One particularly concerning variety of internet-based disinformation infected America last year: Waves of internet-enabled lies persuaded a significant portion of the US public to believe the utterly false narrative contending that Joe Biden did not win the US presidential election in 2020. Further, the establishment and pursuit of biological weapons programs marked the beginning of a new biological arms race.Īnd while the new US administration made progress in reestablishing the role of science and evidence in public policy, corruption of the information ecosystem continued apace in 2021. Beyond the pandemic, worrying biosafety and biosecurity lapses made it clear that the international community needs to focus serious attention on management of the global biological research enterprise. Plans for quick global distribution of vaccines essentially collapsed, leaving poorer countries largely unvaccinated and allowing new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to gain an unwelcome foothold. Although the new US administration’s quick return to the Paris Agreement speaks the right words, it has yet to be matched with actionable policies.ĭeveloped countries improved their responses to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, but the worldwide response remained entirely insufficient. Ukraine remains a potential flashpoint, and Russian troop deployments to the Ukrainian border heighten day-to-day tensions.įor many countries, a huge gap still exists between long-term greenhouse gas-reduction pledges and the near- and medium-term emission-reduction actions needed to achieve those goals. Other nuclear concerns, including North Korea’s unconstrained nuclear and missile expansion and the (as yet) unsuccessful attempts to revive the Iran nuclear deal contribute to growing dangers. If not restrained, these efforts could mark the start of a dangerous new nuclear arms race.
US relations with Russia and China remain tense, with all three countries engaged in an array of nuclear modernization and expansion efforts-including China’s apparent large-scale program to increase its deployment of silo-based long-range nuclear missiles the push by Russia, China, and the United States to develop hypersonic missiles and the continued testing of anti-satellite weapons by many nations.
Still, the change in US leadership alone was not enough to reverse negative international security trends that had been long in developing and continued across the threat horizon in 2021. A more moderate and predictable approach to leadership and the control of one of the two largest nuclear arsenals of the world marked a welcome change from the previous four years. Perhaps even more heartening was the return of science and evidence to US policy making in general, especially regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, in 2021 the new American administration changed US policies in some ways that made the world safer: agreeing to an extension of the New START arms control agreement and beginning strategic stability talks with Russia announcing that the United States would seek to return to the Iran nuclear deal and rejoining the Paris climate accord. Last year’s leadership change in the United States provided hope that what seemed like a global race toward catastrophe might be halted and-with renewed US engagement-even reversed.
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