Coronavirus Is a Stress Test Many World Leaders Are Failing
- Late responses of Johnson, Trump, Xi, others carrying costs
- In ‘does leadership matter’ debate, Covid-19 says it does
Emmanuel Macron , Donald Trump and other G7 leaders during the G7 summit in 2019.
Photographer: ANDREW HARNIK/Getty ImagesIf a leader has a political weakness, novel coronavirus is finding it.
It’s too early to score countries on their overall responses to a pandemic whose life cycle is likely to be measured in years. Yet it’s clear already that some used the time they had to prepare and act in the critical, early stage of the outbreak far less well than others.
In China, the virus revealed a damaging addiction to secrecy, shared by local officials and President Xi Jinping alike. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s blustering approach to policy cost not only time, but almost his life. In the U.S., President Donald Trump’s chaotic management style and politicization of the outbreak appears to have hampered a rapid, coordinated federal response.
In the age-old debate over whether leaders matter in deciding history, the answer from the first few months of 2020 is a resounding “yes they do,” says Francois Heisbourg, a former official in the French foreign and defense ministries who now advises the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.