The worth of war metaphors in pandemic are limited to the West
https://arab.news/5aung
“We are at war with a virus – and not winning it. This war needs a war-time plan to fight it,” declared the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guttierez at the recent G20 virtual summit held to discuss developed nations response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the Western world, the use of war metaphors to describe national responses to the pandemic has been widespread. In the US, President Donald Trump has used the imagery of war and in fact added the pandemic to his ongoing trade war with China. Over the past several weeks, the President has insisted on calling COVID-19 the “China Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus.” His ardent followers in the Republican party have followed suit. A war on the virus under these terms would automatically mean, on some level, a war with China.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has emerged as a star in the COVID war with his generalissimo style daily briefings, has used similar terminology, even though he is not a Trump supporter. In one early briefing he announced: “The soldiers in this fight are our health care professionals. It’s the doctors, it’s the nurses, it’s the people who are working in the hospitals, it’s the aides. They are the soldiers who are fighting this battle for us.”
Americans of course are the usual suspects, eager and likely to take on war metaphors (and actual wars) at apparently every seeming opportunity. Less likely suspects have also taken on the rhetoric of gathering troops and declaring doctors soldiers. One of these is British Queen Elizabeth who used the World War II song “We Will Meet Again” in a recent speech to the nation
At the outset, there would appear to be little problem with war metaphors. We tend to use similar fight metaphors against most diseases. People talk about their fights against various diseases and describe themselves as victorious if they survive. That may well be the case, and surely no one can stop anyone using the vocabulary of annihilation against something that has killed thousands and thousands of people around the world.
As some of the statements made by Prime Minister Imran Khan reveal, developing countries cannot maintain delusional war metaphors because they cannot imply to their citizens that a victorious future with the virus behind them is even possible. In his recent speeches, the Prime Minister has instead highlighted the different ways in which developing nations are likely to experience the aftermath of the virus.
Rafia Zakaria
But how and which countries utilize war metaphors also tells us something about the way in which the outlook toward and the fight against the virus is being conceptualized in different ways in the Western and non-Western world.
One reason for the greater popularity of war metaphors by Western countries is that they want to emphasize that victory is possible and that the myth of Western invincibility is not a myth at all.
A “war” signifies a concerted national effort (and nationalism is a resurgent ideology in the West) and then complete conquest and return to a pre-war time era. Maintaining the myth of Western invincibility is in turn important because it deflects from the idea that Western governments did not act with enough speed and were less vigilant than they should have been. It is ironic of course, for it could be said that it is precisely that belief in their own invincibility that led so many to ignore a threat already well on its way.
The situation is markedly different in developing countries, including Pakistan. As some of the statements made by Prime Minister Imran Khan reveal, developing countries cannot maintain delusional war metaphors because they cannot imply to their citizens that a victorious future with the virus behind them is even possible. In his recent speeches, the Prime Minister has instead highlighted the different ways in which developing nations are likely to experience the aftermath of the virus. In making an appeal to the International Monetary Fund for debt relief so that Pakistan could attend to the challenges it confronts, the Prime Minister made specific mention of the pandemic of hunger that is likely to follow the pandemic caused by the virus.
For developing countries, and the surge of the virus in Karachi’s most densely populated katchi abadis is proof of this, assuaging hunger creates the need for social contact, and social contact provides opportunities for the virus to spread.
As the country begins to open, even without a cure or treatment or a vaccine, the poor who are hungry now and will still be starving then, will take the risks that will leave them diseased and possibly dead.
If the virus is a singular catastrophe in the West, where things were going well until the virus came along, things will go well again once the virus has passed. For developing countries like Pakistan, it is the beginning of some very dark times.
Metaphors, utilizing war or anything else obscure reality. Pakistan, which has seen steady spikes in fatalities and where the pandemic continues to accelerate, cannot afford to take refuge in metaphor.
There needs to be greater stress placed on creating regional coalitions that may not result in large aid disbursements but can lead to effective crisis management. It would be quite something after all, if the pandemic could in this way underscore not only the chimera of war metaphors, but of war itself.
*Rafia Zakaria is the author of “The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan” and “Veil.” She writes regularly for The Guardian, the Boston Review, the New Republic, the New York Times Book Review and many other publications.
Twitter: @rafiazakaria
