Honestly, foreign aid was a miniscule amount of money that yielded massive amount of soft power. Trump is a waste of oxygen.
Republicans don’t understand soft power or second order effects
All that matters is the now.
Well that fucking sucks for humanity.
Welcome to Trump’s America. “Well that fucking sucks for humanity,” might as well be the phrase that historians use to summarize his second term.
If you’ll recall, he tried to withdraw America from the WHO at the end of his first term, but failed due to losing the election before the request was accepted. The WHO’s recommendations didn’t match what Trump said during the COVID pandemic, and Trump will use any means at his disposal to quash dissent.
Well maybe this will decrease American influence.
Can we do the same for the UN? World bank? IMF?
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind if the “World *” organizations were more, y’know, world-oriented.
China will pick up the slack, don’t worry
China gotta step in.
Yeah, because that’ll surely end well. Any strong democracy would be a lot better than either the US or China.
China still hasn’t been anywhere near transparent about COVID, for example. Do you really think they’d be any better if an outbreak of something similar would happen, especially if it originated from China in the first place.
The WHO is losing staff today due to lack of funding. That is “a bad ending.” If someone can put up the money in short order to stop that bad ending, it’s better one. China can do that. If a stronger democracy can do it so we can have more good endings down the road, they should. I’m not optimistic.
If someone can put up the money in short order to stop that bad ending, it’s better one.
Money rarely comes with no strings attached.
I’m with you there, in theory at least. Chinese money tends to come with strings attached, though. I’d be weary of that kind of influence without proper oversight.
It’s not like the WHO hasn’t flip-flopped on things before due to outside pressure either, so there’s some precedent there.
Yes. There’s no oversight, whoever puts the money has the influence. US, China, EU, Canada, Australia, etc. We need to move away from the idea of funding being separable from influence. About anything. The economic dimension isn’t separate from the political one. It’s a myth we are told that’s served to further the interests of capital against the rest of us. If any country or block wants the influence we/they can put up the money.
We’re in agreement then. I mean, I don’t have anything in particular against China as such, I just don’t like how they handled COVID and I certainly have some issues with their governance at large, but their money would still be welcome if there was proper oversight.
I do hope WHO will get up and running at 100% though, they’re sorely needed. Considering what’s happening in the US I don’t think it’ll be long before some shit happens over there as well.
Now who will send me a letter for the price of a cup of coffee per day?
I had no idea the band had that many members
