Borderless

Alex Magno (The Philippine Star)

February 4, 2016 - 12:00am

The really big challenges facing humanity today – global warming, pandemics and
terrorism – recognize no political borders. They overwhelm governments – yet
nation-states continue to bear the burden of combatting them.

Unfortunately, we have no other choice. National governments are the only effective
instruments we have, even as they might be subject to the vagaries of national
interest, local sentiment and partisan politics.

For instance, when the United Nations decides peace-keepers are necessary in one
part of the world, the international body depends on the willingness of individual
nation-states to contribute the forces necessary for the mission. In the case of failed
states, the situation could be tricky.

The Syrian civil war has dragged on for nearly five years now, reducing most of that
nation’s cities to rubble and forcing millions to become refugees and migrants
dependent on international charity. No solution could be found to end it. The radical
ISIS refuses to participate in peace talks. Russia supports the Assad regime nearly
unconditionally.

The situation in Syria stumped the western powers. Condemnation of the Assad
regime plays into the hand of ISIS. Crushing ISIS will likely enable the brutal Assad
regime to survive.

Meanwhile, Syria has nearly decomposed as a nation. Its cities are laid to waste. Its
historical treasures destroyed. Its people are in a diaspora.

So thorough has Syria’s devastation been, it is now difficult to imagine the place
could ever be restored as a functioning nation-state. Syria has died.

The ISIS, for its part, has mutated and multiplied virulently, delivering terror across
the world, from the US to Europe to western Africa to Indonesia. A fanatical
movement without borders has proliferated after a nation died.

Western nations have been condemned for inaction in the face of all the horrors
associated with the Syrian civil war. Those nations, however, do not have an available
mechanism for intervention. They are accountable to their publics who do not take
kindly to the prospect of a full-scale invasion of a failed state.

On hindsight, the key element of international failure ought to fall on the two regional
powers whose cooperation might have changed the outcomes and prevented descent
into this quagmire: Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. Centuries of animosity and
religious rivalry prevent these two regional powers from arriving at a common effort
to keep order in their part of the world.

The third regional power, Turkey, is hampered by the fact that the Turks are not
Arabs. None of the troubled Arab countries relish the sight of Turkish armed forces
rolling in to restore order. It smacks too much of a revival of Ottoman domination.

Syria’s civil war will likely go on and on until there is no one left to bomb. There is
no mechanism to resolve it.
Pandemic

Last year it was the Ebola virus in western Africa that terrified the world. This year, it
is the Zika virus emanating from Brazil’s jungles the has alarm bells ringing.

Ebola required an international effort to contain. While Swiss laboratories hurried to

find a cure, the US inserted army contingents in the most severely affected areas to
establish clinics for volunteer doctors from every continent.

At the height of the epidemic, Ebola infections were registered across the globe. The
facility of modern travel has the underside of quickly converting epidemics into
pandemics.

The Zika epidemic now threatens to be more explosive than Ebola. In a matter of
weeks, infections spread from Brazil to Central America. The other day, a case of
sexually transmitted Zika infection was recorded in the US. This is a strange virus
that can reside in a man’s semen after traces of it disappears from his blood.

With its low-grade symptoms, it is difficult to detect infected persons early enough.
Traditional immigrations procedures cannot stop the infection from crossing borders.

The most dangerous outcome of Zika infection are babies infected at the womb. It
produces a birth deformity called “microcephalus” – babies with small heads and
smaller brains. Several Latin American countries are now reduced to pleading women
to avoid pregnancies until after this epidemic is eradicated.

The epidemic throws a large cloud over the Olympics that will be hosted by Brazil in
a few months. It could potentially cut turnout or even force cancellations if the
epidemic is not effectively curtailed.

At the forefront of the fight against Zika is the World Health Organization (WHO), a
UN-affiliated agency tasked with coordinating public health efforts across the globe.
The hindrance to WHO efforts, apart from limited resources, is the fact that no cure
has yet been developed against infection from the virus.
Without a cure, the war against Zika will have to be principally an attack against the
mosquitos that carry the virus. It is the same mosquito that carries dengue. In Brazil
and neighboring countries, there is now a massive effort to clear mosquito breeding
grounds.

The long effort against malaria has been helped by new technologies that enable us to
genetically modify the mosquitoes themselves. Those technologies may now be
deployed to contain the spread of Zika.

Still, the prospect of a global pandemic stares us in the face. There are not enough
means in the hands of international agencies to enable them to lead the battle. Much
of the effort will be borne by governments, with their own limitations and variable
commitments.

As in the effort to reverse climate change, years of consensus-building were required

before the historic Paris accord was reached late last year. Sovereignty remains a
potent idea often standing in the way of global governance.