS] or in the Rules of Procedure of the Commission [i.e. CLCS] or in its practice to indicate that delimitation of the continental shelf constitutes an impediment to the performance by the Commission of its functions.”

From this perspective, Malaysia could begin discussions with Vietnam about delimiting the Joint Defined Area. The two countries could choose to do it by way of negotiations or adjudication. While the greater degree of control over the process offered by negotiation seems to make it the preferred practice for maritime delimitation for South China Sea states, adjudication has some important advantages for Malaysia in this case. First, it could be faster. Boundary negotiations can last for decades without agreement whereas ITLOS or an ad hoc arbitral tribunal would take about three years to reach a decision. Second, Malaysia has significant experience in settling maritime disputes using third party mechanisms, having initiated four different proceedings, one of which involved both ITLOS and arbitration under Annex VII of UNCLOS (i.e. the case concerning Land Reclamation in and around the Straits of Johor). Last but not least, a decision from an international tribunal could help reinforce the validity of the joint submission made by Malaysia and Vietnam. In cases such as Bangladesh/Myanmar and Ghana/Côte d’Ivoire, ITLOS went so far as to examine relevant parties’ submissions to the CLCS itself to conclude that they had entitlements to an extended continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles even when the CLCS had not yet issued a recommendation.

Delimitation may be a slower and less eye-catching way for Malaysia to affirm its sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the Joint Defined Area than simply undertaking unilateral drilling. But it is the only way forward that is guaranteed to be lawful. Even more importantly, it can help avoid confrontations like the current three-way standoff, which carries a risk of instigating a larger conflict and undermines ASEAN unity.

The author would like to thank Ms. Pham Ngoc Minh Trang and Mr. Duong Danh Huy for their help in the completion of this commentary.

About Vu Hai Dang

Vu Hai Dang is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore.

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