Trump and the UN -The slow death of international order?

[Stavros]

So now it is the turn of the WHO, although so far the US is to withdraw funding for 60 days while it 'investigates' the UN agency, or spends 60 days trying to find reasons to withdraw from it altogether , the President having linked the WTO with the WHO on Tuesday afternoon (14 April 2020) -but note he claimed after his pressure the WTO is becoming more friendly to the US but he still reserves the right to walk away from it

The claims he made against the WHO on one level are verifiable rubbish -he queried the 'transparency' of China's relationship with the WHO but said on the 24th January "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency". His claims that the WHO did not state the new Coronovirus was communnicable human to human is false, just as it is wrong to claim that the WHO did not respond appropriately to the outbreak -the WHO made clear the position in early January at the same time that the President was informed, by David Navarro and others, that this new virus had the potential to kill substantial numbers of Americans -the WHO urged countries to test, which South Korea did, but the US did not take action in terms of doemstic policy until March, just as in that six week period the President insisted the virus was under control, it was just a form of 'flu or a 'hoax', claims that were supported by Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh

Well, whatever the truth, the politics is what matters here:
a) the US has not maintained its funding agreements with the WHO, and is thus in arrears so one wonders if withdrawing funding the WHO often does not get will affect the day-to-day operations of the organization. It amounts to a temper tantrum by the US.

b) if the US is concerned at China's influence in the WHO (not proven), maybe the question is, why did the US, on paper a major financial contributor and also a member state whose scientists and medical personnel also work for the WHO, not use that financial and intellectual contribution to challenge China within the WHO and make itself the most influential country? The President appears to be complaining that China has achieved something with the WHO that the US could have done years ago had it paid its dues regularly and linked its expertise in science and medicine more closely with the top layers of that bureacracy.

c) the anxiety must be that this is a 'warning shot' by the US that it no longer sees the UN and its agencies as important, but if the US were to withdraw from the WHO on the basis it is 'not fit for purpose', what does the US propose to replace it with, as there has been international co-operation on public health matters for the best part of the last 200 years? -just as, if the WTO were scrapped, would there be an alternative, or just anarchy, given that the WTO, like the WHO creates rules that member states agree to abide by? Maybe there is no plan, just as scrapping 'Obamacare' was a priority, but came with no alternative. In which case, why not scrap American government in addition to every other irksome institution the President sees as an obstacle to his power?

Lastly d), the sad irony is that is that there are citizens in the US whose access to health care is as poor as some of the poorest member states of the WHO in sub-Saharan Africa. Withdrawing funding from the WHO is mean, spiteful, and comes from a country that itself does not guaranteee health care for every citizen 'from cradle to grave' -does withdawing from the world's premier health organization mean US citizens will therefore benefit? I doubt it.

[filghy2]

b) if the US is concerned at China's influence in the WHO (not proven), maybe the question is, why did the US, on paper a major financial contributor and also a member state whose scientists and medical personnel also work for the WHO, not use that financial and intellectual contribution to challenge China within the WHO and make itself the most influential country? The President appears to be complaining that China has achieved something with the WHO that the US could have done years ago had it paid its dues regularly and linked its expertise in science and medicine more closely with the top layers of that bureacracy.

It also gives China a chance for a propaganda coup by stepping up their own contributions to help fill the gap. It's clear they are trying to atone for their earlier cover-up by presenting themselves as the country prepared to help others, in contrast to the US.

I'm not a fan of China, and I think we do need to counter their attempts to expand their influence, but it needs to be done in a smart way, rather than poorly-considered knee-jerk responses. Abandoning international responsibilities is hardly the smart way to counter China's influence.

[Stavros]

I think you are right about China, and I wonder if the Americans know that by their actions they are strengthening China's global status. Just as, I assume, the President was told that increasing sanctions on Iran would weaken the reformists who have more urgent domestic priorities than nuclear developments, while strengthening the Guardian Council and the legacy of Khomeini for whom nuclear developments must accelerate whatever the cost. It seems this President can only deal with either/or propositions as the complexity of real international relations confuses him.

If we assume that their long term ambition is to dissolve the UN, then the question that is asked which they might pose is -what difference would it make? That in turn begs the question why States have created international diplomatic structures since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 with the attempt to bind those relations through the agency of international law. One can read the history of international relations as a sequence of peace and armed conflict, adding Pinker's argument that since 1648 there have been progressively fewer wars and lower casualty rates from armed conflict, the assumption being that taken as a whole, diplomacy works by giving states in conflict the means to prevent that conflict deteriorating into destructive military war.

Sukumvit Boy some time ago wondered if the hostility the US was expressing with regard to China's ambition could become a 'Thucydides Trap' through which, without originally intending to do so, a conflict of interests spirals out of control, where one incident creates the conditions for war. I was, and remain sceptical because I am not sure this idea can be justified if a conventional war is the consequence, because such wars cost so much and have uncertain outcomes for both sides, and thus makes the Generals wary. Unless they think there can be a short decisive first strike to put themselves in an unassailable position- even though this was the now famous mistake the Germans made when they attacked France in 1914.

If the UN goes, I assume Bolton and his boss believe, you have a world of states where only their power matters -they might say this is what we have in reality, though one might argue against that the UN helps define power as 'interests' rather than raw power, where interests may be economic or cultural as well as political. The problem is that when powerful nuclear states like Israel, Russia and China use force to acquire territory, in violation of the UN Charter/International Law, neither the UN as a body, nor the USA as a single state, can do anything about it, or, as in the case of the US and Israel, may even endorse it, thus demeaning the status of international law and the UN. To which one adds the USA's withdawal of funding for UNRWA and the USA's formal withdrawal from UNESCO.

So I don't see the US going to war with China because of some obscure islands in the China Seas which, in an Asian context increase their physical presence in the Pacific Region and may be seen as a threat by Japan; just as Russia is free to annexe the Crimea and portions of the Ukraine because nobody, other than local people and the government of Ukraine is going to react militarily to stop them and reverse the incursions.

On the other hand I think that the 45th President of the USA wants to use battlefield nuclear weapons, just to prove it can be done, and enhance what he thinks will be his reputation as the greatest President of all time, in which case it is more likely to be a small state that cannot retaliate in kind, such as Iran. But the real danger in this 'might is right' world without the countervailing influence of International Law and the UN, is that once one nuclear power deploys tactical weapons on the battlefield, others will do so.
What used to be called MAD was based on the assumption that Presidents would exist who were not themselves MAD enough to use their nuclear arsenal. Pause for an intake of breath, as what we have in 2020 was unthinkable in 1950.

So I see this WHO spat as an alternative to a military confrontation wiith China, but as China already invests more in Africa than the US -the US has troops in West Africa killing people even as China has engineers buiding roads and bridges- I think that while in propaganda terms people are suspicious of China, we may have to accept that they are now in a more powerful position to entrench their global status just as the US becomes isolated behind its Wall, the UK even more isolated as it leaves the EU, while the EU is having its own integrity challenged by internal divisions and now economic uncertainty with a possible slump draining resources and hope for the next - ten years? I also think that havng developed a robust domestic economy, and with the Communist Party still in total control of the country -indeed 'cleansing' the 'Wild West' without opposition- China can cope with losing a proportion of its markets and supply chains in Europe and North America. It may be the only means the 'West' can undermine China's power, even if it means undermining the performance of domestic economies in Europe.
Unless this crisis, as with Chernobyl in the USSR, is a portent of decline. I think China is in a stronger position economically than the USSR was in the 1980s, but who knows what will happen in the next six months never mind the next six years?

At least with the UN and its agencies, international relations give the world structure rather than chaos, they offer unifying policies raher than anarchic self-interest, and can act to prevent war rather than encourage it. For all its many flaws, we are better off with the WHO and the UN than we are withou them.