Quora Answer: What Will Happen to WHO Now That the US Has Decided to Halt Funding?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What will happen to WHO now that the US has decided to halt the funding?”

On the WHO website, there is a statement of accounts of the invoiced contributions of individual nations, assessed according to the size of their economy and other factors: Assessed contributions overview for all member states as of 31st March 2020.  You would note that the United States is in arrears, and the WHO is still functioning.  In fact, the US has been in arrears in a number of its international commitments, and none of these organisations have collapsed.  They have been constrained, but they have continued to function.

In the aftermath of World War II, and the establishment of a new world order with the United States as a global superpower, the US initiated or supported efforts to set up various supranational organisations, including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and many others.  It also undertook the responsibility of being the largest funder of these organisations.  None of this was done out of altruism.

When you are the largest single donor or funder of anything, you dictate the agenda, and shape policy in nations all over the world.  In effect, the United States enforced a sort of global hegemony that even the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were constrained by.  This meant that it was always inevitable that a stalemate in the Cold War would have resulted in an American victory.

Donald John Trump does not understand history, and how the world functions.  An increasingly isolationist America, stepping back from its international commitments creates a vacuum.  Into that vacuum, other players will step forth.  China is the strongest candidate at the moment, but Russia and the European Union are not far behind.  Once the international order is weaned off American largesse, the US will gradually lose its ability to influence policy outside its immediate regions.  Contrary to “Making America Great Again”, this will ensure the US becomes increasingly irrelevant.  We are witnessing, in real time, the fall of an empire.