Russian Expert : 'Vaccine Nationalism' Exposes U.S. Selfishness

On September 24, Russia's 'Today Economic Network' published Maxim Bout's article on September 22, titled 'The United Nations and Russia's Anti-epidemic Initiative by the United Nations Early on'.

The article stated that the 'vaccine nationalism' displayed by the United States will eventually fail the UN fundraising negotiations for development during the new coronavirus epidemic. Konstantin Blokhin, an expert from the Security Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, expressed this view in an interview with 'Today Economic Network'.

The relevant content is summarized as follows:

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres strongly condemned the intention of individual countries to obtain the new coronavirus vaccine for their own countries. He did not specify which countries it is, but said that 'vaccine nationalism' is an unjust failure strategy.

Guterres said that individual countries are signing shadow agreements that only provide vaccines to their own people. Guterres believes that such methods will not be effective, because only by working together can we successfully fight the epidemic. He pointed out, 'Until all of us are safe, no one will be safe.' As we all know, he mainly refers to the United States.

Constantine Blokhin pointed out, 'When the possibility of using vaccines to prevent new coronavirus infections appears, what Americans do is in line with their usual psychology. The first thing they do is to snap up information about the smoothest global research and development. In order to buy the entire scientific research team and finally get the vaccine in the United States. Americans promote American exceptionalism, so their behavior is not unexpected.

'Everything the United States does is based on the strongest notion of selfishness and self-esteem. The rest of the world is second-class, and all the best things belong to the Americans. Therefore, for them, this kind of arrogance People’s selfish behavior is the norm, and people in other parts of the world are shocked. Americans used to snap up a large number of medical masks regardless of the interests of their allies—the psychological motives of these actions were the same.'

Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus epidemic, there have been more than 31.3 million confirmed cases worldwide and approximately 965,000 deaths. The United States has become one of the most severely affected countries, with nearly 200,000 deaths.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, Russia has been calling for mutual help to tide over the difficulties together. Russia has actively helped many countries to fight the epidemic, from providing testing reagents and drugs to dispatching epidemiological expert teams. The recipient countries include Italy, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the United States, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.

Blokhin emphasized, 'The completely different national spirit and psychology do not allow Russia to be selfish in the context of global threats. President Putin has repeatedly called on various platforms to abandon sanctions and unite against the epidemic at least during the epidemic, and call for a stop of war and political conspiracy. But the West and the United States do not accept such proposals.

'However, this is not the first time. For many years, Moscow has been calling for cooperation in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East, but the West would rather collude with radical extremists and use them for their own purposes.'

Guterres said, 'From the beginning, we have insisted on adopting a series of large-scale anti-crisis measures, and proposed to provide at least 10% of global GDP for this purpose. Developed countries allocate a lot of funds to help their countries. They are capable of doing so.' The Secretary-General of the United Nations announced that the leaders of the world's major powers will start talks on funding for common development during the epidemic next week.

Guterres believes that it is necessary to ensure that the following environment is created so that developing countries will not face financial collapse, poverty and worsening debt crises. The Secretary-General of the United Nations said, 'We need collective political will to avoid further deterioration of the situation. In a week’s time, we will organize a meeting of leaders of global powers to find solutions to the problem of raising funds for the epidemic and post-epidemic development.'

Blokhin commented, 'Whether it is at the level of the status quo of the relationship between Moscow and Washington, or the prospect of working together to support global development, I will not have too much expectations for the above meeting. The United States has always believed that the United Nations is hindering its dominance of the world. A stumbling block, constantly trying to reconstruct the United Nations based on the 'NATO Principles' (that is, the principles of complete obedience to the United States). Prior to this, the United States was a hawk who blatantly despised international law in the United Nations.

'Furthermore, we all know that the United States considers itself superior -- it is not a tradition in Washington to allocate selfless funding to help certain backward countries. This is beyond President Trump’s psychological range. Trump launched a trade war to increase US revenue. He never intends to distribute these revenues to third world countries.

'Therefore, at the upcoming meeting, the Americans will once again demonstrate national selfishness and criticize the UN's willingness to help weak countries. From this, we can predict with great confidence that the meeting will not produce much effect. The proposal will be wasted.'