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Begin New Search Topic COVID-19 Political Geography North America

31. The Department of Defense Contributions to Pandemic Response

Author:
Tom Cullison and J. Stephen Morrison
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
The Department of Defense (DOD) should be systematically incorporated into any evolving U.S. government vision on international health security. A process of strategic planning that encompasses a spectrum of valuable DOD contributions to contain the global Covid-19 pandemic should begin right away. DOD has broad capabilities that have consistently proven their high value in addressing the current Covid-19 pandemic and other historical disease outbreaks, in support of the U.S. civilian-led response. The knowledge and experience gained in crisis response at home and overseas contribute to military readiness and improved coordination of all actors involved in preventing, detecting, and responding to infectious disease events. This report draws from months of deliberations organized by the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security’s DOD Working Group. It lays out four concrete and pragmatic recommendations to strengthen DOD’s contributions overseas in advancing U.S. global health security interests
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

32. The Caribbean in the Crossfire Between Covid-19, Narcotics, China, and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Author:
R. Evan Ellis
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
The Caribbean is strategically vital as the southeast maritime approach to the United States. It is a key hub and transit area for commercial logistics serving the eastern coast of the United States as well as the Atlantic side of Central and South America. The region is connected to the United States through ties of commerce, geography, and family. Not only is the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico situated centrally in the Caribbean between the Dominican Republic and the Leeward Antilles islands, but significant diasporas of Cubans, Jamaicans, Dominicans, Haitians, and others are found in U.S. communities, from South Florida to New York and New Jersey and beyond. The United States relies on good governance in the Caribbean and partnership on a range of national security issues, including the entry of illegal narcotics (principally moving north from Colombia and Venezuela) and other contraband goods. Even more importantly, the Caribbean touches—or is proximate to—a substantial number of important U.S. ports and military facilities, such as Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah and Kings Bay, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Norfolk, Virginia. Not only are these facilities critical to U.S. international maritime commerce, but military facilities in some of those areas play important roles in the deployment and sustainment of forces in a range of potential conflicts, be they in Africa, Europe, or Asia. Indeed, during the wars of the previous century, German submarines sought to operate in or near the Caribbean in order to put U.S. facilities and ship convoys at risk.
Topic:
Security, Narcotics Trafficking, Military Intervention, Drugs, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Latin America, Caribbean, and North America

33. COVID-19 vaccine supply chains and the Defense Production Act

Author:
Chad P. Bown
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Abstract:
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the US government used novel policies to accelerate research, development, and production of a diversified portfolio of new vaccines. This paper begins by describing the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 and the initial “priority-rated” contracts agreed to under Operation Warp Speed in 2020 to expedite manufacturing and achieve scale, which succeeded in producing hundreds of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines by early 2021. However, a puzzle soon emerged, as the scale of US vaccine production was shortly thereafter overtaken by plants in the European Union and India. The paper investigates the tradeoffs US policymakers faced in early 2021 once much of the initial uncertainty about the safety and effectiveness of many COVID-19 vaccines had been resolved—about whether to recalibrate contracts to expand production capacity to help meet global, instead of US, vaccine demand. It also examines the emergence of input shortages and assesses whether both the price constraints implicit in the 2020 DPA contracts and business decisions made to quicken the process of bringing new vaccine plants online globally inadvertently exacerbated them. It also explores the potential need for complementary, input capacity enhancing policies in the face of highly fragmented, cross-border COVID-19 vaccine supply chains.
Topic:
Crisis Management, Vaccine, COVID-19, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

34. Turning Point: A three year update on US supermarkets’ progress and pitfalls

Author:
Hana Ivanhoe and Art Prapha
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the global landscape of the food retail industry has dramatically shifted. There is now greater awareness of how wealth and gender inequalities have been exacerbated; the power of workers in the United States (US) has been awakened; the vulnerability of global supply chains has been exposed; big retailers are competing in technology adoption; investors are demanding environmental, social and governance (ESG) information; and there has been legislative advancement towards mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD) law. Amidst these increasing pressures, major US supermarkets have continued to delay urgent actions needed to end exploitation of workers, women and farmers in their supply chains and retail operations. Key gaps include the lack of commitment to adopt a robust HRDD approach, lack of policies on workers’ rights at home and abroad, and the non-existence of gender policy in their business model. Failure to act now will result in irreversible impacts on workers, farmers and women – impacts that pose major risks to business continuity and supply chain resilience.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Governance, Business, Private Sector, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

35. State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19

Author:
Nicholas F. Jacobs, Desmond King, and Sidney M. Milkis
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Nicholas F. Jacobs, Desmond King, and Sidney M. Milkis look at the final year of the Donald Trump presidency, and the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They argue that Trump’s actions fit a rationale, partisan strategy endemic to executive-centered partisanship. Consequently, Trump and the Republican Party failed to suffer the repudiation that punished previous presidents when adjudged failed crisis leaders.
Topic:
Governance, Political Science, Crisis Management, Donald Trump, COVID-19, Health Crisis, and Republican Party
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

36. The Psychological Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the U.S. Military

Author:
Timothy Berger
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
The U.S. government and Department of Defense (DOD) have plans to counter a pandemic and return the country to normal while reducing the impacts of the disease. These plans address psychological health, but only in a limited manner. The U.S. government and DOD’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been primarily focused on containing the virus and reducing the number of deaths and damage to the economy, with very limited attention paid to the mental health impacts in both the population and military. Historical cases suggest that the psychological impacts can be wide-ranging and enduring if not treated properly and the country does not recover from the pandemic in a deliberate fashion. While some emerging research could suggest this for the U.S. population and military, researchers have not conducted specific studies into this particular field. Therefore, the U.S. military’s mental health could be degraded by the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigation measures and may be degraded for a significant period of time, reducing its readiness and ability to aid in the government’s response to the pandemic.
Topic:
Mental Health, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

37. Operation Warp Speed and the Countermeasures Acceleration Group—A Twenty-first Century Manhattan Project

Author:
John E. Hall and Nathan Packard
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
On 15 May 2020, Operation Warp Speed, later renamed the HHS-DOD COVID-19 Countermeasures Acceleration Group (CAG), was a collaboration between the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense (DOD), and the private sector to accelerate development, production, and distribution of effective vaccines and therapeutics to counter COVID-19 for the American people. The CAG was the nucleus of the “whole-of-America” effort to defeat COVID-19, and DOD’s contribution was essential to the success of the CAG. This article highlights the contributions made by DOD, with a focus on innovative solutions and best practices that might apply to other DOD activities.
Topic:
Crisis Management, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

38. Implications from the Guard's Extensive Use: A Cautionary Tale of 2020

Author:
Michael G. Anderson
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
From 2020–22, the National Guard saw extensive use domestically to respond to a wide variety of crises, including natural disasters, civil unrest, pandemics, and border security in addition to overseas deployments. As these emergencies perpetuate, balancing the National Guard’s use domestically and overseas is critical to preserving a sustainable and capable force. It is important for a broader understanding across local, state, and federal governments of the sustainability of these cumulative effects on this force.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Border Control, COVID-19, Civil Unrest, and National Guard
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

39. Lessons from the Inflation of 2021-202(?)

Author:
Asha Banerjee and Josh Bivens
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Starting in mid-2021, inflation in the United States rose to levels not seen since the early 1980s. This inflation followed on the heels of the economic shock imposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the significant fiscal policy interventions meant to smooth the fallout of this shock. As of October 2022, inflation – both headline and core measures stripping out food and energy prices – remained at historically high levels, though there are significant signs of softening in the near-future. This episode has sparked furious debate over the proper policy response, and has exposed how little innovative thinking has been done on inflation by either macroeconomists or policy analysts since the 1980s price acceleration was ended by the Volcker shock. This paper identifies a number of key questions raised by the inflationary outbreak of the past 18 months and offers some answers. An extremely brief summary of these questions and answers is provided below, with the rest of the paper expanding on these points.
Topic:
Economy, Inflation, Macroeconomics, Fiscal Policy, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

40. Resilient Industry Ecochains for the US-Taiwan Partnership

Author:
Stephen Su
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Stephen Su, Senior Vice President and General Director of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan, explains that the "United States and Taiwan can work closely together to develop resilient industry ecochains for key industries such as semiconductors, telecommunications, automotive, biotech, machinery, etc."
Topic:
Partnerships, Economy, Industry, Resilience, COVID-19, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America