The world needs leaders right now, but it has Trump, Xi and Putin instead

Several weeks after denying the COVID-19 infection was a peril to his nation, and that to even claim such a thing to be true was “fake news,” Trump finally declared a national emergency to deal with this new plague.

Ending a shocking shortage of test kits to check for the virus, the president announced in the Rose Garden that half a million more test swabs would be available this week to examine Americans who showed symptoms of the disease.

That the president chose not to discuss the travel ban beforehand with the U.S.’s European friends was not unusual. It is his usual modus operandi. But each time he behaves this way, the patience of European leaders wears thinner.

A great unknown — and it will probably never be known because there is no accurate measuring stick — is whether Trump’s shallow, shambolic initial responses to the threat posed by the virus caused many more Americans to become ill. The additional negative effects of the long delay in getting a credible testing regime for the virus in place, and cuts to federal agencies dealing with public health and disease that he made early in his administration, will also never be known. All Trump said about any of this on Friday was that he was not in any way responsible for exacerbating the medical emergency.

To respond to the unprecedented challenges posed by what has finally been called a pandemic, there has been an urgent need for leadership from the president of the only superpower and the presidents of the two would-be superpowers. To take charge in such a way could soothe public anxiety that has often bordered on panic. Until now the leaders of the U.S., China and Russia have not met the challenge.

While at first denying the hazard posed by the coronavirus, and then publicly dithering for weeks about what to do about it, Trump has continued to be preoccupied by other international matters. To get Iran’s attention the U.S. moved two aircraft carriers into the Middle East for the first time in eight years. For the same reason, Washington also dispatched B-2 bombers from Missouri to Portugal.

Such machinations are easy to arrange. They follow a well-established formula. They are also 20th-century responses when security questions today often have more to do with cyber and information warfare, and now medical matters, than in the projection of raw military power. This is especially disturbing at a time when the domestic situation in the U.S. has been roiled by uncertainties about COVID-19 and what to do about it.

China, which many regard as the superpower heir apparent, has behaved no better. Beijing has adamantly denied that for four weeks or more it suppressed knowledge of the peril posed by COVID-19 from its own citizens and the world. The most obvious explanation is that such a revelation might have tarnished the reputation of Xi Jinping and the supposed invincibility of the Communist Party. At the same time, state security organizations abominably treated those Chinese medical officials who tried to sound the alarm.

Another whopper from Chinese spokesmen and diplomats has been the now-persistent claim that it was the heroic leadership of Xi and the party that had brought China out of the crisis. More recently, China’s top foreign ministry spokesman began promoting the outrageous theory that the coronavirus outbreak had not originated in China but had been cooked up in a U.S. army lab and that Patient Zero had actually been an American.

The Kremlin, as opportunistic as ever, has sought to turn the coronavirus crisis to its own advantage, too. Vladimir Putin ordered an oil price war with Saudi Arabia as international demand for oil collapsed. Putin’s apparent goal has been to depress the price of oil enough that the U.S. fracking business goes bankrupt. If he succeeds in that, Russia might be able to knock the U.S. off its pedestal as the world’s number one oil producer.

Putin’s mischief fueled so much uncertainty in global markets that many trillions of dollars had been wiped up by the end of the week, ending a bull market that had lasted for years and helping to pull the entire world into recession.

What Trump, Xi and Putin share is a desire to remain in power for a long time. They exult in what can only be described as cults of personality. They have a need to be regarded as brave, indomitable and exceptional.

Though measuring public support is an inexact science, especially in China and Russia, another common link that the three leaders share at the moment is fragile political support at home. This helps account for, but not justify, their self-serving behaviour.

Through their various prevarications and gambits, Trump, Xi and Putin have demonstrated at a time of intense international anxiety that they are not up to the immense responsibilities of high office.

Whatever their shortcomings, the dictators, Xi and Putin, are likely to be around for a long time. Although Trump sometimes acts like he does not know it, he serves at the pleasure of the American people. Initially downplaying the severity of the coronavirus outbreak and mocking those who took it seriously long before he did may cost him dearly when Americans vote in November.