Gordon Brown: Trump Has Abandoned the World

[Celerity]

Gordon Brown emphasizes that America’s withdrawal from 66 international organizations is at odds with global public opinion.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/trump-has-abandoned-the-world



On January 27, US President Donald Trump’s second withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement will finally take effect. This follows his announcement on January 7 that the United States would leave an additional 66 international organizations, including 31 United Nations entities and 35 non-UN bodies, now deemed unacceptable to the administration. Never has a national leader so comprehensively severed ties with the international community in a single month. Nor has a leader blatantly declared, “I don’t need international law,” as Trump did in an interview with the New York Times a few weeks ago. He went on to assert that he alone would be the arbiter of when such constraints apply to the US, and that his power would be limited only by his “own morality.”

Greenland has rightly become a focus of concern over US threats to seize it. But this overlooks the fact that lives are already being lost because of America’s brutality. Over the past year, the Trump administration has slashed funding for global humanitarian assistance and health programs, which, according to the Center for Global Development, will likely result in roughly one million additional deaths per year. A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and other organizations found that US and European aid cuts could together cause up to 22.6 million additional deaths – including 5.4 million children under the age of five – in developing countries by 2030. Given that recent developments imply further deep cuts in international support, these figures will surely need to be revised upward.

Of course, we were already aware that the administration would target global institutions like UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the UN Refugee Agency, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). But now we know that America will become the first country to abandon the very framework for reaching agreements on climate change, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which it will leave one year from now. At the same time, no one should doubt that the remit of Trump’s new Board of Peace will have major implications. This attempt to provide an alternative to the UN’s peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts, which have persistently been underfunded, represents a momentous shift in longstanding US policy.

The attack on agencies committed to the international rule of law from which America has long benefited – including the International Law Commission, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law – augurs badly for the legality of future US actions. It also seems far removed from the official explanation that the goal is to cut waste and counter the “woke” agenda. Leaving the agencies that support women’s equality and the protection of girls’ and women’s rights can hardly be justified by labeling them “ideological programs” at odds with US sovereignty, as the official statement does. One has to ask how an agency like UN Women can be considered “unnecessary” and “wasteful” when it has helped more than 80 countries deliver gender-responsive budgets, and when its sister agency, UNFPA, supports maternal health.

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[tanyev]

1. Trump doesn't want to cooperate with the world, he wants to rule as much of it as he can.

[MuseRider]

2. Exactly.

I cannot recall him calling for us seriously to join him. He always says some little thing then the next say he just takes it.