Coronavirus intelligence failure is worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11, says expert slamming Trump government
The coronavirus pandemic is the worst intelligence failure in US history, according to a political scientist.
Blaming it on the Trump administration, Micah Zenko — a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Center for Preventive Action, New York — said that President Donald Trump’s administration has forced a “catastrophic strategic surprise” onto the American people. However, says Zenko, unlike past “strategic surprises” such as 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or the Iranian revolution of 1979, the current one was brought about by “unprecedented indifference, even willful negligence.”
“The White House detachment and nonchalance during the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak will be among the most costly decisions of any modern presidency. These officials were presented with a clear progression of warnings and crucial decision points far enough in advance that the country could have been far better prepared. But the way that they squandered the gifts of foresight and time should never be forgotten, nor should the reason they were squandered,” Zenko writes in Foreign Policy (FP).
He adds, “Trump was initially wrong, so his inner circle promoted that wrongness rhetorically and with inadequate policies for far too long, and even today. Americans will now pay the price for decades.”
Previously, Zenko worked at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and in Washington, DC, at the Brookings Institution, Congressional Research Service, and State Department’s Office of Policy Planning.
For years, US intelligence agencies have been warning about the increasing risks of a global outbreak that could result in many deaths and destabilize the economy.
A 2018 worldwide threat assessment report of the US intelligence community, for instance, had warned of a future outbreak having pandemic potential. The report by the Director of National Intelligence had warned that a novel strain of a “virulent microbe” that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus “having pandemic potential if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.”
Experts had also cautioned that according to the World Bank estimates, a severe global influenza pandemic could cost the equivalent of 4.8% of global GDP — more than $3 trillion — and cause more than 100 million deaths.
The report said that the increase in frequency and diversity of disease outbreaks such as dengue and Zika will probably continue through 2018, including the potential for a severe global health emergency that could lead to major economic and societal disruptions, strain governmental and international resources. Such an incident could increase calls on the US for support, it said.
“The frequency and diversity of disease outbreaks have increased at a steady rate since 1980, probably fueled by population growth, travel and trade patterns, and rapid urbanization. Increasing antimicrobial resistance, the ability of pathogens — including viruses, fungi, and bacteria — to resist drug treatment, is likely to outpace the development of new antimicrobial drugs, leading to infections that are no longer treatable,” said the 2018 report.
Similar warnings were issued last year. In the 2019 worldwide threat assessment report, experts assessed that the US and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or largescale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability. This, said the report, will severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the US for support.
The experts said that the growing proximity of humans and animals has increased the risk of disease transmission. According to the analysis, the number of outbreaks has increased in part because pathogens originally found in animals have spread to human populations.
“Although the international community has made tenuous improvements to global health security, these gains may be inadequate to address the challenge of what we anticipate will be more frequent outbreaks of infectious diseases because of rapid unplanned urbanization, prolonged humanitarian crises, human incursion into previously unsettled land, expansion of international travel and trade, and regional climate change,” said the analysis.
According to Zenko, the Trump administration has failed both in taking seriously the specific, repeated intelligence community warnings about a coronavirus outbreak as well as in vigorously pursuing the nationwide response initiatives commensurate with the predicted threat.
He said alerts by the intelligence community made little impact on senior administration officials, “who were undoubtedly influenced by Trump’s constant derision of the virus, which he began on January 22: ‘We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine’.”
Zenko made some observations about Trump’s leadership style in the article, which he said explained the worsening coronavirus pandemic that Americans now face. He said once Trump believes something, no matter how inaccurate it is, he remains “completely anchored to that initial impression or judgment.”
“Leaders are unusually hubristic and overconfident; for many, the fact that they have risen to elevated levels of power is evidence of their inherent wisdom. But truly wise leaders authentically solicit feedback and criticism, are actively open thinkers and are capable of changing their minds. By all accounts, Trump lacks these enabling competencies,” Zenko writes.
He alleged that Trump’s poor judgments “contaminate all the policymaking arms” of the federal government with almost no resistance or even reasonable questioning. “Given that Trump concluded early on that the coronavirus simply could not present a threat to the US, perhaps there is nothing that the intelligence community, medical experts employing epidemiological models, or public health officials could have told the White House that would have made any difference,” says Zenko.
So far, over 189,630 cases have been reported from the US, and over 4,000 have died, according to the John Hopkins tracker.