HE HATES THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE AMERICAN, NOT BECAUSE THEY'RE PRO-CHINA:

[T]here is evidence that local officials attempted to cover up the early outbreak, and the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has stood by his endorsement of China's heavy-handed tactics. As with decisions to honour Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, and former Zimbabwean ruler Robert Mugabe, Tedros' stance has been roundly criticised. In his defence, it does seem to stem from a genuine desire to win engagement in order to deliver his mandate of achieving health for all.

Interestingly, President Trump was one of the few world leaders who seemed to agree that China was doing a good job, praising the government's "hard work and transparency" in January and commending Xi Jinping's handling of the mounting pandemic in a string of further comments during February.

Trump had two other aims in mind when he pulled the rug from under the WHO's feet. In the short term, most pundits agree that Trump's main motivation for cutting WHO funding was to deflect blame from his own bungled handling of COVID-19 on home soil. His approval ratings are at an all-time low and the US now has more cases of coronavirus than any other country.

In the longer term, withdrawing from multilateral partnerships aligns with Trump's zero-sum worldview. As with Nato, the World Trade Organization and virtually every other international body, Trump feels that the US is getting a bad deal from its WHO contribution. And he bristles at the thought of foreign nations exploiting American generosity.

Former presidents have worked to develop, maintain and promote an Anglophone, dollar-backed international world order built on American values of capitalism, liberalism, democracy, integration and the transparent rule of law. This has fostered an unprecedented era of peace, stability, international cooperation and integration of markets (as well as massive socioeconomic inequality) - projecting American soft power and allowing national firms to enter formerly closed markets.

In Trump's view, his predecessors were chumps...

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