During World War I, the Allies faced a similar problem: Shortages for key goods were being exacerbated by uncontrolled international competition on private markets. Even as the Allied countries fought a shared enemy, the Central Powers, they competed to purchase goods they needed — such as wheat and various raw materials — from abroad, needlessly complicating their joint war effort. The shortages got so bad by 1917-18 that some officials in the European Allied countries thought that it threatened them with outright defeat, as their war economies teetered on the brink of collapse and their civilian populations grew exhausted.

To solve this problem, the Allies created a series of institutions that could make joint purchases of scarce goods at fixed prices, pool them and allocate them according to need, and arrange their shipping. The two greatest capitalist powers in the history of the world, the United States and Britain, effectively agreed to suspend the free working of the laws of supply and demand in global markets to ensure that goods were provided to whichever country was facing the worst shortages — not whoever could pay the highest prices. After the war, many recognized that this system of international coordination was critical to the Allied victory.

The success of this wartime supply system also showed how powerful international cooperation can be during a global crisis. It was no coincidence that several of the officials who had run this system moved into powerful positions at the League of Nations after the war, and one later helped to found the European Union. The League of Nations pioneered some of the earliest forms of international cooperation in matters of public health, economic policy and the policing of contraband. The collapse of this international cooperation in the 1930s left the world unable to mount an effective response to the Depression and the coming war, though these efforts did lay important foundations for the creation of bodies like the United Nations.

An improvisation for preventing needless competition among countries facing a common enemy, in other words, helped give rise to the world’s first real experiment in global governance. Could we do it again?

To beat the coronavirus, we need to empower international bodies with the resources necessary to ensure that every country has the supplies it needs to deal with the pandemic. In a highly unequal world economy, this will require some form of global redistribution, because uncontrolled markets for these goods are leading to catastrophe for those countries that cannot afford their grossly inflated prices.