But the spectacular contrast between the Chinese and American political and economic systems is made even more clear in the realm of global geopolitics, where out of this global pandemic has emerged the multilateral world presaged by the Munich Security Conference’s requiem for the American Century. Where Mike Pompeo praised a triumphant neoliberal ideology of “individual freedom [and] free enterprise,” this very Western consensus on neoliberal austerity has left Western governments politically subservient to the very industries they now beg to work in the public interest to meet the needs of this crisis. Lacking the state-owned enterprises that spearheaded China’s crisis response, the U.S., for instance, has turned to prison labor and Korean War-era war powers which require private manufacturers to prioritize government orders for medical supplies—making clear that carceral and military logics are the last recourse of a state emaciated by the tenets of neoliberalism. Leaders in the United Kingdom and Sweden are now floating “herd immunity” as a potential strategy, refusing to slow the economy and expose the weakness of their national health care infrastructures. After decades of evacuating state oversight of health, educational, and housing to the private sector, the emaciated, neoliberal West is crumbling under the weight of a crisis of its own making.

Turned inwards by crisis, the United States and EU have abdicated even the pretension of leadership over the liberal world order: leaving nations across the world turning increasingly towards China for support. Take, for instance Venezuela, which received 300,000 test kits, technical consultation, from China, as Cuban medical specialists arrived to assist the Venezuelan response. At a press conference, Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodriguez announced that Venezuela and China would create a special airlift cooperation to facilitate the flow of life-saving supplies during the crisis. Chinese aid came just days after the IMF rejected a Venezuelan appeal for an emergency $5 billion loan to fight the pandemic and the World Health Organization has struggled to bypass U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba to coordinate an effective response—sanctions that Chinese officials said they refused to honor during this humanitarian crisis.

Iran has similarly struggled to address the pandemic amidst U.S. sanctions that restrict Iranian access to international financial markets despite supposed exceptions for health supplies. Majid Ravanchi, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, called for an end to sanctions and criticized U.S. “lip service” to humanitarian exceptions that are failing the Iranian people in practice. Alongside urging the U.S. to lift its unilateral sanctions on Iran, China has also sent significant aid: on March 17, the Iranian ambassador to China announced the arrival of a shipment of 15 tons of Chinese relief supplies including test kits, ventilators, disinfectant, and protective masks. Iranian media likewise reported that China had sent some 18 medical consignments to help Iran fight the coronavirus outbreak, in addition to expert delegations sent by the Red Cross Society of China and the Chinese Center for Disease Control, and a crowd-sourced fundraiser posted by the Iranian embassy in China on Weibo, which raised over a half million USD for Iran’s medical response. That the U.S. has insisted on continuing its sanction regime on Iran and Venezuela, while China has refused to honor those sanctions despite the risk of secondary sanctions, speaks to the two superpowers' very different approaches to diplomacy.