Here, we offer an overview of past and contemporary phenomena that bear witness to the tensions and geopolitical strategies that can emerge in relation to health issues.
We begin by reviewing a number of recent and classic texts and articles on the geopolitics of health and the emergence of health diplomacy, in order to identify the key issues and concepts at stake. These references show how classic geopolitical issues such asstrategies of influence, international cooperation, the balance of world order and global inequalities can be applied to the analysis of countries’ commitment to global health.
It should be noted that these concepts and analyses are applicable to global health issues even before the emergence of the concept some twenty years ago: some sources demonstrate the existence of geopolitical tensions around infectious diseases, such as the HIV-AIDS pandemic (and the ideological conflicts surrounding the emergence of the disease). On the other hand, several references (press or academic articles) look back at the Ebola epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa and the tensions it generated, sometimes replaying old conflicts or opening the way to new forms of intervention and actors.
Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to new diplomatic practices, new geopoliticalobjects such as healthcare products (masks, vaccines or traditional medicine) and new players, who have deployed strategies to compete with Western countries, thus overturning the world healthcare order and its traditional polarizations.
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