When President Joe Biden announced in June that the United States would donate additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, he claimed it was a humanitarian gesture. “We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions. We are sharing these vaccines to save lives and to lead the world in bringing an end to the pandemic, with the power of our example and with our values,” Biden said.

This was a bald-faced lie. The United States has repeatedly traded vaccines for political influence while upholding a system of vaccine apartheid that guarantees vaccine scarcity in the Global South and reinforces US empire.

Members of the foreign policy establishment have leapt to Biden’s defense, pointing out that China has also used its vaccines as a bargaining chip. They insist that Biden’s “vaccine diplomacy” has been a force for good. But it is Washington, its European allies, and US pharmaceutical companies — not China — that have blocked most of the world from obtaining vaccines.