The United Kingdom’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair has issued a message for western leaders as they continue to implement legislation to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Speaking at a POLITICO online event on Wednesday, Mr Blair urged governments to “resist the pill of nationalism amid the crisis” calling the current debates between “globalizers and non-globalizers” a distraction and urging countries to focus on practical cooperation to defeat Covid-19.
Despite this Blair, who along with former U.S. President George W. Bush ignored the United Nations when invading Iraq last decade, acknowledged that few international organisations are currently up to the job.
The United Nations Security Council is “not really representative of the world today,” said Blair, who now leads the non-profit Institute for Global Change, which he founded in 2016.
Blair accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of needing to streamline its bureaucracy. He claimed member countries should agree to give the organisation “much greater heft and weight.” Otherwise, it is “unfair to criticize them”.
According to the former PM, the G20, an economic forum for 19 nations, the European Union and their central bankers, is ”the only short-term practical way” to achieve global cooperation.
He went on to say how the west would need to recognise China’s new “dominant position” in the world, Blair claimed there will be both areas of “genuine confrontation” alongside an unavoidable need for partnership on issues like climate change and public health.
He urged President Donald J Trump to act “strategically” regarding the U.S.-China relationship, criticising “a series of ad-hoc reactions of a transactional nature.” The days of framing the relationship in terms of individual issues like the coronavirus pandemic or Huawei technology “are over,” Blair said.
“We have to understand China from the Chinese point of view,” he continued, describing Chinese people as proud and “by their nature nationalistic.”
He also claimed China needs to be “a predictable and responsible partner” given the “massive economic interconnections” between China and the rest of the world. And the Chinese government has “serious questions to answer about the origins of this (coronavirus) crisis.”
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Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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