The White House is in a particularly intense form of crisis mode, reckoning with the coronavirus pandemic while also stoking the coals of President Trump’s reelection campaign. As scrutiny builds over the administration’s squandered opportunities to confront the outbreak early on, Trump is training his ire on China and the World Health Organization. At a Tuesday news conference, he even threatened to withhold funds from the U.N. body.
Washington’s foreign policy establishment, meanwhile, laments that, at a time of global crisis, Trump has seemingly left the field and abandoned the banner of global leadership. Its denizens issue a steady stream of commentary on what the world may look like when the pandemic passes, though no one knows when that may be. But it’s obvious that global concerns and priorities may change.
“The first months of this crisis suggest that the world order that emerges on the other end is likely to be permanently altered,” wrote Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “America’s response to 9/11 committed the familiar mistake of hastening a superpower’s decline through overreach; the Trump presidency, and our failure to respond effectively to COVID-19, show us the dangers of a world in which America makes no effort at leadership at all.” Continue reading.