Vaccine Diplomacy and Vaccine Nationalism

Abstract

With the COVID-19 pandemic in place for over two years now, it is time to assess its main aspects and tendencies, and identify the new features it has lent to the international relations landscape. This paper studies two approaches different countries have taken in developing and distributing COVID vaccines during the pandemic; these approaches are defined as ‘vaccine diplomacy’ and ‘vaccine nationalism.’ Until recently, vaccine diplomacy has played only a marginal role in international relations, while vaccine nationalism has not been considered a problem internationally. During the COVID-19 pandemic, both approaches came to the forefront as foreign policy tools that have sharpened existing contradictions between the global North and the global South and exacerbated the confrontation between the West, on the one side, and China and Russia, on the other. Examining cases of cooperation and confrontation between different countries during the development and distribution of COVID vaccines, the authors analyze why and how they tend to employ vaccine diplomacy or vaccine nationalism, whether the two approaches have helped them achieve their goals and helped the world overcome the global healthcare crisis.