But Trump’s dramatic declaration this week that he would halt critical funding to the WHO in the middle of the pandemic is proving unpopular. It puts him at odds with his own administration’s officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Department — major agencies that recognize the importance of supporting and influencing the WHO in a time of shared crisis. And it underscores, yet again, Trump’s penchant for punishing or weakening multilateral, international institutions, even when it’s unclear what the United States gains from such disruption.
That order was already fraying seven decades after it emerged out of the ashes of World War II, a process accelerated by the ascent of illiberal demagogues in some of the world’s major liberal democracies. But the coronavirus pandemic is providing a genuine existential test to an aging U.S.-created status quo. “The political winds and pressures of the 21st century, from human migration and extreme income disparity to protectionism and rising new powers, have weakened its foundations, leaving it ill-equipped to handle the first truly global threat to its very existence,” wrote my colleagues Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly this week.
“The currents of populism are so great now that leaders are no longer inclined or rewarded for behaving in terms of international cooperation,” Stewart Patrick, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Bloomberg News. “There is a growing risk that these organizations could weaken and atrophy. There just aren’t enough leaders out there taking an enlightened view of the international interest.”
For years, observed William Burns, former deputy secretary of state and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, U.S. leaders built partnerships that served as “an invaluable force multiplier” for the American agenda. The pandemic is showing a new reality: “In this one, the Trump White House’s blend of arrogance and ineptitude, against the backdrop of more than three years of diplomatic disarmament, is a force divider,” Burns said.
Trump may be the figure most indicative of this institutional atrophying, but the crisis in global politics extends far beyond him. His defenders point to an international system that’s increasingly obsolete: The U.N. Security Council is a dusty relic of the aftermath of World War II, where the veto powers of the five permanent members have often stalled meaningful collective action; newer alliances or blocs are no less feckless or more effective; appeals to global “solidarity” and “shared values” ring all the more hollow; and three decades of unfettered globalization have played disproportionately into China’s hands.
“Every aspect of the international architecture has failed,” Taufiq Rahim, a Dubai-based global health expert with the New America organization, told my colleagues. “It starts with the U.N. Security Council, which has shown itself to be not just ineffective but no longer fit for purpose. While the G-7 and G-20 have convened in some form or other, that hasn’t led to any direct immediate action.”
A senior European official told my colleagues that rather than criticize and punish an institution like the WHO, the United States ought to “lean in” and more actively work to modernize the U.N. system, where Chinese influence has steadily grown. But Trump, while spoiling for a geopolitical confrontation with China and railing against “globalism,” has left the United States’ traditional partners in Europe in the lurch.
“China is not omnipotent, and Russia certainly is not. But in geopolitics, it’s not just about resources, but about how to prioritize their usage in times of scarcity,” noted Jan Techau, director of the Europe program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “China and Russia put a premium on systematically expanding their geopolitical reach and their influence on governments across the globe. Europe is high on their list because it is the crown jewel of Pax Americana and because it is an important market.”
Trump’s aversion to multilateral diplomacy and commitments, argue some experts, won’t thwart China from imposing its will on organizations like the WHO. “While Western commentators often portray these moves as sinister, China is just using available tools to advance its own interests,” wrote academics Alexander Cooley and Dan Nexon in The Post’s Monkey Cage blog. “And these techniques are not new. What we’re seeing now is only shocking to many U.S. observers, who have grown accustomed to a world where the United States makes the rules.”
By the time the pandemic passes, whenever that may be, the rules may well have changed.
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