Fifteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the United States being isolated from several other countries, which notably banned entry by U. S. citizens. This paper traces this isolation from the Trump administration’s failed pandemic policies, based around their rejection of the idea of international community. The paper first surveys the failures of international law and such approaches as realism, liberal internationalism, and the English school to create a suitable model for international community. I note that global institutions, regardless of how democratic we perceive them to be, do not create global communities; global communities create global institutions. Similarly, international law does not define international community; laws do not make communities, communities make laws. Otherwise, would have no boundaries, especially on the global level. The next part explores the nature of national identities and their link to world opinion and a nation’s international image. Even its most ardent defenders admit that a vague sense of group identity exists in the international community. A prerequisite for the existence of an international community is the threat of global isolation, as community is defined, in part, by those excluded from it. Often, nations collectively practice isolation through indirect, or “soft”, sanctions including criticizing the image of the targeted nation, questioning the nation’s reputation, and other more abstract strategies. I conclude that the potential for such isolation provides boundaries for an international community, as shown by the United States’s experience recently.