Social Distancing from our Allies: Interning Abroad During COVID

About the author: Maya Guzdar ’22 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the International Centre for Defence and Security. She is currently an International Relations major at Stanford University.

One of the most interesting parts of interning for an organization in a foreign country during a pandemic was getting an outside perspective on the state of the U.S.

In the US, where COVID has been politicized, I’ve struggled with taking a step back and viewing the virus — or any sort of politics for that matter — objectively.

By the time my internship started, in early July, U.S. coronavirus cases were skyrocketing, with over 50,000 cases per day on July 5, my first day. Especially after the brief downturn in cases we’d experienced in late may and mid-June, I was feeling a bit distressed about the American response.

On my first day, sitting in my high school bedroom zooming in to see that my co-workers were calling in from their actual workplace was a bit unsettling. They’re already back in the office? Does no one in the world take this virus seriously?

But Tomas explained the situation to me: on July 5th, Estonia had registered a grand total of 0 new coronavirus cases. Oh. Despite my insistence that I had felt no patriotism toward my country just a day before on July 4th, I couldn’t help but feel a bit defensive had to bite my tongue to keep from mentioning our population size or compact cities.

Throughout my internship, I struggled with finding the balance between remaining critical yet also defending myself and my country to my balkan colleagues. I couldn’t imagine what the U.S. looked like from the outside looking in.

I also didn’t realize how my blatant criticism of the U.S. (so naturally a part of my political thinking and writing) could be interpreted by my Estonian colleges. In a brief I authored, my assertion that Trump’s undermining of NATO was devastating for Estonia came off as condescending (US savior complex much?). I was failing to recognize the most important point: that the US needs NATO and trans-Atlantic cooperation just as much as Estonia does.

Under the Trump administration, US foreign policy has been over-simplified into a “tit for tat” type approach: if country A pays this much, country B should pay that much. It took breaking out of my US-centric thought patterns to realize how much I’d been pulled into that transactional mindset.

My time with the ICDS has taught me that the value of U.S. alliances comes from more than just the money, troops, or trade. It comes from the very nature of having alliances — our mutual strategic long term best interests are served by maintaining and nurturing our long held pacts and agreements with our allies.

So, perhaps it was with this philosophy in mind that Tomas comforted me some weeks later when I finally worked up the courage to ask him his opinion on the U.S. COVID situation.

“Oh, you Americans always find a way to get out of your troubles. I have faith.”

Perhaps the most optimistic person I’d spoken to since April, Tomas helped me see the big picture. That as Americans, while we may be bullies, and erratic, and even dangerous right now, we need everyone else as much as they need us, and our allies weren’t ready to give up on us just yet.