Trump insists that he is “the President of the United States . . . not the President of other countries” and that “we have to focus on this country” while “they’re working on their countries.” His approach overlooks the fact that failing to defeat the pandemic abroad undermines our ability to get it under control—and restore our way of life—at home. 

THE COST OF “AMERICA FIRST”

Well before the current crisis, the Trump administration repeatedly proposed drastic reductions to foreign aid and funding for global health. In February of this year, even as the novel coronavirus was spreading in China and beyond, the administration proposed to cut U.S. foreign aid programs for fiscal year 2021 by 21 percent. The cuts included 35 percent of funding for global health programs, amounting to around $3 billion and encompassing a reduction of 50 percent in U.S. support for the World Health Organization (WHO). In pursuit of other immigration and foreign policy goals, the administration slashed assistance to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, all of whose budgets and health-care systems were already under great strain. At the United Nations in 2018, Trump announced that “moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends.” 

Trump hasn’t completely ignored the rest of the world. Since the start of the pandemic, the administration has announced an additional $274 million in international aid. But that is a drop in the bucket at a time when more than a million people around the world are already infected with the deadly virus, national budgets everywhere are stretched thin, and the global economy is heading into a severe recession. Nor does the $2.2 trillion stimulus package, which Congress passed and Trump signed on March 27, adequately address the global dimension of the crisis. That entire bill allocates only $1.5 billion—less than one-tenth of one percent of its total—to support the international activities of the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin has pointed out that the bill provides almost as much to Amtrak as it does to fighting the virus abroad.

Some of the Trump administration’s most recent proposed cuts in foreign assistance could prove particularly counterproductive. On March 23, for example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced plans to reduce assistance to Afghanistan by $1 billion in 2020 and threatened to cut another $1 billion in 2021. But the Afghan government is already strapped for cash and gets some 75 percent of its revenues from international donors. Its public health infrastructure is poor. If Kabul has to adopt austerity measures as COVID-19 spreads, the already fragile government could collapse. Afghanistan’s Minister of Public Health said on March 24 that without social-distancing measures, up to 16 million Afghans could ultimately be infected. The problem would not be limited to Afghanistan: according to the EU border agency Frontex, some 17,000 Afghans crossed the Aegean Sea into Europe in 2019, and as many as double that number are expected to do so in 2020.  

The administration’s proposed cuts in foreign assistance could prove particularly counterproductive.

Yemen, too, faces cuts in aid from Washington. Seeking to press the Houthi leadership to ease restrictions on aid delivery to areas under its control, the Trump administration suspended around $70 million in assistance to those areas. The cuts—which provide some exceptions for certain “crucial, lifesaving activities” but not for basic health care—could prove catastrophic, and not just for Yemenis. Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, told The Washington Post last week that her organization was “running out of money” and would have to close lifesaving operations in the next month if further funds were not forthcoming. So far, there are no reported cases of COVID-19 in Yemen, but an outbreak seems only a matter of time. Yemen shares borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman and maintains extensive interaction with Iran, which has one of the highest infection rates in the world, a problem only exacerbated by the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign. 

The damage does not end there. Trump has ended all U.S. support to the Palestinian Authority, including humanitarian, development, and public health assistance, ostensibly in order to pressure the Palestinians to embrace the administration’s Middle East peace plan. But this move, too, is likely to damage global efforts to fight the virus. Washington has further cut funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which is the primary provider of health-care and basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees.  One consequence of these measures is that COVID-19 could soon overwhelm Gaza’s anemic health system. According to the WHO, Gaza has only 15 available ventilators for its entire population of nearly two million, in one of the most densely populated areas of the world.

Megan Doherty, the senior director of policy at Mercy Corps and a former foreign assistance adviser at the State Department, notes that refugees and displaced populations “are particularly vulnerable to the virus, because in overcrowded camps, distancing is impossible, and residents lack access to information, soap, and clean water.” Refugees elsewhere in the region, including in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Libya, Jordan, and Egypt, are also highly vulnerable to the virus, which will continue to threaten global populations at least until a vaccine can be deployed. 

THE ONLY FUTURE IS GLOBAL

Faced with this global crisis, Trump may try to leave other countries to handle their own problems while he puts up walls around the United States. But this vision is a dangerous fantasy. Even if the United States were to permanently deny entry to nationals from large parts of Asia, Africa, or the Middle East, desperate people from those regions will inevitably make their way to the United States through Mexico, Canada, and Europe. And even if it were somehow possible to prevent people from coming in from those countries, the costs to the United States of sealing itself off from its most important trading partners would be greater than those of working to contain the virus in the source countries to begin with.   

The more realistic option is for the United States to lead a determined international effort to end the pandemic. There is extensive precedent for such leadership not just in wartime but in the field of global health. In 2003, the administration of President George W. Bush recognized the spread of HIV/AIDS as a threat not only to global health but also to global and U.S. security. It established the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which marshaled medical, diplomatic, and foreign aid resources to save millions of lives worldwide. Similarly, in response to the devastating Ebola outbreak in 2014, President Barack Obama worked closely with the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and foreign governments to contain and treat the deadly disease, including by sending teams of U.S. experts to assist other countries.

In the current crisis, however, the United States has exercised no such leadership. On March 26, the G-7 partners failed to agree to a joint statement on the pandemic because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted on branding the pathogen the “Wuhan virus.” Trump enjoys a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, which is the current chair of the G-20, but little evidence suggests that the administration is using that organization to guide a coordinated international response. Indeed, Trump’s failure to lead a coordinated global response, together with his practice of berating, belittling, and bullying the United States’ closest and wealthiest allies, has, remarkably, allowed many to view China as a more responsible global leader than the United States. On March 31, the leaders of Ecuador, Ethiopia, Germany, Jordan, and Singapore proposed the sort of global alliance to fight the pandemic that once would have been led by the United States. 

The coronavirus pandemic is a threat to U.S. national security.

Much time has been lost and many opportunities missed, but the administration and Congress can still act. The administration should abandon the illusion that an infectious disease can be stopped at American borders, and Secretary of State Pompeo should start to build a coalition to combat the pandemic through existing organizations such as the WHO, G-7, and G-20, or new ones if necessary.