Foreign Policy | October 15, 2019
Read the PublicationWhoever sits in the Oval Office come January 2021, he or she will almost inevitably have to address pandemic disease as a foreign-policy issue. From AIDS and malaria to Ebola and pandemic flu, every president in recent decades has been faced with an international infectious disease outbreak that demanded both the attention of U.S. diplomats and officials and financing from U.S. budgets. Yet, to varying degrees, each administration has been caught unprepared. So far, the current set of presidential candidates does not seem more promising on this front.