Science diplomacy has played an indispensable role as a bridge between science and foreign affairs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s bound to have a far-reaching impact on global order in the post-pandemic era.

The pandemic has led to doubt about the generally assumed effectiveness of science diplomacy, said Pierre-Bruno Ruffini, a professor of international economics at the University of Le Havre (France). The pandemic is a strong case for science diplomacy, as it poses questions to science as well as diplomacy. From a scientific perspective, scientific uncertainties including origin of the virus, its long-term influence on human health, and the efficacy of vaccines have not been removed. From a diplomatic perspective, doubts which revolve around global dimensions of the pandemic and collective action of anti-pandemic responses are still spreading.

A challenge such as COVID-19 is the type of situation where science diplomacy should have its greatest relevance. However, so far, it has not worked well and the performance has been rather mixed. Ruffini proposed that we can roughly distinguish two periods. The first phase of 2020 shed full light on scientific research. The international mobilization of scientific resources has been exemplary, and sharing medical data across countries has also been remarkable: Science was present and proactive. In contrast, diplomacy was almost absent in that period, particularly multilateral diplomacy. Faced with a global crisis, uncoordinated responses on various national levels emerged from many parts of the world.

With the arrival of the second stage of 2020, the vaccine race came at the forefront. Adding to the essentially scientific moment of the initial stage, we have entered a geopolitical and geo-economic moment. Under the background of innovations in novel vaccines, we have witnessed shifts of focus from science to the market, and from logics of cooperation towards logics of competition among laboratories and the states which support them.

“In summary, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of science in policy-making in the domain of human health, whereas it has also shown the weaknesses of the multilateral system,” Ruffini outlined.

“As a historian, I believe the global response to COVID-19 has expanded previous patterns of medical cooperation while reflecting the contemporary geopolitics of research and development,” said Greg Whitesides, an associate professor of history at University of Colorado Denver. He argued that the rapidity of vaccine development is unprecedented, which illustrates how scientific and technical advances have revolutionized the production, testing, and delivery of medicines. At the same time, the response strengthened pre-existing international networks and norms—such as medical reporting—while exposing differences in national approaches and transparency.

According to Ruffini, what has changed is the perception that one must have about science diplomacy, and this would surely alter usage of the concept in the future. COVID-19 highlights a side of science diplomacy which many people do not like to see—the importance of national interests.

“Too many people have a naive view of science diplomacy, arguing that it could solve all problems,” Ruffini noted. The pandemic recalls that, basically, the rationale of science diplomacy is twofold: addressing common global challenges while advancing a country’s national interests and needs. Therefore, the picture is destined to be mixed in the first place. The former promotes the advancement of science diplomacy for the sake of effective global governance, meanwhile, the latter provides reasons to take advantage of others. The pandemic has stressed tensions between national interests and common interests. Ideally, science diplomacy should be a way to harmoniously resolve these conflicts.

In Whitesides’s view, cooperation and competition in vaccines co-exist in the global arena. Equitable access to medicine is a priority for the global community, and the WHO’s COVAX program provides a structure for research and distribution of vaccines, although questions remain about pricing, selection, and testing. On the other side, the pandemic provides opportunities for advanced nations to use access to medicine and research as diplomatic tools.

The spirit of science is universal and borderless, but scientific efforts cannot be divorced from national support. Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez, a senior lecturer at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, said that there would be cooperation but people will not aspire to a model of disinterested or deinstitutionalized cooperation. For this reason, science is indeed a mechanism of attraction and seduction, a type of sophisticated soft power. Nonetheless, relevant decisions are not isolated but rather connected with economic or foreign policy interests.

Ruffini summarized three lessons from the current experience in the perspective of science diplomacy. First, when science diplomacy does not work while confronting a global threat, this is not due to the failure of science, but probably because of conflicting national interests. Anyone interested in science diplomacy should understand its dual nature, namely, collaborative and competitive.

Moreover, the vaccine competition exposed how scientific issues intermingle with geopolitical games. For instance, vaccine discovery and dissemination has been utilized as an instrument of soft power.

On another note, the global health crisis has demonstrated the significance of social sciences and humanities. It’s necessary to comprehend the behavioral and social contexts of a crisis. Thus, it’s problematic to overlook social sciences or humanities when discussing science diplomacy, Ruffini warned.