With an out-of-control second wave, India has become the center of the global battle against Covid-19, rapidly overtaking other places in trouble, like Brazil and France. Its national vaccination program is strong; alongside China and America, it has already vaccinated over 100 million people. But it seems that government and people thought they had already won, and allowed large political, religious, and recreational gatherings to take place; sowing the seeds of outbreaks in New Delhi, Maharashtra, and elsewhere, that grew with exponential suddenness, creating a national crisis. Hospitals and morgues overflowed; vaccine exports were halted; industry, medicine, the center and the states all scrambled to do what they could.
As India is the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, and a pillar of the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral alongside America, this crisis will probably accelerate plans by the Quad to become a global provider of Covid vaccines. This was mentioned at a video summit in March, but as just one priority alongside others like climate change and defending democracy. Now India must concentrate on overcoming its domestic crisis, through lockdowns and extra vaccine production. Vaccination will be open to everyone over the age of 18, after 1 May... But once it has turned itself into a machine for beating Covid, that capacity will surely be retained, and once again used as part of the global fight.
The universality of the Covid threat will also give India a chance to move back towards a nonaligned position, perhaps under the umbrella of a unified World Health Organization anti-Covid strategy. Despite its membership in "eastern" organizations like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, India's antagonism towards China has lately pulled it towards America and away from its old ally Russia. But India is already manufacturing the Russian vaccine Sputnik-V, alongside the British AstraZeneca vaccine (under the name Covishield), and the Indian vaccine Covaxin, so it can be a conduit for both western and eastern contributions to the global vaccine supply.
For now, global politics is still unfolding in the shadow of the renewed antagonism between east and west. Biden called Putin a killer; Russia massed forces on the borders of Ukraine; Turkey revealed that the US was sending warships to the Black Sea, via Turkey's Bosporus strait; the warships were not sent, Russian pulled back its forces, and Biden declared that over 100 years ago, Ottoman Turkey committed genocide against Armenia, a label which Turkey has fought to deny for decades.
As for China, it held its annual "two sessions" (lianghui) of political decision-making, parallel meetings of the People's Congress (the Communist-dominated legislature) and the Consultative Conference (a heterogeneous advisory body with representatives from all sectors of society), in early March. In the legislature, the end of rural poverty was celebrated, a five-year-plan of green finance and high-tech self-sufficiency was adopted, a law to ensure patriotic government in Hong Kong was passed, and Xi Jinping said the Chinese economy could double in size and surpass the American economy by 2035; while representatives at the advisory conference fretted about male feminization in the media, and the 9am-to-9pm, six-days-a-week culture of overwork.
Then foreign minister Wang Yi headed to Alaska for a first, acrimonious meeting with representatives of the new Biden administration. The Americans made their usual criticisms of Chinese policy regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan; the Chinese were unimpressed and went home. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov then visited Wang in China, saying America has forgotten what diplomacy is, and that Russia and China must keep working together on achieving financial and technological independence from American threats.
In the Middle East, at the start of 2021, it was one year since the American assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iranian special forces, during a visit to Iraq. The Iranian parliament formalized a policy of allying with anyone in the region who would expel the American military from their country, and a few months later, Iran also signed a long-term trade deal with China, in effect offering Iranian oil for Chinese investment. This will give Iran relief from American economic sanctions, and China extra security of energy supply - oil arriving by sea is at risk of naval blockades by America and its allies, but Iranian oil will come by land. (This joins Nord Stream 2, whereby Russian oil goes to Europe, as an energy supply line outside of American control.)
Elsewhere in the region, Netanyahu hung on as prime minister of Israel, winning the fourth election in two years, and overseeing one of the most thorough national vaccination programs in the world; and Turkey remained diplomatically hyperactive, welcoming the Libyan unity government, urging Egypt and Ethiopia to make a deal over management of the Nile, and declaring neutrality between Russia and Ukraine. Pope Francis of the Catholic Church visited the Shia grand ayatollah, Sistani, in Iraq; but it was less successful than his meeting with the Sunni grand imam of Egypt's Al Azhar in 2019.
America rejoined the Paris climate convention, announced it would stay within the World Health Organization, and sought to revive the Iranian nuclear deal. Within America itself, the rush to vaccinate the country was followed by the announcement of new grand plans: spend $2 trillion rebuilding American infrastructure, assemble a democratic rival to China's Belt and Road network, cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, withdraw from Afghanistan by the tenth anniversary of 9/11, fight "systemic racism" throughout society. The outcome of the George Floyd trial was seen as a victory for racial justice.
In Brazil, former president Lula had his political rights restored, meaning he could run as the leftist candidate against rightist president Bolsonaro. In Myanmar, an important state for Chinese economic ties with southeast Asia and for Indian security in its northeast territories, the military cancelled an election which its candidates had lost, killing hundreds of protesters. In Africa, Covid infections were the least of any major world region, but the continent was still in a recession it could ill afford, a stumble after many years of rapid development.
