This interview with Oona A. Hathaway on security and leadership during COVID-19 comprises The Military History Portal, a section of The Yale Historical Review.

1. INTERVIEW
Oona A. Hathaway
Interview by Henry Jacob Transcribed by Yuhan KimJuly 14, 2020
The disconnect between those two worlds appalled
me, and I decided I had to write about it.
But you seemed to have learned this nexus years
ago when you worked in D.C. I know that you
and others at the Pentagon played a central role
during the Ebola outbreak. How does Obama’s
reaction to Ebola in 2014 differ from Trump’s
response to coronavirus in 2020?
During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Obama did not
respond by closing the borders. The administration
recognized that if Ebola got out of control abroad it
was a problem for the United States. It was in our
national self-interest to help address the emergency.
The initial impulse of the Trump administration
during the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak
was the opposite.
1
In March, you co-wrote Universal Health Care is a
National Security Issue. In this prescient article, you
explore ways to reframe traditional notions of
national security in light of COVID-19. How has
your perspective on these intertwined issues
developed over the past few months?
As a national security lawyer and as somebody who
worked at the Pentagon, the cavalier talk about loss of
life as the crisis began to unfold really struck me. In
my world, any risk to Americans is taken incredibly
seriously. I was shocked when some leaders spoke of
citizens as dispensable. We have billion-dollar planes
to protect our lives and we can't spend two dollars on
masks to ensure that those who protect us in the
medical field are themselves protected?
THEYALE HISTORICAL REVIEW
Military History
This afternoon, I have the opportunity to
speak with Oona A. Hathaway, Gerard C.
and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of Law
and Professor of Political Science at Yale
Law School.
On Security and Leadership during a Crisis

2. The U.S. distanced itself from the World Health
Organization and refused to participate in the EU-
led effort to develop a vaccine. This is not a good
long-term strategy for dealing with the problem,
because as long as COVID is anywhere COVID is
everywhere. Responding to the problem by simply
shutting down our borders is not only ineffectual, it's
also inconsistent with the historical role of the
United States as a leader of the global community.
Right, the construction of the wall – literal and
metaphorical – signals the end of a certain form of
US power. I want to stay on the topic of global
collaboration. In The Internationalists, you
demonstrate the value not only of multilateral
agreements, but also the persistence of ideas. How
does the global order the internationalists sought
to create in the 1920s-1930s help you understand
our current situation?
The internationalists recognized that states needed to
resolve their disputes by working together. Their
solution was not perfect but their impulse was
correct: global challenges require global cooperation.
The same principle is true for dealing with COVID.
The World Health Organization was founded on
that very ideal, the idea that nations share global
health interests and that they should work together
to address health crises. Many issues are not limited
to national boundaries and can be most effectively
addressed by working together.
The World Health Organization made some early
errors in responding to COVID-19. It didn't identify
the problem fast enough. It didn't come out with
clear recommendations early enough.
Those are all fair criticisms, but to withdraw all
money, all funding, all participation, and all
assistance is clearly the wrong response. Instead, we
should try to figure out why the WHO did not
respond as quickly as it should have. Why did the
failures that we saw take place? And how can we
improve the organization going forward?
As director of the Center for Global Legal
Challenges you teach the next generation to unite
legal thought and action. Given the vacuum of
leadership today, this program seems doubly
important.
At the beginning of this conversation, you
mentioned that the disconnect between defense
and health care spending led you to reconsider
national security. You have also written on the
lack of global leaders. How has COVID brought
this topic to your attention?
COVID has made clear a lot of problems in the
world and some real failures of leadership within
the United States as well in global institutions such
as the United Nations. A colleague of mine at the
law school and I wrote an article about a possible
way of moving forward. We propose that smaller
states can gather together to form what we call
global clubs. These are the kinds of ideas that
academic institutions can generate inside and
outside of the classroom.
If you're in Washington, you deal with problems on
a daily basis and often don’t have time to think
about the big picture. But academics can step back,
put things into historical context, and think a little
bit outside the box.
2 Oona Hathaway

3. and we could have the same conversation we are
having right now on Zoom. With the internet,
we have the capacity to generate conversations
and ideas across global borders. How do we
take advantage of these innovations to solve
problems in new ways?
Technology presents opportunities as well as
dangers. How have you explored the intersection
of law and cyber security?
The internet gives us new ways to interact. It also
creates its own set of issues as any new innovative
tool does. Because of these vulnerabilities, we have
to spend a lot of time thinking about cyber
conflict, cyber terrorism, and cyber espionage. But
we cannot lose sight of the positives, the capacity
to engage in a deep way around the globe in a
way prior generations never could.
And that’s exciting. We can bring ideas from
around the world and include new perspectives
that were previously excluded.
Alongside this venture, we at the YHR are
leading a national initiative on racial justice and
social change. I know that you are passionate
about this issue as well, you even described the
Black Lives Matter movement as the only path to
save our democracy.
As hard as the last few months have been, they've
been eye opening for a lot of Americans. More
have recognized the truths that have been there all
along, but that have not been widely discussed.
The kind of suppression we have been seeing in
the daily news has long been a reality for
communities of color. But the conversation has
expanded recently. We all have an obligation to
extend the conversation and think about the role
of race in our work.
As I look back, I think there's more I could have done,
there's more I can do, and more that I hope to do in
my teaching, my writing, and in supporting scholars
and students. Just Security, which I'm an editor for,
just started a new series called Racing National
Security. I don’t think that would have happened if it
weren't for the current crisis. But we cannot treat this
as a fleeting moment. It must be a permanent
commitment.
4 Oona Hathaway
We can add to the conversation by saying,“this is
how we've done it for 75 years, but there are other
models out there.”
This interchange between New Haven and D.C.
plays a particularly valuable role today. This
discourse is also necessary so Americans can
reflect critically on the systemic injustices of our
institutions.
Many of these problems were already clear before
Trump. Maybe we don't need global hegemony to
run the world. Maybe we can give more states a say
in what global institutions look like. We can think
not just about solving the immediate emergency, but
also the entrenched failings.
“This is how we've done it
for 75 years, but there are
other models out there.”
This is why a publication like The Yale Historical
Review is valuable. It’s a way to try to put the events
that we're dealing with now into a broader historical
context and look for models in history for the moment
that we're in, while recognizing that the world has not
always been structured the way it is currently
structured and it won't always be structured the way
it's currently structured.
That then frees us up to realize, “okay if these
structures aren't working, what are some alternatives?”
How do we think about that, and how can change and
growth happen? And are there ways of achieving
growth in international governance that could
innovate around these problems and utilize lessons
from prior efforts? What are some advantages that we
have that we can take advantage of that prior
generations didn't have? We happen to both be in
New Haven, but you could just as well be in Timbuktu

4. 5
This is an ongoing discourse, it does not end after one
Zoom call.
It’s the work of a generation. But that's not to say
that we don't have responsibility to act right now.
Sometimes that statement can be seen as if you have to be
patient, and that is not what I mean. We need to act
with urgency and make a long standing and long-term
commitment. Most U.S. scholars of international
law do not focus on the racist and colonialist
history of the field of international law. I've always
mentioned it in my teaching, but haven't centered
around it. I will integrate these histories more fully
into my courses. We must also recognize the
inequities that have created the institutions that
we have. And that's not just a problem of the
past, it’s also a problem of the present. I don't have
all the answers, but I'm eager to have the conversations.
On the note of changing the political landscape for
the next generation, I want to discuss the
upcoming election. What do you hope to see in
November?
I hope that Americans reject the “America First”
and America alone mentality. I hope that this
election is a referendum on the vision of the United
States that Donald Trump has put forward. I hope
that voters embrace a vision of themselves as citizens of
the world and playing a positive role in the world. Joe
Biden definitely embodies these ideas. This is not a zero-
sum game. We can pursue the interests of the US and
the world at the same time. That would be the first
step to repairing our very damaged relationships in the
world.
THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW