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Cyber warfare, terrorism, and biological weapons.

The COVID – 19 pandemic has been an eye opener from many perspectives, and definitely from a foreign relations perspective.

During WWII extensive – and secretive – research was conducted at many locations around the world, including at Ft. Detrich, MD here in the US, involving biological weapons.

The idea of “weaponizing” bacteria and viruses was tempting for many reasons, but primarily because conventional weapons are physically destructive, and that is not always a desirable outcome.

The “benefit” of a biological weapon is that it can be cheap, easily deployed, with quick and devastating consequences which might be very difficult to trace, leaving buildings and infrastructure intact.

While conspiracy theories abound regarding the COVID – 19 pandemic and its origin in China, there is currently no evidence that concludes that the Chinese government willingly and knowingly created and deployed this virus in order to disrupt the global economy. There is a good possibility that the virus “escaped” from a lab, but we are still awaiting results from that investigation. In the meantime, it is safe to say that regardless of the origin of the virus, it has dramatically changed the global community in many ways, both from an economic perspective as well as every other aspect of our lives.

Consider and discuss the following:

1. What economic consequences do you foresee from a pandemic, such as COVID – 19, not only to the US, but to the global economy?
   • consider trade, investment, development, export and import, student exchange and travel (tourism)
2. Why is it short-sighted and ill-advised for nations to focus inwardly (isolationist/realist theory) during such a devastating plague?
   • consider the benefits of scientific cooperation vs. the policy of “going it alone” in search of a vaccine
3. During 2020, the US has not had a cohesive and unified message from the previous administration addressing the pandemic and its impact on the nation – each state is more or less on its own, implementing policies haphazardly and without much Federal support. What national security issues do you think have been impacted because of this patch work approach during 2020?
   • you can discuss other nations’ policies toward this pandemic and how/why they might be more successful in their approach, and how the US may learn from that (you can look at New Zealand, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, So. Korea, Singapore and compare to US policy and current results)
4. Now that the US has been successful in distributing vaccines, the challenge is to get the majority of people in this country vaccinated. What future do you see for the US in the global community if we can’t get at least 80% of people vaccinated?
5. What would you have done different – from the beginning of this pandemic 18 months ago – that you believe would have had a better outcome for the world than what we currently see? Explain (this is your chance to use some counterfactuals and explain what your foreign policy would have been to help the US and the globe in this pandemic)