Trump Administration Orders U.S. Diplomats to Curtail Contact With WHO

Trump Administration Orders U.S. Diplomats to Curtail Contact With WHO While Trump burns bridges with the World Health Organization, U.S. officials strain to preserve American influence in an institution that is critical to global health… rgramer1 Foreign Policy

Despite the White House decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization in the midst of a deadly pandemic, American officials have sought to maintain some U.S. influence at the global health agency, promoting a far-reaching reform initiative and granting U.S. diplomats the authority to continue working on WHO programs that fight polio, HIV, and other infectious diseases.

But that effort has been undercut by a new set of orders from the State Department to sharply curtail diplomatic contact with WHO officials—even though the United States will remain a member of the global health agency until next summer—as well as a U.S. decision to cut funding for the WHO.

The contradictory currents in U.S. policy underscore the challenges facing the Trump administration as it grapples with the fallout of a pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans: It wants to punish the WHO for what it claims is an unwillingness to hold China accountable for failing to act swiftly to contain the coronavirus. But it that still relies on the U.N. agency to confront a broad range of deadly diseases that could spread across U.S. borders if not properly tackled abroad.

“It seems the United States doesn’t want to completely cut its relationship with the WHO,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Like it or not, the U.S. can’t live without this organization.”

Earlier this month, American allies Germany and France rebuffed a request from U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Brett Giroir to endorse a U.S.-drafted road map for WHO reform, preferring to develop their own initiative.

The U.S. paper included an array of proposals aimed at enhancing the WHO’s ability to respond rapidly to an emerging pandemic and strengthening its power to investigate outbreaks, as well as calling out countries that fail to fully disclose the emergence of infectious diseases on their soil. ...

In contrast to those U.S. efforts to maintain a leadership role in the WHO, the State Department has issued a sweeping directive to U.S. government personnel abroad to pare back interactions with the organization’s officials and require them to seek prior approval to participate in WHO-related events and meetings, a full year before the U.S. withdrawal from the body takes effect.

U.S. government personnel can only engage with WHO personnel in “specific, limited circumstances” and must seek prior approval to participate in any WHO events that have a public or media component, according to a cable sent to all diplomatic and consular posts abroad that was obtained exclusively by Foreign Policy.