Covid-19: US’s comparision to China will be decisive

The Pentagon created the Office of Net Assessment in 1973 to forecast America’s strengths and weaknesses relative to its main adversaries after a nuclear war. What would a similar “net assessment” tell us about how America and the world will look after the coronavirus pandemic?
At the heart of such a post-pandemic assessment is the question of where America will balance out relative to China, our greatest competitor and co-dependent, after all the death and disruption of the year(s) ahead. This issue is especially important now, as China and the United States trade insults about who’s to blame for the spread of the virus that emerged three months ago in Wuhan.
Let’s start with costs. Any assessments are wildly uncertain, but we know there will be many thousands of dead, hundreds of billions in lost production and national income, and immeasurable losses in human capital, as studies and research are disrupted. America and China will both be weakened, initially, but it’s unclear exactly how much.
Numbers are guesstimates. China has reported 81,155 cases of covid-19 and 3,249 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States still measures quite low, with 17,000 cases and 220 deaths as of Saturday. But the US numbers will go much higher. Researchers at Imperial College in London made a dire forecast that as many as 2.2 million Americans could die if social-distancing and other mitigation measures aren’t successful.
Then there’s the economic cost: Goldman Sachs’ latest forecast is that China’s GDP will decline 9% during the first quarter, a loss of more than $1 trillion in production and income and an unprecedented reversal for modern China. Goldman is predicting a 5% decline in US GDP during the second quarter, when the pandemic effects hit hard. That would also represent a loss of over $1 trillion in output.
But there will be benefits from the pandemic, too, and this is where the analysis gets interesting.
It’s likely that for a generation, America and China will both be better prepared for outbreaks of disease and other disasters.
There will be better early-warning systems, better stockpiles of equipment, better vaccines and resilient supply chains. Public-health professionals will know more and have greater
credibility when they make recommendations.
Will governance be more effective after the coronavirus catastrophe? That’s probably the most important factor in this net assessment. Will China become more transparent, so that party officials don’t suppress bad news and make the initial spread of disease worse than necessary? Will America have more competent political leadership, better planning, and better government-led systems than the erratic, ad-hoc podium performance we’re watching now, which has also spread disease unnecessarily?
America’s ability to improve government will be a kind of national character test: Will Americans look at the messy initial response to coronavirus and decide we need a stronger public sector? Or will people conclude that government is the problem? If the answer is the latter, then the net assessment becomes bleaker.
The world will take stock of the two systems, after the pandemic threat recedes. Indeed, this crisis may be an inflection point, like World War II, that shapes a new order. In a sense, it’s a battle of narratives: Do people trust the American model — a free society that, although raucous, organises itself spontaneously from its diverse, decentralised nodes to respond to crisis?
Or do they prefer the Chinese brand, an authoritarian regime that may lie to its people but can mobilise society, top to bottom, relatively quickly?
This broad benchmarking of America and its main adversary was the initial mission of the Office of Net Assessment when it was chartered by President Richard Nixon. Under its legendary founder, Andrew Marshall, the group assessed likely US and Soviet strength following a nuclear exchange — beyond the bland comparison of submarines and bombers that the military favored.
Marshall’s group, with its sharper analytical lens, was one of the first to see that the Soviet Union was much weaker economically and politically than conventional analysis suggested. Appreciation of that underlying Soviet frailty helped tip the Cold War balance toward the United States and its allies.
Where will America and China stand after the coronavirus crisis, not only in terms of capabilities, but also in the world’s perceptions of their respective ability to act wisely and decisively in a crisis? Which system has hidden weaknesses that could be fatal?
We’re in the medical equivalent of war. China’s authoritarian system is turning a corner towards recovery. American democracy needs to show that a free society can make that same turn nimbly and quickly.

—The Washington Post

David Ignatius is an American journalist and novelist.
He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post.
He has written eleven novels, including Body of Lies, which director Ridley Scott adapted into a film