Marcel Dirsus is a political scientist based in Hamburg and a non-resident Fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University (ISPK).
HAMBURG — When Donald Trump announced the United States would stop funding the World Health Organization (WHO), political leaders were quick to rush to the now blameless institution’s aid.
The EU’s foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell said “the EU fully supports their important work”; Germany Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted: “Apportioning blame won’t help. This virus knows no borders.”
This is a pattern we’ve seen again and again over the last couple of years. Trump criticizes something that deserves to be criticized, but he takes it too far and with remarkably bad timing. In reaction, others instinctively offer blanket support to the subject of his criticism, even if that means defending the indefensible. All nuance is lost.
It goes without saying that stopping the flow of cash to a global institution like the World Health Organization during a global pandemic is a terrible idea. It will make it tougher for countries around the world to respond to this crisis and the poorest will suffer more than they already are.
It will also cost America dearly in the court of public opinion. Trump’s latest move won’t stop China from expanding its influence within the WHO — just the opposite.
Instead of taking money away, Trump should be increasing America’s commitment to the WHO to push back against China. Instead of acting unilaterally, a smart U.S. president would have pushed Europeans and others behind the scenes to build coalitions to reform the WHO from the inside.
And yet, for Europe to react by defending the WHO without qualification is also misguided. As painful as it is to admit: Trump has a point. The role of the WHO as an institution and the way it has dealt with the Chinese regime during the coronavirus crisis deserves serious scrutiny. The problem isn’t so much that Trump is critical of the WHO, it’s that he took it too far, at the worst possible time.
We’ve seen this kind of overcompensation before, and it works both ways. If Trump defends something, it becomes bad. If he attacks something, it becomes good. But that’s not how it works — or at least it shouldn’t be. Trump is usually (very) wrong, but even a broken clock is (sort of) right every once in a while.
In much of Europe, NATO’s 2 percent of goal — the idea that governments commit to spend 2 percent of national GDP on defense — became toxic the moment Trump started going on about it, despite governments having previously agreed that it was necessary. The more Trump has gone after international agreements and institutions, the more Europeans have come to present multilateralism as an end in and of itself as opposed to a tool to be used to solve particular problems.
The urge to defend the indefensible and vice-versa is understandable. Trump is so unpopular in many countries that opposing him is an easy way to become more popular yourself, and if you were to criticize someone or something Trump has attacked, you run the risk of appearing to agree with him.
In Germany, Trump is so unpopular that opposing the U.S. gives you brownie points. Just two weeks ago, Berlin’s interior minister clearly tried to score a few by accusing America of “modern piracy” after a shipment of masks didn’t arrive in the German capital. It turns out the accusations were inaccurate, but the damage to transatlantic relations had been done.
This whole dynamic is hugely problematic. Whether it’s the WHO, NATO or multilateralism more generally, the much-discussed liberal international order will have to evolve and change in order to survive. Blanket support isn’t good enough, especially because many of Trump’s views are shared across the American political spectrum.
When it comes to China’s influence at the WHO, burden-sharing in NATO or Nord Stream 2, Trump isn’t the only one to hold strong views. They’re all topics we’ll deal with long after he leaves office.
Opposition to Trump’s position on any given day is not a good enough guide for good policy. We have to think for ourselves and act accordingly. If that means agreeing with Trump occasionally, so be it.