The President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced the freezing of the funds that his country contributes to the World Health Organization (WHO), equivalent to 15% of its budget. The reason for the decision would be the deficient work of this United Nations agency in managing the coronavirus crisis, related, always according to Washington, to the pressures that the Chinese Government would have exerted so that the appearance of the new one would not be reported. disease. At the moment, no other member has backed President Trump's budget suspension or his conspiracy speculations. And although the financial vacuum that the United States will leave could be filled by other private or state donors, preventing the main programs from being affected, the truth is that the political scope of the American gesture goes beyond the mere budgetary question.
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On this occasion, Washington has used the pandemic to open a new front of tension with China, and, incidentally, to advance in the declared objective of dismantling the multilateral system built at the end of World War II. Other United Nations agencies, such as Unesco or the agency in charge of alleviating the situation of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, have been in the crosshairs of American diplomacy, and it cannot be ruled out that the payroll will expand as the world-wide crises are happening. The international roles of the two biggest powers of the moment seem to be reversing: while the United States is betting under Trump's leadership on a new protectionism, China is leaning towards opening markets. Hence, it is not possible to rule out new tensions in the agencies devoted to trade and the economy.
The possibility that international reality is witnessing a change in hegemony cannot hide a deeper process that, if it progresses and is consummated, will have more destabilizing effects than the simple fact that China occupies the position of the United States. It is that the rules that shaped the world order are in some cases threatened and in others in open receding, tilting relations between the great powers, and, in general, between the States, towards a stark competition of power. This should be the world according to Trump, convinced not only that his international power is the greatest at the moment, but also that it will continue to be so indefinitely. A more modest mistake than this, such as that the United States was enabled to wage successful wars on two different fronts, conceived by the Bush Administration, marked the beginning of a global disorder of which Washington does not seem the greatest beneficiary.
The individual confinement and closure of borders and exchanges that the coronavirus pandemic has fostered are simultaneously rehabilitating unsupportive attitudes and protectionist reflexes. This circumstance plays in favor of the immediate objectives of Trump's diplomacy, even though it may jeopardize the international role that the United States has been playing for more than half a century. The real danger is not that China will become hegemonic, but that sooner or later it will become hegemonic in a world without rules.
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