I know basically nothing about foreign policy at all, but just in the "tombert thought experiment" land I'm going to give my "asshole opinion" [1].
-----------
> Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how does that apply to a foreign country?
Conceivably couldn't we do some kind of trade agreement/embargo on countries that don't follow a minimum level of disclosure/safety protocol? E.g. if country A is shown to have covered up a massive lab leak, we impose some kind of tariff on them for N days.
Obviously there are no easy solutions to problems like this, but I think that would be the place I start, because obviously US law doesn't really apply to places outside of the US; the only thing we could do (at least the only thing that I could think of) that's even close to punitive enforcement would be to apply leverage.
[1] "Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one and most of them stink"
>Conceivably couldn't we do some kind of trade agreement/embargo
Imagine, if you will, a scenario where one country is manufacturing such a large percentage of products so that an embargo would cause massive disruptions to pretty much everyone everywhere. Now imagine that country being the suspect in a situation where the punishment is that very embargo. What do you do?
-----------
> Now, the crux, whatever legislation you come up with, how does that apply to a foreign country?
Conceivably couldn't we do some kind of trade agreement/embargo on countries that don't follow a minimum level of disclosure/safety protocol? E.g. if country A is shown to have covered up a massive lab leak, we impose some kind of tariff on them for N days.
Obviously there are no easy solutions to problems like this, but I think that would be the place I start, because obviously US law doesn't really apply to places outside of the US; the only thing we could do (at least the only thing that I could think of) that's even close to punitive enforcement would be to apply leverage.
[1] "Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one and most of them stink"