May 19, 2020, Federalist, What U.S. National Strategy Should Look Like In The Wake Of Coronavirus
If China’s actions in the coronavirus catastrophe offer any window into this communist regime, it is that the threat they represent is unlike anything America has faced. By John Poindexter, Robert McFarlane, and Richard Levine
- John Poindexter is a former national security advisor. Robert McFarlane is a former national security advisor. Richard Levine is a former National Security Council director for policy development.
War Crime?
- However, if U.S. intelligence services find proof that the PRC knew the virus escaped from its lab, or began in Wuhan some other way, yet locked down travel to other parts of China while permitting international travel from this city, at the time the Communist Party of China prevented essential international fact finding, this state committed what amounts to a war crime.
Precedence – How the U.S. reacted to past epidemics
- Twice before this crisis, and in the living memory of many Americans, our nation has experienced pandemics. According to the CDC’s website, during the 1957 Asian Flu, “The estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.”
- The U.S. population in 1957 was 172 million; thus, adjusted for our present population, the Asian Flu would have killed 222,000 Americans. Of the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, the CDC has written, “The estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States.” America’s population in 1968 was 201 million; adjusting for today, the Hong Kong Flu would have killed 164,000 Americans. Neither pandemic altered American economic life.
- While some may argue the present pandemic could be much worse than the two that preceded it, the present dread, stoked by a foreign power, has certainly ruptured America’s economy in ways inconceivable before it.
- The way we have answered this pandemic is not repeatable: our array of actions cannot be mounted if another wave or pandemic strikes. This is our gravest sin: we have shown China, Russia, and Iran, as well as terrorist actors, that our nation may be brought low if faced with a new pathogen.
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