“The vaccine nationalism of western countries created the space for these other countries to practise vaccine diplomacy,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank.
The divide is a diplomatic opportunity, and some foreign capitals are taking it. “Balance and pit the west against non-western powers like Russia and China, to see from which side you will score a better bargain.”Ĭonspicuously missing so far from the fray of overseas deals and donations have been western governments, which are consumed with vaccinating their own populations first and have preferred to channel vaccine aid into multilateral schemes such as Covax, the sharing mechanism that will start by supplying about 3% of the most vulnerable people in middle- and lower-income countries over the next six months.īy then, countries such as the UK, US and Canada expect to be on their way to herd immunity, along with a clutch of other wealthy countries that have bought up most of the supply of western vaccines that will be produced in 2021. “Vaccine procurement is symbolic of Serbia’s foreign policy strategy,” said Vuk Vuksanovic, a researcher at the London School of Economics and the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. In a market of extreme scarcity, with vaccination yet to begin in 130 countries, states such as Serbia are emerging as early leaders in the vaccination race, leveraging geopolitical competition – along with a willingness to smooth out regulatory hurdles – to access millions of doses fast.
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