Opinion | How the coronavirus pandemic exposed the dark side of Western democracy

When policies harmful to the average citizen are conflated with democracy, what do Western statesmen mean when they castigate others for failing to adopt it?

In the post-pandemic world, it is no longer reasonable to claim that one ideology always generates good outcomes while all others lead to misery and death

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A volunteer places US flags at on the National Mall in Washington, representing some of the 200,000 lives lost during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:00pm, 4 Oct 2020Updated: 9:08pm, 13 Oct 2020

Last month, The Economist argued against engaging in a cold war with China, but concluded by revisiting a Cold War truism, claiming: “America and its allies must prepare for a far longer contest between open societies and China’s state capitalism.”

That line sits uncomfortably beside an emerging genre of writing about the demise of democracy in the post-pandemic West. Among others, The Washington Post and The Atlantic have published multiple essays about rampant inequality, the opioid crisis and nationwide protests in the United States. The use of military force against peaceful protesters and their illegal abduction shocked even members of President Donald Trump’s own party. But for many, the mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and the needless loss of life offered proof positive that the US is no longer the world’s flagship democracy.

Pankaj Mishra, writing in the London Review of Books, described the ripple effects of Britain’s economic policy on the country’s pandemic response.

“Over the last decade, successive conservative governments have ruthlessly shredded what was left of the social safety net in the name of budgetary ‘austerity’, hastening Britain’s decline into a flailing – if not failed – state that can’t even secure supplies of gowns and masks for its hospital workers,” he wrote.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, writing in The Guardian, recognised austerity and deregulation as familiar components of pre-pandemic policy in Britain and the US. He wrote that “Tory austerity was never a good idea and is now an admitted failure” – except that it remains standard doctrine for the ruling party of the US.

Mishra contrasted the negligence of flagship democracies with more responsible efforts by nations willing to implement statist intervention policies in both the East and the West. Mishra’s review of modern history suggests in fact that “East and West” no longer suffice when characterising the divide between those who do and those who do not promote the people’s “safety and happiness”.

Had China embraced this Western vision of democracy, for instance, its coronavirus death toll would be closer to 800,000, and no doubt China would be censured for that. Instead of bringing millions of poor into the middle class, as it has, China would have condemned millions of middle-class citizens to poverty, as in the US.