Where Did the Words Used to Describe Pandemics Originate? The past tells all. by Simon Horobin

Language always tells a story. As COVID-19 shakes the world, many of the words we’re using to describe it originated during earlier calamities – and have colourful tales behind them. 

In the Middle Ages, for example, fast-spreading infectious diseases were known as plagues – as in the Bubonic plague, named for the characteristic swellings (or buboes) that appear in the groin or armpit. With its origins in the Latin word plaga meaning “stroke” or “wound”, plague came to refer to a wider scourge through its use to describe the ten plagues suffered by the Egyptians in the biblical book of Exodus.

An alternative term, pestilence, derives from Latin pestis (“plague”), which is also the origin of French peste, the title of the 1947 novel by Albert Camus (La Peste, or The Plague) which has soared up the bestseller charts in recent weeks. Latin pestis also gives us pest, now used to describe animals that destroy crops, or any general nuisance or irritant. Indeed, the bacterium that causes Bubonic plague is called Yersinia pestis.

The Bubonic plague outbreak of the 14th century was also known as the Great Mortality or the Great Death. The Black Death, which is now most widely used to describe that catastrophe, is, in fact, a 17th-century translation of a Danish name for the disease: “Den Sorte Død”.

Snake venom, the original ‘virus’

The later plagues of the 17th century led to the coining of the word epidemic. This came from a Greek word meaning “prevalent”, from epi “upon” and demos “people”. The more severe pandemic is so called because it affects everyone (from Greek pan “all”).

A more recent coinage, infodemic, a blend of info and epidemic, was introduced in 2003 to refer to the deluge of misinformation and fake news that accompanied the outbreak of SARS (an acronym formed from the initial letters of “severe acute respiratory syndrome”).

The 17th-century equivalent of social distancing was “avoiding someone like the plague”. According to Samuel Pepys’s account of the outbreak that ravaged London in 1665, infected houses were marked with a red cross and had the words “Lord have mercy upon us” inscribed on the doors. Best to avoid properties so marked.

The current pandemic, COVID-19, is a contracted form of Coronavirus disease 2019. The term for this genus of viruses was coined in 1968 and referred to their appearance under the microscope, which reveals a distinctive halo or crown (Latin corona). Virus comes from a Latin word meaning “poison”, first used in English to describe a snake’s venom.

The race to find a vaccine has focused on the team at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, named for Edward Jenner (1749-1823). It was his discovery that contact with cowpox resulted in milkmaids becoming immune to the more severe strain found in smallpox. This discovery is behind the term vaccine (from the Latin vacca “cow”) which gives individuals immunity (originally a term certifying exemption from public service). Inoculation was initially a horticultural term describing the grafting of a bud into a plant: from Latin oculus, meaning “bud” as well as “eye” (as in binoculars “having two eyes”).

Although we are currently adjusting to social distancing as part of the “new normal”, the term itself has been around since the 1950s. It was initially coined by sociologists to describe individuals or groups deliberately adopting a policy of social or emotional detachment.

Its use to refer to a strategy for limiting the spread of a disease goes back to the early 2000s, with reference to outbreaks of flu. Flu is a shortening of influenza, adopted into English from Italian following a major outbreak which began in Italy in 1743. Although it is often called the Spanish flu, the strain that triggered the pandemic of 1918 most likely began elsewhere, although its origins are uncertain. Its name derives from a particularly severe outbreak in Spain.

To the watchtower

Self-isolation, the measure of protection which involves deliberately cutting oneself off from others, is first recorded in the 1830s – isolate goes back to the Latin insulatus “insulated”, from insula “island”. An extended mode of isolation, known as quarantine, is from the Italian quarantina referring to “40 days”. The specific period derives from its original use to refer to the period of fasting in the wilderness undertaken by Jesus in the Christian gospels.

Lockdown, the most extreme form of social containment, in which citizens must remain in their homes at all times, comes from its use in prisons to describe a period of extended confinement following a disturbance.

Many governments have recently announced a gradual easing of restrictions and a call for citizens to “stay alert”. While some have expressed confusion over this message, for etymologists the required response is perfectly clear: we should all take to the nearest tall building, since alert is from the Italian all’erta “to the watchtower”.

Can New Zealand's Coronavirus Budget Help Avoid Mass Unemployment? To combat the pandemic, the budget aims to protect existing jobs where possible, generate new jobs through targeted public investments, and ultimately create the conditions for a return to sustainable job growth. by Jonathan Boston

Budget 2020’s focus on “jobs, jobs and jobs” is understandable, commendable and vital.

COVID-19 poses the largest threat to paid employment since the Great Depression almost 90 years ago. The number of people receiving Job Seeker Support (Work Ready) – the main benefit available for the unemployed – rose almost 50% between February and early May, from about 80,000 to 120,000.

That is a crisis in anyone’s language. Paid employment is not only important economically, it is about social and psychological health. This is reflected in a long-standing cross-party commitment to high employment levels and a high labour market participation rate. Significant and protracted unemployment serves no good purpose.

To combat this, the budget aims to protect existing jobs where possible, generate new jobs through targeted public investments, and ultimately create the conditions for a return to sustainable job growth.

But worse is still to come. Treasury is forecasting an unemployment rate of close to 10% before year’s end. Given the unprecedented impact of the pandemic, however, all such forecasts are highly conditional.

So can the 2020 budget help avoid mass unemployment? Are the measures announced sufficient to address the scale and distinctive aspects of the current crisis? A little context helps in answering such questions.

New Zealand started from a good position

By OECD standards, New Zealand entered the pandemic with a relatively low unemployment rate. In March 2020 the official unemployment rate was about 4.2%, slightly up on 4.0% in December 2019. This compared with pre-pandemic unemployment rates of around 4.0% in the UK, 5.2% in Australia and 7.4% in the Euro zone.

Fortunately, too, the government’s comprehensive wage subsidy scheme has so far limited the spike in unemployment. By contrast, the US unemployment rate rose dramatically from 4.4% in March to almost 15% in April, with more than 20 million jobs lost in recent weeks.

Goldman Sachs estimates the US unemployment rate may peak at 25%, comparable to the depths of the Great Depression. The real jobless rate, which includes those who want to work but have given up trying, is forecast to reach 35%.

Of course, the depth and duration of the economic downturn remains highly uncertain. Hence, policy responses must remain flexible and adaptive. Wisely, this budget recognises that. Finance minister Grant Robertson has reserved significant fiscal resources should they be required.

The impacts of this pandemic differ from any previous financial or seismic shock, so it poses distinctive and unusual policy challenges. Specific industries and sectors have been disproportionately affected (tourism, aviation, hospitality, retail, international education, and the arts), as have particular communities (such as those heavily dependent on international tourism).

Targeted and tailored policy interventions are essential, along with more broad-brush responses.

Again, the budget reflects this. Key policy measures include the targeted extension of the wage subsidy scheme for a further eight weeks for businesses experiencing more than a 50% reduction in turnover, a $400 million package for the tourist sector, a substantial boost to the infrastructure investment fund, and some additional support for research and development.

Young people need the most support

Unfortunately, as with previous recessions, COVID-19 will have a disproportionate impact on younger people. Since March, the increase in unemployment has been particularly marked among those aged 20-29. Tertiary students are among the hardest hit by the loss of job opportunities.

Significant and continuing efforts will be needed to minimise these inter-generational effects, and the budget goes some way to addressing these.

It includes a substantial trades and apprenticeship package (worth $1.6 billion), along with additional subsidised places for tertiary students, a modest increase in per student subsidy rates, extra support for employment services, specific initiatives for Māori and Pasifika students, and a new hardship fund for students.

But more assistance for the university sector will likely be needed over the next few years – not least because of the substantial loss of income from international students. Specific measures could include a strategic tertiary investment fund, an increase in the value of targeted student allowances, and a rise in student loan borrowing limits.

Finally, it is vital that the rush to protect and create jobs must not jeopardise future employment opportunities by contributing to poorer environmental outcomes. “Shovel-ready” projects must not be carbon-heavy.

New Zealand needs a genuinely sustainable economic recovery, one that enhances societal resilience, protects ecological values, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

To that end, the $NZ1 billion environmental jobs package is welcome. It will enhance pest control and ecological restoration, while also improving facilities in the national parks and reserves.

But investments of this kind will be undermined if the planned reforms to the Resource Management Act result in greater urban sprawl, the loss of valuable agricultural land, and higher transport emissions.

Ultimately, sustainable employment requires a sustainable environment.

Why America Resists Learning From Other Countries The pandemic may pose the greatest threat yet to the belief that America has little to learn from the rest of the world. by URI FRIEDMAN

Americans have long considered their nation a shining “city upon a hill,” with the “eyes of all people … upon us,” as the Puritan lawyer John Winthrop put it almost 400 years ago. Now those eyes are riveted on the United States for all the wrong reasons. The country is consumed by the worst COVID-19 outbreak on the planet, and the beacons of light are popping up elsewhere in the world.

R. Daniel Kelemen, a political scientist at Rutgers University who has studied what the United States could learn from European public policies, told me that those who subscribe to the ideology of American exceptionalism, or as he described it, “the notion that the United States is fundamentally different from and superior to other nations,” have traditionally resisted seeking out lessons from other countries’ experiences. At the very least, “this view leads many to think that the U.S. is simply so different that policies that might work in other countries could simply never work here,” he wrote in an email.

American exceptionalism has been pronounced dead numerous times, from the Vietnam War through the global War on Terror, and nevertheless managed to stick around through those difficult periods. But the coronavirus crisis may pose the greatest threat yet to the belief that America has little to learn from the rest of the world.

While U.S. policy makers do study other governments’ initiatives more than they necessarily advertise, American politicians typically resist engaging with ideas from abroad. Most U.S. public-policy debates, on matters including education reform and social mobility, occur in a bizarre vacuum, as if the encounters (good and bad) of the large majority of humankind with these same challenges yield no useful insights for the United States. On the rare occasions that politicians do invoke the policies of other governments, they often wield them as political props during highly polarized debates over issues such as health care and gun control.

And many American politicians, especially those on the right, have in recent years paradoxically doubled down on American exceptionalism (we have a president who ran on an “America first” platform, after all) even as American power has declined relative to other countries’.

This kind of insularity might have been “relatively harmless when America bestrode the world like a colossus, but it’s dangerous when the country faces a raft of global challenges from China, to climate, to COVID-19,” Dominic Tierney, a political-science professor at Swarthmore College (and a former contributing editor at The Atlantic), told me by email.

Pandemics are, in fact, particularly ripe moments for cross-cultural learning. Consider, for instance, the face mask. As Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist at the University of St Andrews relayed to me, face masks were invented during a 1910 outbreak of the pneumonic plague in Manchuria, by a Chinese doctor named Wu Liande, who was inspired by surgical masks he’d seen while studying in England. They caught on, in Wu’s telling, because of a fateful refusal to learn from others: Only after a French doctor who had declined to cover his face while treating patients died were the masks widely adopted.

Today, in the case of COVID-19, “all states face the same essential threat, and each government’s response is a kind of laboratory experiment,” Tierney said.

“The United States had the advantage of being struck relatively late by the virus, and this gave [us] a priceless chance to copy best practices and avoid the mistakes of others,” he noted.

Instead, the United States squandered that advantage on many fronts. The Obama administration had developed a playbook for pandemic response that drew in part on lessons from other countries’ experiences, but the Trump administration disregarded it. When China began confining millions of people to their homes in January, the U.S. government should have gotten the message that the Chinese were grappling with a grave threat to the wider world, the Yale sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis told me in March. “We lost six weeks” in the United States to prepare—“to build ventilators, get protective equipment, organize our ICUs, get tests ready, prepare the public for what was going to happen so that our economy didn’t tank as badly. None of this was done adequately by our leaders.” By one estimate, from the epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell, if social-distancing policies had been implemented just two weeks earlier in March, 90 percent of the cumulative coronavirus deaths in the United States during the first wave of the pandemic might have been prevented.

Rather than using diagnostic tests that the World Health Organization had distributed to other countries early in the global outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention insisted on developing its own, only to botch the rollout of those tests. Nations such as South Korea and Taiwan have raced ahead of the U.S. in their efforts to contain the outbreak.

Even now, as a number of countries have swum feverishly toward safer ground, the United States has spent the past couple of months of near-nationwide lockdown merely treading water. It has yet to roll out robust testing across the country, despite Donald Trump’s assertions since March that anybody who wants a test can get one. It has also failed to develop proper contact-tracing systems, as other nations have, and to meaningfully flatten the curve outside New York.

Amid all this, Trump has exhibited more hubris than humility. The president has repeatedly claimed that the United States is leading the world in testing, which in part is an unflattering reflection of the U.S. outbreak’s huge scale and also is not true on a per-capita basis. He has stated, referring to America’s coronavirus response, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and “so many” other world leaders, “almost all of them—I would say all of them; not everybody would want to admit it—but they all view us as the world leader, and they're following us.” Even after he has asked the South Korean government to send tests and medical equipment to the United States to help combat the coronavirus, Trump is insisting that the country cough up much more money for the privilege of stationing U.S. troops there. It’s a measure of traditional American hard power that seems obsolete these days, relative to South Korea’s newfound clout as a world leader in addressing COVID-19. My colleague Anne Applebaum has argued that Trump’s proposal in April that people inject themselves with disinfectant, to the horror of scientists and laughter of people at home and abroad, marked an “acceleration point” for a “post-American, post-coronavirus world … in which American opinions will count less.”

As an example of ideas the United States could borrow from other countries, Tierney cited the fact that 750,000 people in Britain, which would be equivalent to nearly 4 million Americans, responded to the British government’s request to enlist in a “volunteer army” to help deliver food to vulnerable populations and provide other assistance. “How different might the American political scene be if the U.S. president had made a similar call for Americans to help?” he asked.

A number of countries that have had more success against the coronavirus have demonstrated greater open-mindedness about learning from their peers. Taiwanese officials are watching Iceland’s mass-testing efforts, while the German government is explicitly modeling its response after South Korea’s “trace, test, and treat” campaign.

Still, Kelemen cautioned that at least as far as European nations are concerned, they’re not all rushing to embrace the pandemic-response innovations on display around the world or necessarily concluding that those policy ideas are the right fit for them. “Things have moved so quickly that there hasn't been much time for considered lesson-drawing,” he noted. Some countries were slow to institute strict lockdowns, despite witnessing the horrifying spread of the virus in Italy, while others “embraced approaches that broke with the broader consensus,” including “Sweden’s proposal to pursue more of a herd-immunity approach.”

Nick Wilson, a public-health expert at the University of Otago in Wellington, told me that New Zealand’s record of learning from other countries is similarly mixed, despite its world-leading progress in combatting the virus. He noted that the government emulated Asian countries in instituting an early lockdown, and it recognized that “things could get very bad very quickly with COVID-19” after watching the outbreak play out in Italy. His colleague at the University of Otago, Michael Baker, told me that as a government adviser on the nation’s coronavirus taskforce, he was personally very influenced by a February 2020 WHO-China Joint Mission report, which suggested that the pandemic could be contained, and led him to advocate for New Zealand’s current strategy of eliminating the virus entirely from the country.

Yet Wilson added that New Zealand has lagged behind Asian countries in encouraging mass mask wearing, in rigorously quarantining incoming travelers, and in using digital technologies for contact tracing. New Zealand “still doesn’t learn quickly enough from other countries,” he wrote in an email. “It might have some prejudice against learning from Asia [because of] an assumption of cultural differences, even though places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are all democracies.”

In the United States too, even before the virus hit, attitudes toward learning from other countries were beginning to change. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton critiqued Bernie Sanders’s proclivity to look to other countries for policy insights and innovations (“We are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America,” Clinton said), but many of Sanders’s fellow candidates during the 2020 Democratic primary echoed his admiration for other countries’ achievements. “The No. 1 place to live out the American Dream right now is Denmark,” Pete Buttigieg stated during one debate.

Some shifting is even occurring on the right. As a Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney condemned Barack Obama for not believing in American exceptionalism, and spoke of “standing a little taller” when he traveled abroad, because as an American he “had a gift that others didn’t have.” Now, as a senator, Romney is urging the U.S. government to follow South Korea’s lead and “learn from those countries that were successful” in dealing with their outbreaks. Conservatives are championing Sweden’s laissez-faire approach as a blueprint for how to mitigate public-health damage while preserving freedom and the economy.

“There has actually been some discussion—even in conservative circles—of taking lessons from countries like Germany regarding its Kurzarbeit program of wage subsidies for employers who keep staff on payroll,” Kelemen said. But he added that, with the exception of the U.S. Paycheck Protection Program, “most of our economic-policy response has ignored useful lessons from abroad, explaining why our unemployment rate is skyrocketing above those in many other affected countries.”

Kelemen noted that the coronavirus crisis has led to a surge in interest among the American public and U.S. policy makers in harvesting lessons from other countries, most evident in the fact that everyone is following “the comparative charts of how countries are doing over time on infection rates or changes in year-on-year death counts.” And there have been other periods in U.S. history when American policy makers were more open to exploring and experimenting with policy ideas from other countries, including during the Progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he added. Perhaps this could be another one of those periods.

The United States, of course, still has tremendous capacity to teach. But it also may need to emerge from this crisis recognizing that it has equal capacity to learn. To learn is to admit room for improvement, and thus to improve, especially in dealing with modern-day threats such as pandemics, which America doesn’t have much experience contending with as a superpower. The United States could, for example, easily seize on the momentum among many of its allies to pool lessons learned and coordinate policies to combat the virus and reopen economies.

As C. Jason Wang, a Stanford professor who has studied Taiwan’s COVID-19 response, told me in March, “Taiwan ran out quickly” to confront the virus, but the United States is still a “giant” with “a lot of capabilities.” And “once it starts running, it runs fast.”

How Coronavirus Exacerbates the Drug Shortages in Canada Drug shortages cause all sorts of problems. by Lorian Hardcastle and Reed F Beall

COVID-19 has exposed and magnified weaknesses within health-care systems. Drug shortages, which are a growing problem in Canada, may be one example of this.

Shortages hinder patients’ ability to effectively manage chronic diseases, leading to unnecessary harm. They also complicate the work of health-care providers, such as pharmacists, who must spend considerable time trying to find difficult-to-obtain drugs, and physicians, who have to prescribe alternative drugs to replace those that are unavailable. Shortages may also increase costs if alternative treatments are more expensive.

Potential contributors to shortages

Disruptions in the supply chain due to COVID-19 may cause shortages because many drugs and the raw ingredients used to produce them come from India and China. India has started to ban some drug exports due to shortages in its own country.

Supply-side pressures are also caused by increasing consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry, which means fewer suppliers and manufacturing facilities and thus fewer alternative sources for drugs. Given that most shortages are of less expensive generic drugs, some speculate that manufacturers intentionally limit the production of less profitable products to drive up sales of expensive brand name drugs.

COVID-19 may also produce demand-side shortages. Manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand for the sedatives required by patients on ventilators. Large volumes of these drugs will also be necessary when Canadian hospitals catch-up on elective surgeries cancelled due to COVID-19. For example, two manufacturers of one such sedative, propofol, have reported recent shortages.

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which were touted as treatments for COVID-19, are in sufficiently high demand that professional regulatory bodies have issued warnings about inappropriately prescribing these products. Since March 15, six azithromycin products and one hydroxychloroquine manufacturer have reported shortages in Canada. The latter of these affects patients who take hydroxychloroquine to treat arthritis and lupus.

Prevalence of shortages

In order to enhance tracking of and responsiveness to drug shortages, Health Canada has required manufacturers to report shortages since 2017. Shortages have been steadily increasing over the past two years, with 2,023 products in shortage as of April 2020.

Some of this effect may be attributable to the increasing number of products that are added to the pharmaceutical market each year. This suggests that Health Canada must continue to increase its capacity to monitor and address shortages to correspond with the growing number of products in active use. In its role as federal drug regulator, Health Canada may help drug manufacturers address shortages by reviewing alternative suppliers, processes, facilities and production locations.

Anticipated or actual shortages, April 2018-April 2020. (Lorian Hardcastle and Reed Beall), Author provided

Although the full effects of COVID-19 on drug shortages are not yet known, it is notable that manufacturers reported 221 new shortages in April 2020, compared to 148 in March, 59 in February and 104 in January. In other words, a recent increase in shortages, which could be attributable to COVID-19, may worsen existing problems with shortages.

Response to shortages

Pharmacists reported a rush to fill prescriptions when physical distancing measures took effect, with some patients requesting a six-month supply. In response, Health Canada discouraged drug stockpiling and the Canadian Pharmacists Association and provincial governments strongly encouraged pharmacists to limit patients to a 30-day supply of their prescriptions.

Although this may help to address shortages by moderating demand, it increases the cost of drugs for individuals who may incur additional dispensing fees with each visit. This disproportionately affects those who are unemployed and who have lower incomes. It may also require more frequent visits to pharmacies, which can be dangerous for seniors who are at increased risk for COVID-19 and tend to use more prescriptions. When this 30-day restriction is lifted, the elevated demand may further contribute to shortages.

The federal government has implemented several measures to address COVID-related shortages. On March 25, it authorized the passage of regulations necessary for “preventing shortages … or alleviating those shortages or their effects, in order to protect human health.”

This legislation also allows the government to grant a manufacturer a license to produce a drug, even if another manufacturer holds the patent for that product. Although these licences could theoretically increase supply, practical challenges may limit their utility. For example, alternative suppliers may similarly be unable to obtain raw ingredients from the same foreign suppliers.

A more practicable solution may be the import and sale of drugs that have not yet met all Canadian regulatory requirements, which is permissible following an order by the minister of health. However, this exceptional process is only available for particular drugs that meet certain manufacturing standards.

While the federal government’s efforts may help to mitigate shortages during COVID-19, it should also seize this opportunity to develop long-term solutions to shortages, which have affected the Canadian drug market for years. Due to the globalization of pharmaceutical manufacturing, the government must work with both industry and other countries to rapidly identify and respond to disruptions in the supply chain, so that Canadians have uninterrupted and reliable access to safe drugs. Given the pressures caused by COVID-19, now is a pivotal time for the government to act.

The Reconstruction of Brazilian Foreign Policy Reconstructing Brazilian foreign policy is urgent and indispensable. By leaving behind this shameful page of subservience and irrationality, let us once again place at the center of diplomatic action the defense of our independence, sovereignty, dignity, and national interests. Let us embody once more all the values, including solidarity and the search for dialogue, that have helped build the heritage and boost the pride of the Brazilian people. by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Aloysio Nunes Ferreira, Celso Amorim, Celso Lafer, Francisco Rezek, José Serra, Rubens Ricupero and Hussein Kalout

Despite our distinct political trajectories and opinions, we, who have all held high positions in the sphere of international relations in various governments of the New Republic, express our concern with the way in which the country’s foreign policy has systematically violated the guiding principles of Brazil's international relations as defined in Article 4 of the 1988 Constitution. 

An innovative document in this sense, the constitution states that Brazil “is governed in its international relations by the following principles: I, national independence; II, respect for human rights; III, self-determination of peoples; IV, non-intervention; V, equality between States; VI, defense of peace; VII, peaceful resolution of conflicts; VIII, repudiation of terrorism and racism; IX,  cooperation between peoples for the progress of humanity;  and X, granting of political asylum.”

It furthermore states that “The Federative Republic of Brazil will seek the economic, political, social and cultural integration of the peoples of Latin America with a view to forming a Latin American community of nations.”

Comparing the principles of Brazil’s constitution with the government’s actions in the realm of foreign policy reveals that the latter contradict the former in both letter and spirit. True national independence cannot be reconciled with subordination to a foreign government whose explicit political strategy is to promote its own self-interest above all other considerations. A government that declares itself a steadfast ally of that country relinquishes its own independence. In doing so, the current administration embraces an agenda that threatens to drag Brazil into conflicts with nations with which we maintain relations of friendship and mutual interest. Furthermore, it departs from the universalist principle of Brazilian foreign policy and its ability to open dialogue and build bridges with different countries, developed and developing ones, for our own sake.

Some other examples of recent contradictions with the provisions of the Constitution include the following: support for coercive measures in neighboring countries, a violation of the principles of self-determination and non-intervention; vote in the United Nations for the imposition of a unilateral embargo in violation of the rules of international law, equality of states, and peaceful resolution of conflicts; endorsement of use of force against sovereign states without authorization from the UN Security Council; official approval of political assassination and vote against resolutions by the Human Rights Council in Geneva to condemn the violation of such rights; defense of the policy of denying indigenous peoples the rights guaranteed to them in the Constitution; disregard for issues such as discrimination on grounds of race and gender.

In addition to contravening the Federal constitution, the current strain/breed of foreign policy has imposed serious costs on the country, such as the collapse of external credibility, loss of markets, and capital flight. This damage will undoubtedly prove difficult to repair.

Admired in the realm of environmentalism since Rio-92 and long viewed as a leader in sustainable development, Brazil now figures as a threat to itself and others due to the ongoing destruction of the Amazon and the worsening of global warming. Brazilian diplomacy, traditionally recognized as a force for moderation and balance at the service of consensus building, has become a subordinate player to an aggressive and dangerous unilateralism.

In Latin America, the nation has shifted from an advocate for regional integration to a supporter of interventionist adventures, giving way to extra-regional powers. We have given up the ability to stand up our interests by collaborating to deport Brazilian workers from the United States in inhumane conditions. We have done so once more by deciding to withdraw all Brazilian diplomatic and consular personnel from the neighboring country of Venezuela for purely ideological reasons, leaving behind helpless Brazilian nationals residing there.

In Western Europe, we now antagonize important partners, such as France and Germany, in practically all fields. The current course of anti-diplomatic action distances Brazil from its strategic objectives by alienating nations that are essential to the implementation of the government's economic agenda.

The grave health crisis posed by coronavirus further revealed the ineffectiveness of the current Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its counterproductive role in helping the nation gain access to medical products and equipment. The sectarianism fueling otherwise inexplicable attacks on China and the World Health Organization, coupled with the disrespect for science and the insensitivity to human lives demonstrated by the president, has made the government an object of international derision and disgust. At the same time, it has also jeopardized the efforts of governors seeking to import products that are desperately needed to save the lives of thousands of Brazilians.

Rescuing Brazil's foreign policy will require a return to constitutional principles, rationality, pragmatism, a sense of balance, moderation and constructive realism. In this process of reconstruction, it will be incumbent on the Judiciary—guardian of the constitution and the National Congress, representative of the people's will—to fulfill their role by ensuring that diplomatic actions truly abide by the principles laid out in the constitution.

In order to respond to the yearnings of our people and the real needs of Brazil, foreign policy needs to elicit broad support in terms of opinion. It must be collaborative, with respect and consideration for all sectors of society. It also requires the engagement of our diplomatic corps at service of the country toward a State policy rather than partisan actions aimed at arousing spirits and exacerbating the prejudices of a reactionary minority. We offer our sympathy and decisive support for diplomats who have been humiliated and embarrassed by positions that clash with the best traditions of the Foreign Ministry.

Reconstructing Brazilian foreign policy is urgent and indispensable. By leaving behind this shameful page of subservience and irrationality, let us once again place at the center of diplomatic action the defense of our independence, sovereignty, dignity, and national interests. Let us embody once more all the values, including solidarity and the search for dialogue, that have helped build the heritage and boost the pride of the Brazilian people.

How China's History Explains The Coming Chinese Empire China is an old civilization. by Akhilesh Pillalamarri

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Qing could have done better at focusing on threats from the sea—first the West, and then Japan. On the whole, however, the Qing managed to lay the basis of China’s continued control into the modern era of the resources of much of inner Asia, the Chinese equivalent of America’s wild west.

Chinese civilization is one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations. Indeed, unlike Western, Islamic, and Indian civilizations, China has managed to remain politically unified for much of its history.

Contrary to the common perception of China being historically isolated and weak, many Chinese dynasties were very powerful and have had a profound impact on global history. Yes, it is true that during the Ming Dynasty, China ships conducted multiple voyages of exploration (1405-1433) before abruptly stopping. But this hardly dented the enormous economic and political influence China wielded for most of its history in East, Southeast, and Central Asia. Although the people of these regions pursued their own interests as best as they could, China was always the major power to be dealt with.

Nonetheless, not all Chinese dynasties were created, and these three stood above the rest.

The Han Dynasty ruled China for a solid four centuries, from 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. Although the preceding Qin Dynasty unified China, it was the Han Dynasty that kept it together and developed the institutions that characterized most of Chinese history since.

The Han Dynasty was able to maintain its bureaucracy and military through a more efficient and thorough system of taxation than many contemporary empires. Additionally, to gain increased revenue, the Han created monopolies on iron and salt. The salt monopoly has been a traditional source of revenue for Chinese states since, one that apparently lasted until 2014.

The Han’s large coffers allowed it to expand China’s boundaries outwards from its traditional heartland in the Yellow River valley toward what is today southern China. Southern China would prove to be very important to China in the future since it can support a large population through the rice crop. Thanks in part to southern China’s wealth, China’s sociopolitical development was usually greater than its neighbors, allowing China to easily incorporate or defeat them.

One exception to this, however, was China’s perennial problem— namely, nomads to its north. During the Han, these were the Xiongnu. Constant harassment and raids by these nomads necessitated the first construction of the Great Wall during the Qin Dynasty. During the Han, China attempted to outflank its enemies, which led to an expedition westward into today’s Xinjiang and Central Asia.

This process is generally thought to have informed China for the first time of other civilizations, a shocking development for a people who until then believed themselves to be the only state society. Indeed, during this time China became aware of the civilizations of India, the Bactrians, the Sogdians, the Persians, and many more, This event is thought to have stimulated the development of trade routes that would later be called the Silk Road.

To control trade routes and outflank their enemies, Chinese forces occupied much of Xinjiang for many decades, allowing them to project their influence deep to the west. Buddhism also entered China through this route at this time.

Tang

After the Han Dynasty collapsed due to civil war, China entered a period of disunity until being reunited by the Sui Dynasty, which was subsequently succeeded by the Tang Dynasty, which ruled China from 618-907 C.E. The Tang Dynasty was one of China’s most cosmopolitan and urbane dynasties, opening China up to a period of foreign influences. The Tang Dynasty was also likely China’s largest and most powerful dynasty in history and is considered the golden age of imperial China.

The population base of the Tang Dynasty was estimated to have been around 80 million people, enabling it to completely dominate its neighbors. During this time, China continued to expand northeast and south, incorporating much of Manchuria and Vietnam. It was also during this period that many other state societies developed under Chinese influence, including Korea, Japan, and Tibet. This period thus saw the establishment of the tributary state system to a greater extent than under the Han. Although they did not rule Tibet, the Tang were the first Chinese dynasty to exert influence over the previously foreboding plateau to the southeast.

The Tang military was successful because it had learned to fight like the steppe nomads in many ways. The Tang were crazy about horses, which had previously been relatively rare in China, and imported and breed many different breeds, negating the main advantage of the nomads to their north. The Tang also promoted and used talented Central Asian generals (a decision which would later come back to haunt them).

The Tang’s grip on Xinjiang was firm during this time (the region had slipped from Chinese rule after the Han) and garrisons were established in the “Western Region,” an area that was expanding rapidly to dominate all of Central Asia up to the border of the Persian Empire. Until the Arabs defeated the Chinese in the Battle of Talas (751), it looked as though Central Asia’s future was with China. Numerous states near this region such as Kabul and Kashmir became direct tributaries to China. The Chinese also intervened in the affairs of their steppe neighbors and even in the northern heartland of India.

The Tang Dynasty never recovered from the An Lushan Rebellion, when An Lushan, a Tang general of Central Asian origin, revolted and named himself emperor. Up to half of the empire’s population is said to have perished in the resulting fighting, famines, and diseases in what has been called one of history’s largest man-made disasters.

The Tang Dynasty managed to limp on due to support from Tibetan and Turkish soldiers but eventually collapsed.

Qing

The dynasties that followed the Tang’s collapse were all very weak. It wasn’t until the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) hundreds of years later that another dynasty  rule over the Chinese heartland without major threats or issues. However, the Ming is considered to be one of the worst Chinese dynasties, as China suffered a period of intellectual, political, and economic sterility under its rule.

The Ming were followed by the Qing, China’s last and one of its greatest dynasties, ruling from 1644 to 1911. This may seem puzzling since the Qing are often blamed for allowing the Chinese system to collapse and for the country to be humiliated by the West. These things did happen during Qing but it doesn’t diminish from their achievements. Indeed, China today maintains borders far beyond its traditional heartland, losing comparatively little territory compared to other empires and their modern successor states (like Turkey and Iran) and this feat can be attributed to the policies and conquests of the Qing.

The Qing Dynasty was actually not Chinese in origin. They were Manchus who after establishing a state in Manchuria, were let into China through the Great Wall by a dissident Ming general. They then proceeded to conquer or co-opt the rest of the country. Unlike the Mongols, the Qing established a lasting Chinese-style state. The introduction of new crops from the Americas also helped China’s population grow to around 400 million.

The Qing were the first Chinese state to effectively control regions like Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, and Mongolia, peripheral regions that were inhabited by people that had always harassed China. They were able to do this because of their dual nature as both a Chinese imperial bureaucratic state able to draw on agrarian revenue, and as the leaders of a large northern tribal confederacy that was able to assimilate Mongol tribes into their system. Gunpowder also aided the Qing’s cause, allowing them to negate the power of the steppe tribes.

The Qing’s masterful diplomacy was also part of its success. For example, the Qing ably played Russia and Great Britain off one another during the Great Game. Neither of those two powers wanted the other to gain more territory in Central Asia and were thus happy to led China keep most of its extensive empire as a buffer. Chinese influence also increased in Southeast Asia and Himalayan Asia to a greater degree than before during the Qing Empire, as many states like Myanmar, Nepal, Chitral Valley (in Pakistan today), and Siam became part of the Chinese system.

The Qing could have done better at focusing on threats from the sea—first the West, and then Japan. On the whole, however, the Qing managed to lay the basis of China’s continued control into the modern era of the resources of much of inner Asia, the Chinese equivalent of America’s wild west.

The Qing Dynasty was actually not Chinese in origin. They were Manchus who after establishing a state in Manchuria, were let into China through the Great Wall by a dissident Ming general. They then proceeded to conquer or co-opt the rest of the country. Unlike the Mongols, the Qing established a lasting Chinese-style state. The introduction of new crops from the Americas also helped China’s population grow to around 400 million.

The Qing were the first Chinese state to effectively control regions like Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, and Mongolia, peripheral regions that were inhabited by people that had always harassed China. They were able to do this because of their dual nature as both a Chinese imperial bureaucratic state able to draw on agrarian revenue, and as the leaders of a large northern tribal confederacy that was able to assimilate Mongol tribes into their system. Gunpowder also aided the Qing’s cause, allowing them to negate the power of the steppe tribes.

The Qing’s masterful diplomacy was also part of its success. For example, the Qing ably played Russia and Great Britain off one another during the Great Game. Neither of those two powers wanted the other to gain more territory in Central Asia and were thus happy to led China keep most of its extensive empire as a buffer. Chinese influence also increased in Southeast Asia and Himalayan Asia to a greater degree than before during the Qing Empire, as many states like Myanmar, Nepal, Chitral Valley (in Pakistan today), and Siam became part of the Chinese system.

The Qing could have done better at focusing on threats from the sea—first the West, and then Japan. On the whole, however, the Qing managed to lay the basis of China’s continued control into the modern era of the resources of much of inner Asia, the Chinese equivalent of America’s wild west.