Grandstand. Last April, Donald Trump announced that he would suspend the United States’ contribution to the budget of the World Health Organization (WHO). This Monday On July 6, the United States government notified the organization that it would no longer be a member. A few weeks earlier, on June 11, the same Donald Trump had signed a presidential decree allowing the United States to take sanctions against all those who would help the implication of American or allied personnel before the International Criminal Court.
Most European commentators have placed these episodes under the seal of a long-term offensive against multilateralism and international organizations. In April, the Tweet version of the presidential message gave a slightly different explanation, clearly suggesting that if the WHO had not sought to hide the Chinese management of the Covid-19 pandemic, its silences and denials, the The Trump administration would not have to face a major political crisis that would double the health catastrophe.
What is at stake in the attacks on WHO is therefore not limited only to the strategy of deconstructing the institutions of the international post-war order. To grasp the stakes, a detour through history is essential. The choices of the American president are indeed part of a long tradition of American hostility to the United Nations health organization.
Reluctantly rallying
Since its creation, and even when it considered that dominating the United Nations system was essential for the proper management of the Cold War, the United States has always considered WHO, even more than any other United Nations organization, as an institution bureaucratic and unnecessary. In 1946, on the basis of satisfactory experience with the Pan American Health Organization, the United States argued not for the creation of a UN agency, but for regional coordination and the extension of aid programs. bilateral.
They joined the WHO project reluctantly and Washington's international health policy, throughout the 1950s to 1970s, favored the construction of ad hoc alliances with Unicef, WHO, the Bank or the United Nations Development Program. Decolonization, the accession of new independent nation-states and the resulting WHO transformations have only strengthened these reservations.
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