US President Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) amid the coronavirus pandemic is part of Washington’s imperialist strategy to impose its polices around the world, says an author and political commentator in Chicago.
Trump’s move on Tuesday prompted condemnation from world leaders. Several WHO programs, including emergency mitigation of the coronavirus, are now in danger of being set aside.
Trump accused WHO of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus, saying this had probably worsened the outbreak.
In response, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference on Wednesday that he regretted the decision but called on world unity to fight the pandemic.
“The Trump regime … offer the organization a bribe; get rid of this guy and we’ll flip back the funding. We'll give you back the funding that we’re taking away,” Stephen Lendman told Press TV in a phone interview on Tuesday.
no self-respecting person would go along with this, a bribe,” Lendman said. “We’ll give you the script and when you go on air and make public comments, you read from our script; you don't write your own.”
“That's the deal that's been proposed to the WHO. It's the same deal that's proposed to all the major world organizations…they either go along with US policies or their heads and other officials are sacked and replaced with somebody else.” he added.
On Thursday, seventeen of Trump’s fellow Republicans on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to the president, voicing their support of his decision to cut WHO’s funding.
The United States contributed more than $400 million to the WHO in 2019, roughly 15 percent of its budget. A senior US official said Washington would stop a $58 million “assessed contribution” that it was due to pay for 2020.
“The US wants its way; It doesn't want any dissent from its policies and if it would nation-states dissent from its policies, they risk being terror bombed and having sanctioned a sanctions waged against them,” Lendman said.
“That's the way the US operates. That's what imperialism is all about. That is the world's greatest scourge. They may end up killing us all if we don't find a way to stop it,” he added.
The United States, with the world’s third-largest population, has now suffered the greatest number of reported fatalities from the coronavirus, ahead of Italy and Spain.
More than 700,000 people in the US have been infected with the coronavirus and over 35,000 have died as of Saturday morning, according to a Reuters tally.
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