There can be no denying that Donald Trump, despite being quite unorthodox in his style of functioning and speaking, is certainly one of the smartest politicians of the modern world. Thus, although Trump has been heavily criticised for halting funds for the World Health Organization (WHO) amid the global coronavirus pandemic, there is no room to believe that he did it without a detailed calculation in this allimportant election year.
Being an economic superpower, traditionally the US is the biggest contributor to many world bodies. Trump, being a businessman, doesn’t concur in that kind of philanthropic attitude, for sure. He certainly believes that as president of the USA his main job is to nourish the economy of his country, and only a bullrun of the Dow Jones would preserve his credentials with his electorate.
This attitude was reflected in a series of shocking decisions in the Trump regime during the last three years, despite severe criticism from different corners. The US became a signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation in April 2016, and President Obama committed that the country would contribute $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund.
Trump repeatedly said that climate change is ‘mythical’ and ‘a hoax’, and during the presidential campaign in 2016 pledged to withdraw from the pact, as he believed that would help American businesses and workers. So, America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was inevitable as soon as Trump became the resident of the White House.
Barely four months after he took charge as the US president, on 1 June 2017, Trump announced that the US would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement stating that, “the Paris accord will undermine economy” and “puts (the US) at a permanent disadvantage”. The world became very critical. Even a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 62 per cent of American voters disapproved Trump’s handling of climate change.
However, Trump certainly believed that his eventual approval rate would not be affected due to this, and Wall Street was more important than climate change in his re-election bid. Trump, a businessman, believes that important world bodies should protect American interests if they need large amounts funding from Washington for their functioning.
He took another major step in this direction within one year of his presidency. Towards the fag-end of 2017, as more than 120 nations criticised his decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the US cheered a massive $285 million cut in the United Nations’ 2018 budget. Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador at the UN, said: “This historic reduction in spending – in addition to many other moves toward a more efficient and accountable UN – is a big step in the right direction.”
Then, the 2020 budget request released by the White House in March 2019 did not just put zero funding against UNICEF, it eliminated the entire budget line that funds a variety of UN agencies like the UN Development Program, UN Environment and the UN Population Fund and the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights, among others. Also, UN Peacekeeping took a huge hit in this budget request.
And now, when the world is fighting coronavirus, Trump announced that the US would cease American funding to the WHO while a review is conducted to determine its role in “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”. The WHO has also been accused of not asking for a travel ban to and from China. Incidentally the US contribution of $400 million is the most by any country, and it accounts for about 15 per cent of WHO’s budget.
In fact, this was also on the cards as throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump had accused the WHO of being overly deferential to China. The world reacted strongly. While the American Medical Association termed it a “dangerous step in the wrong direction”, UN Secretary General António Guterres maintained that it was “not the time” to cut funds to the WHO, which “is absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against Covid- 19”.
Richard Horton, the editor-inchief of the highly prestigious medical journal ‘Lancet’, wrote: “Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.” However, Trump believes that these criticisms are immaterial to him. He doesn’t care whether a certain Bill Gates terms his decision “as dangerous as it sounds”, or a certain Ricard Horton calls it “a crime against humanity”.
What really would matter for him is that, according to his belief, millions of Americans do care for their economy first. “Once we OPEN UP OUR GREAT COUNTRY, and it will be sooner rather than later, the horror of the Invisible Enemy, except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend, must be quickly forgotten,” Trump wrote a few days back during the severe Covid-19 outbreak.
That is certainly not all. Trump knows that people (read Democrats) would raise questions about his sloppy inaction in fighting the pandemic, specially at the early stages. Although Trump pointed to a tweet from WHO dated January 14 that repeated China’s claim that there was still “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”, he himself praised China’s transparency even ten days after the WHO’s January message!
While the truth behind Trump’s allegation of WHO ignoring a Taiwanese email of December 31 referring to human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 in China would remain unclear, the move to defund the WHO is an example of classic Trump deflection – initially he himself didn’t consider the threat more than that of flu. Trump desperately needed someone to pass the buck to in this election year. He has found this in the WHO.
Viewed differently, Trump’s action is a telling indicator of how he sees power and how he misunderstands the historic role of US support for such international organisations. One may think Trump is erratic in his decisions, but he seems very consistent in his agenda.
Certainly, this American approach would continue unless a Democrat wins in the November election. Yet, Trump has exhibited how the US can play with such world bodies. In the post-Covid- 19 world, shouldn’t these international organizations try to get out of the comfort zone of American funding and undertake much-needed internal reforms? If not, they will fade out of existence.
(The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)